Series: 11-FEB-B-3
ARRIVAL AT MAYFIELD GUEST HOUSE AS WE DECOMPRESS FROM GLOBAL FLIGHTS AND TRY TO RECONSTRUCT OUR LUGGAGE TRASHED IN TRANSIT BY SECURITY
February 5-6, 2011
I am now in Mayfield Guest House and am trying to pick up the pieces of what is left to me that is left after the officious woman in Dubai trashed my luggage and scavenged out of it only the most important parts and the most expensive. I got a chance to do some reconnoitering here at Hayfield and sat with a few folk who are mainly just visitors at Mayfield in going with retired AIM mission personnel back to where they had once worked. I sat at the table and a woman named Kathryn came in and said she was from Michigan. I said I had been there recently and heard they had a lot of snow in what is called the storm of the century, even if it is only eleven years into the century. She said she wanted to hear a Calvin January Series lecture by a Doctor Geelhoed since he might be coming here and she wanted to meet him.
I showed her my Smythson daytimer, and she said: “Oh wonderful! I am getting a ride on your plane and coming to visit Werkok with you!” What? It seems I am no longer just a freebie supplier of all good things to the Africans, but everyone else can also show up and pile on since she decided she needed to carry fifty tee shirts and load up the plane now that I did not have media accompanying me. And, oh yes, a Lost Boy named Aaron is now in Istanbul and will be coming back tomorrow to also ride on my plane. I do not presume that the Turkish Airline is giving him a freebie ride on its airliner, but I am expected to as it seems everyone knows I am flying in and why not just ho [p on? She says she is an ER nurse form St Joseph Michigan and that she is the “white mother of Ajak.” She is certain that all she needs to do is contact Jon Hildebrandt by phone tomorrow and she is in, and the ideas that the TR group which just sent a photo of them loading at Dulles on Air Ethiopia to make the flight in here tomorrow is not something that she is probably considering since their wishes are irrelevant since all we need to do is pay the bills. I do not know how this is going to evolve, but we will watch this space.
I have pulled out a few items that do not need to make the round trip out to Sudan and CAR. I hope to leave a few of them here to pick them up in return travel to Mayfield on the day of our African departure. I had planned to make a quick trip to either the Nairobi national Park or to the elephant nursery in the morning before the rest of the team arrives, and possibly store up a few more items into the emails that I hope to complete since the Philippine memories will be vanishing in the rush of new data in Sudan and CAR.
As always, I enjoy just hanging out at Mayfield with those coning and going in their transit through this staging area and talking with them about what they are doing and where. One young couple is in the Comoros, one woman in Northern Mozambique, each heading up for some kind of team conference in Brackenhurst in Tigoni where I had once taught the course in missionary medicine and surgery. A couple from Kijabe who live there with their son Jake in RVA and their daughter a graduate of RVA having dropped out of college in Southern California for reasons f getting mono and running out of money at the same time. I asked that they relay my regards to Bramsford whom I had met at the ACS where I was the one who selected him for the International Outreach Award the year after mine. I also have been avoiding those who have kept asking me “What time are WE leaving in the morning?” since I have a good idea when I am leaving, but I am reluctant to invite all comers to hop on to the usurped project for which a number have an interest not to be diverted.
I have no idea when the TR team should be arriving, and we have sent a few emails out to you and to the ones arriving to alert them that we are here awaiting them and to get the consolidated kits together along with the $1,110 pharmaceutical pickup in the mooing ahead of the takeoff. I believe you have now got the three major pieces of the Philippine excursion already sent, Mindanao, Banach, and N Luzon, and will start up now in the African series, stashing some of my warm clothing here at Mayfield and cutting back on the stuff to be carried all the way to CAR. I received Rev. Oruzu’s official welcome to the Murle of PiBor this morning (see 11-FEB-B-4). I have tried to forward the cards from our arrival here at Mayfield through the front office, and will try again to email before the morning AIM Air takeoff from Wilson Field. John has been sleeping a lot and simply resting –a good thing to do at Mayfield, since we will have time enough to be doing and seeing, which was an original idea to try to go to the elephant nursery or the baby giraffe area today, each of which have been bypassed as we await the team. I was eager to clear the deck of the Philippine reports since it is unlikely I would be freshly remembering all of those details as I would be having a mulch-venue African series of events coming on top of them.
So, for now, I am among my East African home base staging area awaiting the next move forward to the “new” South Sudan.
