My Arthritic Hip
The Casual Cynic

While watching the MTV Music Video awards something suddenly jumped out of the screen and nailed me in the gut so hard it took me an episode of Wheel of Fortune and several glasses of prune juice to recover. Old Age has struck, and what a blindside it was. As I sat and watched the endless unknown bands with their shoddy performances covered up by ridiculous dancers I realized that I have lost touch with pop culture. I knew none of the artists, and the odd thing was that I didn't feel like I was missing anything. I caught myself thinking, in a voice that sounded very much like my Dad, "How can they possilbly call this the best (whatever) of the year. I remember was when music was really music, and the bands could really play."

Once, long ago, I vowed that I would never become like those old people who have completely lost touch with what was in. Now all I can do is cringe as I scan the radio stations, and settle for "Performance Today" or "All things Considered." (And find it enjoyable and engaging.) Only old people listen to National Public Radio. I guess my desire to accept pop music died along with the alternative rock age.

When did this change occur. What happened? Since when is U2 considered "Classic Rock" material? Why is Nick at Nite filled with "The Cosby Show and Cheers?" Nick at Nite belongs to "I love Lucy" and black and white sitcoms, not ones I grew up with.

Do you want to know the really scary part - the thing that really made me sit back and take notice of my expired youth? I am okay with things the way they are. I don't recognize, understand, or even remotey enjoy pop music/culture, and I am perfectly content with that. The kids can have their fun and enjoy their dancing models, lip syncing to the "music." I know what real music is all about. Now, I guess I better run see if I can find my white belt with the matching velcro shoes. They've gotta be around here somewhere.

A chip on my shoulder
Rants and delusions

I decided that I don't like scraping paint. Today I started a project that I have been putting off for some time now. Repainting the house. Since I am currently unemployed and in desperate need of money I offered my landlord my services in exchange for a cut in rent. He agreed and now I have to scrape layers of peeling paint chips in order to get down to the now rotting wood underneath. It may be easier to live in my car.

In other news. I may not be unemployed for long. Sort of. LU physical plant here I come. Yes, I am that desperate. The plan is to work part time as an electrician. It sounds like I have the job. Beats sitting at home watching the debts pile up. I am still hoping that something else will come up, but I have currently exhausted all known leads.

Life in Kenya
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

Week 1
Hello,

It is difficult to believe that I have been here for almost a week. So much for the slower paced lifestyle. I have yet to see that. I spent much of the weekend getting settled into Nairobi. The first order of business for Geoffrey and me was to buy a cell phone. This part of Kenya is not as primative as you may think. Of course the first one we bought didn't work as soon as we left the store, so we got to deal with the customer service.

The rest of the day was spent at a wedding. Unfortunately (or perhaps
not) we arrived Kenyan style, two hours late, and only caught the last two hours of the service. The reception afterwards was nice though.

I spent Sunday at a church where a lot of the missionaries attend. It was a nice service, not much different than here. They served me tea, and had a special welcome for me.

It has been good to get started at the airport. The airplane that I will be working on needs a lot of work yet to get it airworthy. It is only a stripped down fuselage at the moment. I have been working on getting the flooring ready to reinstall.

Trasportation around the city has been quite the experience. The buses aren't bad, unless it is rush hour. What is interesting is the mutatos. They are taxis about the size of the old VW vanagons. Only they think they can seat 15 to 20 passengers. I was in one the other day with about 15 others when the mass of bodies pushed the door off its hinges, almost sending the conductor out into the street. There are two rules to getting around the city. One - the car that gets there first has the right away. Two - This is true unless the other car is bigger. It is also preferrable to drive on the left.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to get out of the city and travel up country to work on a repeater station for a local christian radio station. They had been working on getting it on the air for 3 months now, and at 3 o'clock it is up and running. It will have a range of over 200 km. and will be able to reach a lot of the towns around the area.

Another member of my team, Ryan, is arriving this weekend, so you can be praying for his safety. My team leader, Paul, will be arriving at the end of the month.


Week 2
Habari zenu?

I have to show off my 3 hours of language training with the traditional "newsletter that begins in the local language." I have a vocabulary of about 15 words by now, none of which I can use in a complete sentence. I don't think I will master kiswahili while I am here.

First of all I want to apologize for the delay in correspondence.
Hopefully now everything is up and running and I can get e-mails out without losing them. This is a second attempt, so I am trying to remember everything that has happened.

First of all, the rest of my team is now with me here in Nairobi. My team leader Paul Weinberger arrived on Friday and Ryan Veenstra arrived last week. Housing worked out that we will all be living together with Geoffrey, the guy I had started out with. It has been a great set up so far.

I spent last Sunday at a mnyama chuma (Goat roast). As far as social events, it is the "Kenyan Thing." It is pretty much like a Texas BBQ, a chance to get together with friends and eat a lot of meat. It seems that a lot of the social events are based around a meal of some sort. I am told that some can include over 12 courses, which leads to the saying, "Do not throw both your spear and your club at the rabbit, for the elephant is soon to follow." Meaning, pace yourself or you will be hurting. Having said that, the day to day meals may not be all that nourishing for many of the people. Ugali is the staple food. (Picture overcooked grits, and it comes close) This is followed by another food that I can barely pronounce let alone spell. It sounds like sakumawiki It is a weed, much like spinach that is boiled and eaten using the ugali.

Life in Nairobi is a very urban experience. It is sometimes easy to forget that it is another continent. Nairobi is much like any other city, only the two ends of the spectrum are much greater extremes.
Poverty, along with crime is a problem, and the traffic is as crazy as I've seen anywhere. Texas parking lots have nothing on Kenyan roundabouts.

I had the opportunity to go on a maintenance flight and see some of the flight operations. The departure out of Wilson Airport reminded me that the rules are a bit different here. Due to overlying Airspace the
climbout has to stay fairly shallow. This leaves the plane crossing a dip in the ridge at less than 100 feet above ground level. (I don't think the poor farmer in the house we buzz appreciates it very much.) After that it is a sharp left turn to enter a valley that opens up into a great expanse of scrub trees. It doesn't take long for civilization to drop off.

This past Saturday was spent at a home for AIDS orphans. It was really good to see some other ministries that were going on. We delivered a couple of boxes of clothes and made 32 friends in the process. The center supports over 150 kids, but there are only facilities for several dozen. The rest are scattered in foster homes throughout the city.

Week 3
Hello,

How can can .6 hours seem like a few seconds? Easy. Spend them in the left
seat of the best equipped and arguably the best restored cargo DC-3 in the
world. I had the opportunity to do just that last week. The DC-3 belongs to
Samaritan's Purse, and the pilot was a LU grad. I arrived at the airport at
5:30 to receive my captain's bars (for security reasons) and crawled over 40
bicycles on my way to the jump seat. Soon after we took off he offered to
let me fly for a while. We flew along the Rift valley on our way to northern
Kenya, so the scenery was some of the most beautiful I have seen while
flying. I admit, apart from a couple of steep turns (which I held to
commercial standards I might add), I was only holding the plane straight and
level, but it still felt right to be offered coffee while sitting left seat,
in uniform. We arrived, unloaded the bikes and reconfigured the plane for
twenty missionaries coming home from a refugee camp in northern Kenya.
On
the way home I got to try my hand as flight attendant, so I guess I had a

well rounded flight.

The project plane is coming along nicely. We started to prime a bunch of the
parts, and we are in the process of prepping the fuselage for painting.
We
are still waiting for some parts to come in before we can go too far in the
paint process. It can take up to 2 months for parts to arrive around here,
so you can be praying that they come soon. Otherwise, it may be sitting for
a while.

Some you you may have heard about a fireworks explosion in Kilgore, TX over
4th of July weekend. A warehouse that was holdind a collection of 6 shows
worth of fireworks, exploded on Thursday. One of the professors from LU, Mr.
Marty Donner, was killed in the blast while preparing for the show. He had
taught aviation maintenance classes at LU for almost 30 years and was very
involved with students there. I had him for a lot of my classes. The
funeral is this Wednesday in TX, and you can be praying for his family.
He
has a wife and two grown children.

This past sunday I had the opportunity to visit church pastored by the man
who ran the AIDS childrens home. It is in a section of town called Kibera.
At some 800,000 people, it is the second largest slum in Africa. It looks a
bit more like the stereotypical Africa. Average rent there is about 8
dollars a month, so you can get a picture of the type of housing that is
available.


Week 5
Hello,

This week has quite possibly been the most interesting of my stay here in
Kenya. The excitment began innocently enough on Wednesday when I was offered
a chance to fly with another pilot up to a town named Lokichoggio on the
Sudan/Kenya border. We were taking some supplies there in a Cessna 210 and
then continuing on into Sudan to drop off a missionary we were to pick up in
Loki. We left early Thursday morning through a cloud layer that was
reportedly the worst that the other pilot had seen here in Nairobi. I flew
there and had an enjoyable talk with the the pilot. After unloading the
supplies in Loki, we realized that the extra seat had not been put back in
the plane. This meant that I stay in Loki for the afternoon, until John got
back. Lokichoggio is a desert town right on the edge of Sudan, populated
mostly by the Turkana, a nomadic tribe. A Samaritan's Purse employee came
and showed me to a resturant where I could wait out the afternoon. We
had heard that there was some unrest in the area, but it was not until I arrived
in Loki that I heard the whole story. It is illegal in Kenya to own a
firearm, but in the desert regions (and really the whole country) it is a
struggle to enforce it. The day before I had arrived there was a police raid
on the villagers to disarm them. Apparently the word leaked out before hand,
and some 400 villagers skirmished with the police for a good part of the
morning. There were a number of casulties on both sides and the area was
still pretty charged when I arrived. Shortly after hearing this I got word
through the SP contact that the plane I had flown up in would not be able to
make it back that night. While landing at the location in Sudan, it had
experienced a runway induced mechanical failure - the nosegear became bogged
down in a very soft spot in the runway and caused a prop strike. This
not only ruins the propeller, but in many cases also causes quite a bit of
internal engine damage due to the sudden stop, etc. So there I was in the
desert, not knowing anyone except the man I had met that morning, not knowing
how or when I was to get home, and watching anti-personnel type tanks rolling
by. After a bit of quick praying on my part the SP man came back again and
let me know that the DC-3 with Samaritan's Purse was in the area and may be
able to take me home the next day. As it turned out, they were not only in
the area, they were spending the night in Loki. At least now I knew people.
The place I spent the night was very nice, and I was quite comfortable.
The next morning a plane arrived from Nairobi to refuel with a spare propeller
strapped down in the back. They took off shortly afterward to try to get the
plane in a flyable condition so they could get it out of Sudan. The
DC-3 had one more Sudan flight to make and arrived back in Loki at around 12:30.
I boarded and flew jump seat home to Nairobi and arrived at around 4:00
grateful to be back. It was very encouraging to see how God worked through
the whole situation. First He kept the extra seat from being loaded, keeping
me stranded in Loki instead of the interior of Sudan. The DC-3 was in the
area, (actually the same town) and was able to get me home. As far as the
mechanics that went to Sudan to repair the 210 could tell, there was no
damage to the parts of the engine they could inspect on the field and were
able to get it running that night. There was a church in the area that
assisted the crew in sudan and gave them housing while they were there.
The airplane made it safely back to Nairobi on Saturday afternoon. The list goes
on. I thank God for how he works. All that to say, I feel very secure in
where God has put me, and I know He is in control of my safety. It is
exciting to see first hand and be a part of how God is working through the
persecution and instability of some of the areas surrounding Kenya.

As far as other news...Last saturday I visited a gamepark and got to do the
Tourist thing. I saw quite a few animals, including an eagle perched less
than 10 meters away, lots of giraffe, ostrich, elan, gazelle, water buffalo,
crocadile, but unfortunately no elephants, lion or other cool cats. I also
missed the spectacle of the zebra migration by a week or two, which is
unfortunate.

I have been hopping around at work doing work on several airplanes, including
the DC-3, and the 210 that had the incident (before the excitement). It was
rewarding to find out the the DC-3 had gone out afterward on some flights
that ended up being medivacs. One was a young boy who had stepped on a land
mine and had the side of his body pretty messed up. I met a girl getting off
the plane in Loki who was bleeding pretty badly for some reason. Knowing
that I had helped that little bit to save those lives was a good feeling.

The project plane is coming along well. The control surfaces are painted,
and I balanced them and got them ready to reinstall. the only thing left
before some major reassembly can happen is to finish painting the fuselage.
I would really like to see it looking like an airplane before I leave.
The parts we were waiting for did arrive without causing any delay to progress.


Week 7
Hello again from Nairobi.

This week proved to be a bit more "normal" than some previous ones had been.
At least as normal as life in a large African city can be. Much of my time
was spent at the hangar working on the project plane. It is completely
painted except for the belly pod and we are now in the process of
reassembly. It is nice to see the process and to know that it should be
flying by the beginning of Sept.

I moved out of the house I have been living in and into the servant's
quarters of one of the missionaries at the hangar. It happened just when I
was starting to really enjoy the evening meal of chai and ugali. It should
make the transition back to the states a little more gradual. Kenyan cuisine
isn't the tastiest stuff in the world, but it's not bad. I'll miss Geoffrey,
my housemate even more. We got along really well while I was there.

This past saturday we spent the day driving over 160km out to a village to
see a building project that some of the missionaries are involved with.
The drive along the great Rift Valley was beautiful and I was dissapointed that
my camera was locked out of reach in the hangar. I wish you could see it,
but pictures don't do it justice anyway. The roads were in pretty bad
condition, and at some points it was smoother to drive along the side rather
than down the middle. We had more than one not so friendly race trying to
pass a bus in order to breathe without inhaling lungfulls of dusty exhaust.
The buses here are pretty crazy as well. They slam around at over 100 kph
over potholes that are almost impassable and have no concern for which side
of the road they are supposed to be on. (I think in Kenya it is the left,
but it is never really easy to tell)

Construction in Kenya is a bit different than any I have done.
Everything is made of stone to prevent the costly feeding of termites. The stones are all
handcut into blocks and then cemented together in a somwhat orderly fashion.
The wood that is used has the markings of being cut with a chainsaw and
anything that needs to be smoother is finished with a hand planer. Throw in
the more than occational chai time and any constrution project takes quite a
while to complete. The building we observed is going to be the new site for
the Cheyrl's Children's Centre that I have visited several times.

After church this sunday I had a chance to visit a lady in the Kibera slums.
She had recently lost 4 out of her 5 children and the 5 had been very sick.
The pastor had prayed for the girl last week, and she had recovered by the
time we saw her. In addition, the mothers husband wants had left her, but
has come back to the house and wants her out. He is involved in wichcraft
and leaves charms to try to scare her away. He arrived just as we were
leaving and one of the pastors stayed to talk with him. Needless to say, the
mother is a bit distraught and could use much prayer.

The Resurrection of the Site
Rants and Delusions

As I walked into my room the other day I noticed a spot on the desk that seemed dirtier than the rest. I leaned closer and discovered that it was a pile of dust that had obviously not been disturbed for some time. Pushing it aside, I could read "Compaq" on a black and gray box. Oh, yeah. My laptop. I used to open that thing. To write, even. Perhaps I should try it again.

I do have an excuse. I think it is a good one. Over the summer I am LAZY. I also spent most of the time in Africa, away from any type of reliable internet connection.

In order to recap my summer I am planning on posting my newsletters I sent out. I hope you enjoy the back issues.
I'll have to write some thoughts on the rest of the summer as well.