The Middle of Nowhere

First things first - Jane and I had an AWESOME week at the coast and everything went just about perfectly, praise God!  Before I get into telling about the whole week and sharing pictures (which will be once I get caught up on everything in a couple of days), I wanted to share a quick story from our drive down...

Jane and I headed out from Nairobi on Tuesday morning at 4am with five friends in a big van that our friend Kim Pace owns.  Because of the early start, we made great time through town and were well on our way down the open road to Mombasa by the time the sun rose.  About half an hour later, around 7:15, we heard some mysterious beeping sounds and then a sudden lack of the constant engine noise.  After coasting to a stop on the side of the road, we all got out and started trying to figure out what went wrong.

It turns out that Kim had experienced a similar problem last year, so she knew it was probably a problem with the fuel injector - not easy to fix.  That meant we would need a mechanic but, unfortunately, we were in the middle of NOWHERE.  As in, just a road and dirt and a few trees...not much of anything.  Eventually we flagged down a sedan carrying four Kenyan guys and tried to jump start the car - no luck.  They offered to drive someone to the next town to find a mechanic, though, and we all looked around at each other as if to say, "Who's it gonna be?"

As you might be able to guess, I soon found myself stuffed in the back of a little car with a lot of Kenyans.  Now, that's not the ideal situation, especially for a vacation, but my prayers for safety were answered when they dropped me off at a dirt road intersection about 5km down the road, handing me over to a friend who started walking with me away from the highway.  My new friend Matthew led me down the dirt road for about 15 minutes to the town of "Machinnery."  No, I didn't make that up!  We found the home of the local mechanic, and after banging on the door for a while he came out brushing his teeth and rubbing his eyes. 

After a short conversation, I was hopping on the back of a motorcycle with Matthew and a driver, followed by another motorcycle carrying the mechanic and his assistant.  In this manner, I pulled back up to the van with quite an entourage, and all the Kenyans got to work.  A few minutes later they had the van running, and after a short (that's an hour in Kenya) detour by their shop for a new fuel filter, we were on our way! 

Living in Kenya is always an adventure...