Rodgers told his family that we'd be back to see them this morning. There were clouds rolling in Tuesday night, but it didn't rain. It rained enough Tuesday that one more shower would render the road too squishy for the Corolla. If we had a Land Cruiser, no problem, but the Corolla's a bit more delicate.
Since it didn't rain, we packed up, had breakfast. In 2008, they had the lovely breakfast pictured below, included in the price of the room. In 2010, we bought chai and a few chapatis.
At Esther's house, Rodgers told me to sit in Wilson's sitting room since he speaks English. It seems that Rodgers really doesn't like interpretting for me. Anyway, I answered all of his questions about America. We wanted to leave by 10:30. About 10:15 I started noticing some dark clouds. We left 10 minutes later, and the rain hit a few minutes after we cleared the potentially squishy road.
We took Halima with us to Malindi (she would take a matatu home to Marereni). We sat in our cafe, waiting for lunch with Francis. He was in some kind of meeting with missionaries. When he finally showed up, we had lunch, then went to his house to pick up his backpack, and took him with us to Mombasa. His house was still under construction when we were there in 2008. It's complete now and looks great! I told Rodgers he can build me a house like that, but it has to have a sitting toilet in the house. I would also like a stove.
in the cafe with Halima
It was nice having Francis and Halima with us on the drive south. In each town and some villages, there are huge speed bumps. Here in Texas, they would be called speed humps. They are not painted and have no signs to warn you they're coming. You just have to know. We missed one on our way north. Rodgers saw it at the last minute, slammed on the breaks, left some tread on the pavement, and we still caught some air coming over the bump. I thought for sure the car would be broken after that, but it seems fine. Francis and Halima have made the trips enough times that they know where the speed bumps are and gave Rodgers sufficient warning ahead of them.
We dropped Francis at his hotel. He was asked to come down to help some missionary conference. There were some Americans there whose English was unintelligible to the Kenyans at the conference, so Francis was to translate American to Kenyan English or Swahili.
Then, we went to the airport to get my suitcase! I was so relieved that it arrived before we left. There was hardly any traffic because it was a public holiday. They had elections on a new constitution for Kenya. The final count on the voting was 67% for, 33% against, so Kenya has a new constitution! Rodgers was able to get a copy of it before we left, and he has been poring over it.
Besides Nate's malaria pills, my suitcase contained gifts for Esther. We took her 2 mugs with pictures of us on them, Nate's first school picture, and some gifts from friends of ours. Of course we didn't have them when we were at her house, and we wouldn't have time to go back up there before leaving Friday, so we left them with William. Hopefully he will have a chance to take them home soon.
We went back to Jundan Hotel for the night. I suggested to Rodgers we go to Blue Room for dinner. It's a pretty nice restaurant, and he loves their pizza, so he readily agreed. It's walking distance from the hotel, so we carried Nate in the Baby Bjorn.
Then it was somehow already bedtime.
There is a mosque next door to the hotel. Last time I stayed there, it took several days before I was able to fall asleep again after the call to prayer. The 2 days we stayed there this time, I only barely woke up for it. Either I'm becoming a deeper sleeper or having a baby makes me really really tired.
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