14 MARCH 2015

Can there be a worse experience in life than a delayed plane and lost hours sitting in an airport.

Well, actually, yes, there is much, much worse, but with the narrow parameters of airline travel, changing airline timetables, thoughts of missed connections and the evaporating calculations of my itinerary, the nerves do get a little jarred.

Typically there has been a series of events to disrupt the calculus. First there was an email from Tripit, the app that tracks the bookings and airline itineraries that the connection at Nairobi had been changed, leaving a very thin 45 minutes to change planes. In fact the booking company determined this as a missed connection, as an hour is the minimum allowed between flights. Janene, our travelling companion from Sydney was quite sanguine about the time so we decided to take the risk that we could make the dash to the next flight. If it looked impossible, one of us could fake an injury and demand assistance.

We started a very long day in Brisbane, where we had driven in the hopeful expectation that Fiona would deliver us a grandchild before we left. We are still waiting…

Part of the risk plan had been to relocate to a hotel adjacent to the airport and we had selected Ibis Airport Hotel purely on price and proximity criteria. If comfort had been a factor, it would not have been in the race, but it was clean and functional. I had been practising having early nights and early mornings and was day awake at 3.50am for the 6.00am flight to Sydney.

After meeting our friend Janene who is also part of the St Jude’s medical check team, we sat for an unplanned 5 hours at Sydney airport before finally boarding our Qantas 747 – an old plane these days, and the company has certainly returned to profit at the expense of its passengers. However the decision to go Premium Economy is well worth it with extra leg and bottom room, and some personal attention from the flight crew.

We arrived at Johannesburg at a fairy civilised 7.30pm after a fourteen hour flight defying the clock. We discovered that Seth Efrikan airport hospitality is definitely a one-way transaction, but we are better advised now.

The Saturday flight was with Kenya Airways, first to Nairobi and its uncertain connection time, and on to Kilimanjaro, the nearest airport to the school. In the end it all worked out fine as the plane left early and the pilot kept his foot full on the throttle so we had plenty of time – even time for a relaxed coffee, though only after a mad dash through the terminal, along the way meeting some other med team members.

St Jude’s

It has been wonderful to catch up with familiar faces and make new friends, both on the team, and on staff at the school. We have now completed our first week, and, as they say, it has been full on… Jenny has been mainly stationed at the Moshono campus which caters to the lower and upper primary school, while I have been assigned the Smith campus at Usa River, about a 45 minute drive from our lodgings. The drive to Usa is certainly a testimony to the ruggedness of the Toyota buses, as we traverse some of the roughest roads, though still with unneeded speed bumps. The bus seems to be held together with welds on welds, and it ploughs on stolidly. The drive itself can be a bit testing for those of us used to Western ways of dealing with competition on the highway. You cannot afford to be too precious about your space. You share the road with cars and bikes, the ubiquitous dala dalas, buses, trucks, pedestrians, barrows and the odd goat or cow.

It is an amazing illustration of the character of drivers who seem patient and insane in equal measure, but not at the same time.  A simple blip of the horn will alert someone brave enough to walk over the road to skip to safety, because nothing will slow down. So our driver will happily sit in a queue behind a truck at 20 clicks for miles, but then overtake in the face of a stream of oncoming vehicles. It all seems to work in a strangely organic way that ensures all survive and all get to their destination – apart from the trucks that seem to break down with regular monotony.

It has been very dry, and consequently very dusty, leading to a dusty haze that shields Mount Meru from a good view. There was a suggestion of rain on Wednesday with a deep mist shrouding the mountain and suggestive of much sought rainfall to replenish the dry creeks that spill off Meru. And when the rain fell, it was those big drops, making little craters in the soft dust, and giving that sweet smell of rain on parched earth. So evocative of the sparse rain of my youth in the Riverina. Sadly the rain soon stopped and the farmers have to wait for the wet to come in another few weeks.

The work itself has lived up to our expectation. The children are inspirational, and the older ones especially. One sixth former I was chatting to said she wanted to be a human rights activist, and as we talked about that, she revealed a great knowledge and a deep wisdom, and a willingness to do the hard work of study that she could attain her goal. She (Joyce) and her peers graduate in May and start a year of community service before embarking on further studies and careers. It will be a challenge for them, as they have been successful over a long time in their school life, but soon face the uncertainty of what the word offers. But they appear to be strong of character, so should do well.

We had the opportunity to visit Ally, whom we sponsor, at his home with his mum. They have relocated from this time last year. On our last visit, the home was a tiny two room home shared with another seven extended family members. The new home is still tiny – a single room with power, but no water or bathroom. The toilet and washing is a shared facility. But it is new and clean and they are so very proud of it. It is startling to realise that this home is no larger than the average Australian bedroom.

Well, thanks for reading this far. At this stage I anticipate posting something about every week. No pics this time. I will post some pics when I solve the uploading problem!