We hope To Get To the Airport before the Wheel Falls Off!

We waited for our driver to come and get our luggage for his six hour drive to Kisumu, we loaded him up and he was on his way.  Meanwhile, we decided to hire another van for the rest of our day in Nairobi.  In typical Kenyan elastic time, we waited for 2 hours for our new driver to arrive.  Again, in typical Nairobi fashion, he was stuck in traffic somewhere between town and our hotel.  We walked out to the road to watch for him and the traffic was indeed horrendous all along Lenana Road.  We saw several funny attempts of drivers trying to get around the traffic jam, one guy in a large Pajero literally drove up onto the sidewalk and between a pedestrian blockade!


Eventually the van showed up and we loaded up and headed out "a short cut" which Jessica thought was more fun anyway.  As we raced along the very windy bumpy  roads of West Nairobi, we heard a terrible screeching sound like metal on metal.  We finally decided it was the left front wheel! The sound was so bad we thought the wheel literally would not make it.

Then followed a memorable trip down memory lane as we drove through Kilimani to the place where we  lived 15 years ago.  It looked just the same and memories came flooding back.  Even our old gatekeeper was still there and even remembered us.  So much of Nairobi has changed and developed, but the place where we spent four years of our lives as a young family remains in our hearts and minds as the same.  We went on to the YaYa Center, the main shopping place we frequented and I could not even recognize it, it was so modernized. We had a light lunch,looked around the shops and then we went out to find our van and driver who was to take us to the airport for our late afternoon flight to Kisumu.

The trip to Kisumu was short and uneventful, and we landed in Kisumu around 6pm.  True to his word, Moses was there waiting for us and drove us through the streets of Kisumu to our guest house.  By now we were exhausted and literally fell in our beds - but of course, we adjusted our mosquito nets first! So ended our first day in Kenya - a little overwhelming but pretty satisfying.
Jo