Day 31 – Monday, March 1, 2010
I had a great sleep last night on the plane. I was out for the entire flight, and funny enough, I got more hours of sleep than I averaged during the trip. (Yes that means I didn’t sleep much during the trip. I didn’t want to miss any of the socializing or fun activities, so I did the data collection late into the night. I don’t regret this at all as God was clearly on my side with this. In no other circumstance would I be able to operation on 5 hours sleep while going all day long. Only by His grace and approval). But since I finished the collection, we saw over 4500 people in three weeks! Many of these people saw multiple clinics so the count is actually much higher.
Funny thing about adjusting to real life, as London is when I realized real life is starting again, I keep trying to do Kenyan things. Everytime I go to say ‘thank you’, ‘asante sana’ tries to pop out and I have to suppress it. I want to smile at every person and say ‘jambo’ as that’s what you do in Kenya, but not every person I pass really wants to say hi. London is an especially bad place for this too, as people are so rude here that even if you catch yourself smiling at someone staring at you, they just keep staring. Huh. Also, you know you’ve been in Kenya too long when the airplane stops for a minute and you automatically look up to see what people are trying to sell you through the combie window! Oh boy…too many hours on a combie!
I got off the plane and decided to find all the folks that were on a different plane but connecting through London too. Instead of going through immigration and customs at Heathrow, I switched terminals from Terminal 5 to 4, where their flight was supposed to land. By the time I went through security, the fight had been landed for some time and no one was in sight. Then I jumped on a bus from Terminal 4 to 3 as this is where their next flight should be, and this had a much longer security line. Once through, I saw Jean and John who were supposed to be on the same flight as Ted, Karen, Greg, Greg B, Cheri, Tracy, and Shawna. However they said the group never made the flight. Aww! This means I don’t get to say goodbye at all! It was especially sad because we were in such a group environment where there is so little autonomy or personal time, that to suddenly be cut from the group with no transition shocked me. Thanks to the marvels of technology though, I know I’ll be able to email them all, but that didn’t stop the rush of emotions.
I went back to terminal 5, (security checkpoint), got through immigration, found my lone bags (2 hours has passed since when I was supposed to get them), and I switched to terminal 1, where I went through one more security checkpoint. If you’re keeping a tally, since I got to Nairobi, I have been through 8 checkpoints – 4 in Nairobi and 4 in London! There’s only one left in Philadelphia (hopefully!). While on my way to my gate for the next 3 hour layover, I found out since I’ve been traveling so much over the last year, I got bumped up to the first class lounge! There’s really fast internet here (first time it’s been fast in a month!), free food, comfy chairs, quiet, and no airport smell! Also there’s a chance I can catch an earlier flight in Phili! Also I got to talk to the group that missed their flight and apparently they were put up at a nice swanky hotel in Nairobi, and they are out shopping today. Sounds swanky! More to come later….
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