Monday, July 23, 2012

Road Trip part 1

When we have a long day of travel we get up early to leave so we can reach our destination before dark. And it always seems to take longer than we think it will. I actually like getting on the road before dawn. I enjoy watching the sun come up and seeing Africa wake up. As the sun rises we see people going for water and people off to work with their bicycles loaded down. By 6:30 we see children walking to school dressed in their school uniforms. The country side is so pretty at that time of day.

We enjoyed comparing Kenya and TZ on this trip, since it was our first time in Kenya. We were surprised to see the big fields of corn, wheat and sugar cane. We haven’t seen large fields in TZ yet. These fields weren’t as big as some in the states but they are big enough to need tractors and combines. I was surprised to see all the tractors in Kenya because we see very few in TZ. Yes we even saw a few John Deere tractors and combines.


We spent 2- 10 hour days traveling to the conference location. Our 2nd day was traveling from Nairobi to Watumu, which is on the coast of Kenya. To get there we have to travel through Mombasa. Mombasa is a big port city so between Nairobi and Mombasa we saw hundreds of trucks. Wished the road was 4 lanes but at least there weren’t as many speed bumps on this portion of the road and fewer pot holes.
Mombasa
When we were on our way to Nairobi after conference we ended the life of a gazelle (or something similar) prematurely when it ran across the road in front of us, so thankful for the cattle guard on our truck. It bent back and made a dent on our truck and we need some new bolts for the cattle guard but that is it. The gazelle didn’t fare as well. We wished we would have gone back and taken a picture of it because now we aren’t exactly sure what it was that we hit. But it was a big deer like animal.
Wheat fields
Parts of Western Kenya has lots of hills