Back From My R&R
I am sorry that I have not been able to write in such a long time, but things have been busy the past few weeks. Today is Monday and I just returned on Saturday from a two week R&R that we get after being in the field for eight to ten weeks at a time. It was nice to take a break and to relax. The rest was much needed as I was definitely starting to get sick more often and frustrated with people more easily. Over the course of my break I was able to go to a game park in the Masai Mara, in Southwestern Kenya. I was there for two days and then I went to Zanzibar, Tanzania for an additional week and two days. The game park was great and I was able to see every animal there except for a Cheetah. I guess that will give me a good excuse to go back again some day. My time in Zanzibar was a very interesting one. I spent the first two days there with a fellow co-worker named Matt Nowery, who had already been there for a week when I arrived. After those first few days he headed back to Sudan and I stayed on in Zanzibar. The next day, however, I found out that my Visa Debit card had expired a month earlier while I was in Sudan. Then I also found out that all the places in the north of Zanzibar where I was staying stopped using credit cards the week prior because of a discrepancy with a bank in Kenya. So there I was, in Zanzibar not even knowing if I would have enough money to make it the next week I had to stay there. I had previously purchased my air ticket out before I found out about my credit cards. I had to budget my money out, first for my accommodations, then for my ride back to the airport and the exit fee to leave the country. Then I determined how much money I could eat on every day. Over the course of the next week I could not stay in the nicer places that I had hoped to, or eat as much as I would have liked. At first it felt like that this was going to be the worst vacation ever, but God had a different plan.
Instead, it became a sort of adventure. I found out that the cheap place I was staying actually had a kind of breakfast in the morning that consisted of an egg and some bread. So that was a blessing and allowed me to skip lunch every day and make it to a cheap dinner some place. I met a whole bunch of different people from about ten different countries around the world. I hung with people from Germany, Norway, England, France, Denmark, Canada, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, Iceland, America, Australia, Tanzania, Italy, and Japan. During the day I was able to meet a lot more local people than I thought I would and ended up playing an African version of checkers almost every day with these guys working at a construction site along the beach. I took things that I had in my bag and that some of my new friends gave me with when they left, such as: used suntan lotions, an old flashlight, used jam, old shorts, etc, and used them to barter with local people for necklaces and other souvenirs. Let’s just say that I got really good at bartering and meeting people and that I got some cool things that actually only cost me a pair of old socks and two or three dollars… thanks to all my friends who left their old things with me. I did get to go snorkeling for the first ever while I was there, which was a really fun time. There are many more stories such as these and this definitely wasn’t the vacation that I had in mind. In some ways it was better. It was the first that I had ever thought to myself, “do I actually have enough money to make it home?” So I prayed a whole lot and made it back to Nairobi with the equivalent of around three dollars in my pocket. God really did take care of me on that trip and still allowed me to meet some great people and to have a wonderful experience.
So now I am back in Tonj and working hard. I really did hit the ground running on Saturday and have worked two full days since. Things didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped while I was gone but they also didn’t come to a complete stop and blow up. So that was good. I have roughly six and a half weeks left worth of work while I am here in Sudan and I am looking forward to getting a lot of work done and having a good experience the rest of the time that I am here. I will miss my workers and the people here in Sudan when I leave but it will be really nice to be back in the states and to see everyone again. Well, I will leave off here and will be able to write on my blog more frequently from now on as things happen. I have made a new photo album in my Yahoo pictures site just for my R&R. I was about to put around 45 pictures on there from the game park and from Zanzibar if you would like to check them out. Thanks again for taking the time to read my entries and for keeping up with me while I am here in Sudan. Just keep on praying for our work with the churches, for our health, and the rains to stop so that we can safely get to the churches that we need to work on within the next month. Thanks for all your prayers and support!!
Cliff
posted by Cliff @ 8:05 AM
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