howie’s halfpipe

one more sleep.

last night was freaking cold, stupid tassie weather.

there is some good buddies here!

I’m alive, my predictions post is mostly correct.

I have to say i havents been totally bored but there have been moments. it has been cold and  am looking forward to being home, mmm my own bed..mmmmcable internet. mmmmmmmmm westfield

Internet is not paramount at this conference so i took the liberty of actually writing this post last Saturday night. and setting it up so it posts it today.

So i have no new news to tell you but i can predict the following.

Right now its cold in tasmnaia,  and i dont really want to be here and am excited about coming home in a few days.

just started feeling quite sick, went to visit the lovely dubai airport toilets.

world war 3 was over not long after it started.

lovely.

I was fine the whole time in Kenya, i start coming home and then it all comes undone.

still feeling pretty seedy.

On the upside i found free wifi

we just landed in the dubai

was a flight of crap sleep.

toms leaving on his flight to londond soon then i have a couple of hours to kill until my 14hr flight home.

we are in nairobi airport after spending almost 10 hours travelling 400kn over the worlds worst roads.

2 planes to go

pressing the ‘demo’ button on a keyboard is great backing music for a sermon

hotel rooms in kenya have horrible acoustics, you can hear the ‘plop’ of bathroom users from your bed

when construcing a staircase it is not important to make all steps an equal size

NO WE ARE STILL NOT AMERICANS

Roundabouts encourage traffic jams

kenyans are extrememly friendly 

When an descision is needed to be made it is important to stand around for a few hours before actually making that descision

never feel like it is too late to ask a white man for money

if you have asthma dont go into a small mud hut if it has smoke coming out of the door, its like sitting inside a giant bong

hot chips are the unofficial dish of kenya

when preaching in kenya if people wave at you, then you are doing well. If they stand up and walk out maybe not so well

when using a shower it it is important to flood the bathroom as much as possible

if you are friendly to passport control officers they may invite themselves to your birthday party

when leaving kenya leave your suit behind so you never have to wear it again

if a kenyan worship song begins to play in a church or on the radio you have enough time to go back home and have a sleep, eat a meal, go for a walk and have another nap before the song will finish

when ordering chicken stew be sure to remove the feathers before consuming

when you order coke make sure you order ‘baridi’ otherwise you will get room temp coke

when you go through passport control at nairobi airport you find yourself transported to a giant waiting lounge of loud americans, with kenyans only present as cleaners and airport staff

the kenyan countryside is a beautiful thing

be creative when naming your business, for example ‘Rich people also cry butchery’

we are about to leave kitale and travel to nairobi. It should take around 8 - 9 hours.

then at 11:30 pm tonight we fly out to dubia.

should be around 36 hours from when we leave kitale until i arrive in sydney

rain = no power = generators

you can call me ‘the new james clarke’

at the moment the internet cafe we are at has no spare desks for me to put my laptop on so they have given me a chair and a desk outside on the verandah. all that is on this verandah is 1 chair, 1 desk and me and my laptop.

It just started pelting down with rain so i had to run back inside, lappy got a bit wet but he is ok.

yesterday tom and i got the night off which was fantastic! the revival meeting was cancleed because of rain.

this morning we visited a small school that is all just orphans, its a project of a few of the local churches. We played some games with the kiddies which was fun. it seems that older people especially people in powerful positions like pastors just ignore kids and push them away when they are standing too close. Infact when we arrived at the school all the pastors went and sat under a tree and didnt come near the kids excpet for the man translating for me and tom. we had fun playing games and making them laugh.

Its a very tribal culture here, the pastors are the chiefs and all important they get special seats and sodas and get to eat first. Its a bit hard to deal with sometimes cause tom and i are being treated the same way. tom and i asked today if we could hand out the food and rink to the kids at lunch time and the pastor said no. we where just supposed to sit in opur comfy chairs and watch. But in the ned we just sort of did start serving which was probably insultiung their culture by its hard sometines not to be a servant.

if this rain keeps up we may have tonight off too.

kenyan roads have 5 pot holes for each resident there are 30 million residents in kenya

you can explode from the amount of soda drunk

white man = give us money

eating cold chicken cooked many hours ago is fine

cloudy water with floating bits is not recommended for drinking

tooth pics are the national cigarette

most people drink coke at room temp not cold

bribary is an option

time is non existant

never listen when someone says ‘we will leave at 8am” you will probably end up leaving at midday

fresh orange juice is cordial

NO WE ARE NOT AMERICAN

being single is a demon that needs to be cast out

kenyan hospitality is second to none

wearing suits sucks bad

apparently is its fine to wee on toilet seats

the number of seats in a car does not determine the amount of people that can fit in that car

you may find yourself getting in trouble if you take too long to eat

kenyan humour is quite similar to ours

there is better mobile phone reception here than in australia

if you are a pastor or eldor its ok to play with your camera, phone or papers during a sermon if someone else is giving it.

the shower head is normally conventionally positioned above the toilet

the road is yours, drive on it where ever you like in whatever way you like

a corn cob makes a good petrol cap

well yesterday i preached my first 2 sermons. In a small remote village in the middle of the bush. we where in a mud hut church. It was good. I think i did ok but who knows. Luckily its not all down to me.

today we are back in kitale about to head off to another town to do more stuff.

having a goodish times, there are moments of ‘i want to go home’ but then there is good moments too.

wearing suits all the time sucks bad. and we went almost 2 days without coke!

anyway i must dash, hopefully tom writes more than me and you can just read his blog

Tom and I arrived in Kenya on friday night. We where greeted at teh airport by pastor albert and pastor David. They took us to the ymca for the night.

the next day we spent 12 hours travvelling 400 km in cramped packed out vans along the dodgiest roads ever. We eventually arrived in Kitale where tom and I where taken to the mid africa hotel.

A lovey little hotel where we had to share a double bed. Not just any bed but a bed with a matress thta was too big for it and a very uncomfortable sleep was had by all. Tom is no jenny.

yesterdxay we went to Pastor Alberts church and enjoyed the service although the preaching was very very loud and not all that bibilically sound. It seems most of the congregation didnt enjoy the preaching either but they have to respect their pastor.

after church we went to lunch in Alberts house, i spent the whole time worrying that the food was going to kill me. I did feel a bit dodgy afterwards but not too bad. I got to use the dirtiest pit latrine i have ever seen. When i was in Uganda in 01 i used a few pit latrines but they where really clean and well maintained even in remote villages. this one was gross there was poo and wee everywhere and thousands of flies on the walls.

after that we went back to the church for a ‘musical extravoganza’ it was fun lots of singing and dancing all put through the PA and a ridiculous noise level.

There is quite a hirachy in kenya churches the pastors and elders sit in the front row and have a table in front of them that has lots of different soft drinks on it. So every where we go tom and i are given coke and fanta. its a little uncomfortable its like we are sitting in a corporate box at a sporting event. It makes it a bit hard to relate to people aswell there doesnt seem to be a lot of relationship building between church leaders and the congregation its all about preaching the word.

after 3 nights of not very good sleep i’m feeling quite weary, today we are travelling to some village about an hour away from Kitale, we will be spending a few days there preaching at a youth conference, open air meetings and revival meetings. As far as we can tell i’m not doing any preaching until tomorrow.

Africa is a funny place when it comes to time, we are spending several hours each day just sitting around either waiting for something like transport or a person or we are waiting for someone to make a descision. Tom and i are finding it a bit of a struggle not having much time to ourselves just to relax and unpack the day a bit. But you get that.

Kenyan people are very very hospitable and its very hard to make it look like you are trying all the food you are given. I’m being quite cautios as ?Africa has not been kind to my insides in the past. Tom is more relaxed about what he eats.

If you are the praying type maybe here are some things you could pray for.

continued safety as we travel,

health that we can stay strong and healthy

energy as we are both quite weary.

That God will speak through us as we share with people during our talks

that we will be able to engage with people

that peoples hearts will be open to recieve the word.

All in all everything is going well, apart from the feeling of seedyness and homesickness and many conversations between tom and i which go a little something like this “what the hell are we doing here” “I dont know”.

its a very pretty country kenya. hopefully i can put some photos up in the next few days but i dont think internet access will be available.

i miss my wife.

Sitting in an internet cafe in dubai airport.

They love there lines in dubia you have to line up for everything.

soonish we will head to our gate and fly away to Kenya. Thats a bit weird we are going to kenya.

Dubai was a lot of fun, I’d really like to come back and spend more time here. I reckon 2 weeks would be good tom said he’s get bored, but hes just a boring person and i wouldnt invite him anyway.

this could be my last blog post for a while depending on internet availability in Kitale Kenya.

hopefuly there is internet.

howie and tom’s kenyan karnival

Turns out the water that was leaking all over the kitchen was some air conditioning overflow thing.

This morning housekeeping came in and cleaned our room from top to bottom. I think we managed to amuse the two ladies quite a lot. Tom also left his shower curtain on the floor for some reason i think that puzzled them a little.

We headed to ‘wil wadi’ today. A water park kind of like wet and wild only different. It has uphill waterslides. I had a lot of fun, it was nice to chill out in water. there was a mixture of crap sections of slides and good slides.

We would have taken lots of photos but it was so humid their that even having my camera in a backpack the lens was fogged up.

here is us outside the water park.

and here is the burj al arab, the fancy shmancy 7 star hotel. you cant get close to it, lots of security.

then after spending most of the day at the water park we headed to ‘the mall of the emirates’ its the worlds 23rd biggest shopping mall.

It was massive, it even has a 400m indoor ski slope inside it.

we walked around, spent some money in an arcade game place. We dorve the coolest car racing simulater ever.ate some food.

Yesterday we went to the biggest supermarket we had ever seen. well today we found a new one that was even bigger. It had 90 Isles!!! plus a home entertainment section, a clothes section, and different fresh foos sections all not included in the 90 isles.

we bought toilet paper.

now we are back in the apartment, tired and weak. tomorrow we have the morning ti fill in then its off on another plane, kenya bound.

Amen

its 7 am and i’m up and ready for another dubai day.

I heard a dripping noise coming from our kitchen so i went to turn the tap off tighter but as i entered the kitchen the tap was off. The dripping noise is coming from the ceiling in the kitchen, maybe the person upstairs is hosing down his rug in the his lounge room.

think i might go tell reception.

A buddy is $2(UED) which is 64cents (AU)

yeah baby.