Road Trip to Nairobi (Giraffe Centre)

At the end of May our family (and Gabriella) took a road trip to Nairobi, Kenya! It has been on our list of things to do while living in Uganda so when it came up for Jeff and I to visit the Mully Children's Family organization to look at their farming initiatives we decided to bring everyone and drive! 

Road trip!!! 

Equator in Kenya

Not knowing exactly what to expect we planned for the worst case scenarios on our way there and gave ourselves lots of time. We only drove our first day to Jinja, Uganda, which was just over 4 hours from Masaka. We left at 9 the next morning and drove first to the Kenya border that was 2 hours away. It was very quiet when we arrived and we passed without any problems in 45 minutes. It's different than home, you need to get out of the car first in Uganda, exit the country, then walk to the Immigration office in Kenya a few feet away to enter there. We also have to go through that process for our vehicle, so we've been told it can often take hours but we were very thankful to move through quickly! We then drove just over 2 hours to reach Kisumu where we had a room booked for the night. Kisumu is quite a large city in Kenya, there was a grocery store there that we normally have to drive all the way to Kampala to go to, Nakumatt. As well we were able to have lunch at a restaurant we go to all the time, Java House. The main transportation there was tuk tuks which was a very fun and quick way to move through town!

We all loved the tuk tuks

We woke up the next day with Nairobi as our destination, so we were happy to get up and go by 9am again, knowing this was our longest day of travel. We stopped after 3 hours in Nakuru which also had a nice Nakumatt and Java House and then carried on to Nairobi, arriving into the outskirts by 430pm but it took a bit more time to move around once we were in the city! It ended up taking a bit of time to get settled, although Kenya is 5-10 years ahead of Uganda in many ways, it is still Africa! Our first apartment we went to wasn't the one we actually rented or in the area we wanted, so we then were moved to a different one, unpacked, went out for dinner, to get a call that they couldn't give us the price we agreed on for that apartment, so we had to move again! The third apartment was a success though, walking distance to the mall and we had lots of space for the 7 of us.

One of our many stops at Java House

Yum!!!

The kids were pretty excited to have some extra food treats while in Nairobi, like Subway and Cold Stone Creamery, but the highlight of our time was definitely visiting the Giraffe Centre! These animals were so friendly as you feed them right out of your hands or even from your mouth if you want a giraffe kiss! We actually ended up going twice because it cost almost nothing and we all enjoyed it so much!

Finn and Avin were in heaven here, they really love animals.

Mazzy wasn't so sure about this at first! 

So many giraffe kisses, the tongue was really rough but they say it's antiseptic!?! 

The kids are a little nervous while we tired to get a family picture, if you're not feeding this particular giraffe she will head butt you if you get too close. 

Head butt! I love how Finn doesn't even know what's going on. 

Got it! 

Jeff and I really enjoyed the day we spent at Mully Children's Family, they gave us a great tour and a lot of ideas of things to work towards in the future, it was definitely worth the trip! 

Babies!!! This may have been my highlight of the day:) 

When we drove back home to Uganda we decided to speed up our journey a bit and went from Nairobi to Jinja in one day, getting there just as it was getting dark. The road trip was definitely a success and something we hope to have the opportunity to do again! Or maybe we'll drive into Tanzania next, we always love new adventures!!! 

End of the trip and we're still smiling, success!!

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

We had been planning a trip with a few of our co-workers to Kenya to visit a project, Free the Children that is running programs very similar to those in Kibaale and the Timothy Centre. When the dates were finally confirmed we realized it was perfect timing to add a family vacation to the trip! 

It worked best for us to go first on our vacation to the Kenya Coast and then meet up with our co-workers. On our last full day at the coast we were saddened and shocked by the news that there was a terrorist attack at Westgate Mall in Nairobi. We decided it would be best to postpone our visit to Free the Children, we hope to reschedule a few months from now when things have settled down.

We had some last minute rearranging of flights to organize and we were surprised at how easily things worked out, but of course on the day of things weren't all that smooth. It ended up taking 27 hours to get from our hotel back home to Uganda, but it was a fun adventure!!

 The kids had a lot of fun exploring the beach when the tide was out. Finn tries to find his own starfish every time we're at the beach, and Joel is holding a sea urchin!

There were a lot of monkeys and baboons around the resort. The kids had fun watching the baboons, who like to keep a bit of distance from us, with their babies! The monkeys were not shy though, a couple times they grabbed food right from our hands!

Joel loved archery and once he had his lesson spent about an hour each day perfecting this skill. In the one photo he's showing off a jelly fish sting!! He said it stung a lot but only briefly!

We had always planned to take the train overnight from Mombasa to Nairobi, it's a bit longer journey, but less money than flying and the kids were really excited to try it! It should have been a 14 hour journey, so when we woke up at 7am we were expecting to be nearing Nairobi, but were told that the train was not traveling at full speed due to a complication with the locomotive and we were still 6 hours away. That would have had us 2 hours late for our flight! The manager of the train came to talk to us and said if we got out at the next stop he'd arrange a taxi for us and we should be able to drive to the airport in 3 hours. This would be cutting it really close, but Jeff's phone was dead and mine out of airtime, so we couldn't change our flight again, we thought we might as well try! We were able to check in just in time and the airport isn't near the city centre, so we felt safe the entire time!

We are now back in Uganda and are so thankful for everyone who was praying for our safe return!