Just Another Manic Monday
Monday is shopping, cleaning and cooking. Just a light day really ….NOT! We started out with a quick trip to Bethel. We had a parcel to drop off and Marvin had some things to pick up. Its a beautiful Bethel (although we didn’t have time to tour it really) and we got to meet Steve & Becky. Then is was off to the market. That is, for fruits and vegetables. Open air, tons of beautiful produce and all manner of people. A young man begged us for money and was chased off by all concerned. Another desperately wanted to rub my shoes down with a dusty brush. Hmmmph. Just did them myself a few days ago! While the girls got the food, Marvin & I went across the street to see his “guy”. Marvin’s got a “guy”. He is a Lebanese man who runs a liquor store but also does very fair money exchanges. I cashed in some of my Euros for CFA. Now we can start spending! Back across the street we see one of the local “garbage trucks”. How would you like to have his job? Hey, its a dirty job but someone has to do it! Then we went to the SOCOCE. Everything you want (but can’t afford) under one roof. We got the home supplies and extras for our trip tomorrow. Penny kept saying “just don’t look at the prices”. From there we went on the hunt for material. Did you like my new shirt? Its Continue Reading →
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Service Day 1
We survived! … of course that thought may be premature. What a day! We haven’t actually been in service before! We just thought we had. We set out this morning a little after 8:00 am. And when all was said and done (and we were long done) it was after 7:00 pm. Back to back studies all day. We got off easy, just riding on Marvin & Penny’s coat-tails. No actual coat-tails involved. Way too hot! Actually, the heat wasn’t too bad today. It was mostly cloudy so we were spared the worst. Still, I sweat profusely all day and, at one point, thought it might finish me off. Then the wife of Marvin’s study took pity on me and put a fan on me for the whole study. Yea! Saved. The morning started with a little door to door. Very little as there were many studies to do. The presentations are very complex here: “We would like to share a message from the Bible”. That’s it. They listen or they don’t. More often than not they do. And to think of all the work we do trying to tailor presentations to convince people to listen to us for at least a minute! The Bible study work is quite different too. We tread so lightly, terrified of scaring our studies. We treat them with kid gloves and cheer for any minor progress. Here, to our untrained ears, it almost seemed like hitting them between the eyes (in a very nice Continue Reading →
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First Day
So here we are …. first day in Abidjan. It is actually quite nice temperature wise. Of course, we didn’t budge out of the house all day and we have air-conditioning in the room. But it was a cooler day. I was glad to have socks on in our room. Bouba is the guard dog.He mostly sleeps and makes bad attempts to catch the multitude of lizards climbing the walls. … they laugh at me ’cause I am intrigued with the lizards. There are so many of them that it will wear off in a day or two. Meantime I am helping Bouba to hunt them. We have everything unpacked and in its place (did you expect less?). Now we have ‘our place’. Yea! We are drinking lots of water (and supplementing it with other drinks too!). Penny is feeding us far too well! We went to our first meeting tonight. We both managed to comment, although I doubt if anyone understood us. I was brother “Ford” and then “Kim”. After the meeting we got that all straight. …. I think. Of course, I remember very few of the names of the brothers and sisters. Its an extremely friendly congregation. We shook hands with almost everyone. Leslie was kissed by most of the sisters (one even kissed me! ick!) We had to pay attention to understand everything, but it went well. Pizza & brew for supper, so all is very well. Tomorrow is a big service day (pray for us).
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Our Room
We are staying in the Missionary home. There is a room that is empty at the moment and, for three weeks, it is all ours! Yea! We had two gift packs waiting for us, one from M & P and the other from John & Mandy (a thank you for our bringing a few items for them). Wow! What a beautiful room! We have tons of closet space, our own bathroom, air-conditioning … what more could you ask?
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Hitting the Heat
Wooof! We hit the heat! Touch down in Abidjan! Yea! We were worried about the security here, Marvin & Penny had warned us so much. Not such a big deal. We filled out the forms and sailed on through. Then … to the luggage. Was there any small chance that it would come through? Or … days of claims and waiting? We watched the luggage going round and round … nothing for us. Wait for another round … same bunch. sigh. Its going to be a rough one. Then, I noticed another carousal labeled with our flight number! Yea! I headed off to that one, leaving Leslie with our carry on luggage and a cart at the first carousal. At this one there was an 8 year old collecting her families luggage and getting her younger sister to watch it. She was doing a good job too. I watched everything coming through. Nothing for us. Then a long line of new stuff. … sigh. Then the same old stuff again. …. give it up … I went back to Leslie … to find her with ALL of our luggage!!!! Yea!!!! Free at last, free at last!! Great …. ok, you get the idea! So we headed out to the parking lot to meet Marvin & Penny. It was a very, very happy reunion. The drive back was an (beginning of) an eye-opener. Beautiful palm trees and luxury houses, mixed with slums and dumps that shouldn’t be lived in. Women carry Continue Reading →
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The Last Lag (and our last legs)
On to Abidjan! This plane was not quite so nice as the last, but the hospitality and the food was the same. Our TVs were smaller and the selection was not ‘on demand’, but still plenty to do. I didn’t mention that the TVs also allow you to monitor the flight of the plane including cameras mounted on the front and underside of the plane. I actually enjoyed those. Especially on landing. We had a brief stop in Ghana and then 45 minutes to fly to Abidjan. It was funny because they still wanted to serve food during that time. By the time they had served it (we couldn’t eat anymore anyway), they were trying to pick up the trays because we had started initial descent. Crazy. This flight was fairly rough. Strong head winds. But we arrived safe, and almost sound. What would await us….?
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Dubai
Here we are on the other side of the world! This is a unique feeling for one who has never left his continent before (I was almost incontinent, so to speak)! The Dubai airport is stunning. Huge, spacious and very relaxing. The opposite of North American airports. Security seemed relaxed and you got the idea that they were organized and competent. Might be an illusion. We found an attendant at the baggage and explained our situation. He almost shrugged it off. He said “Your flight out isn’t until morning, and if your luggage wasn’t on the plane, we have another one coming in at midnight. We’ll get your bags to Abidjan.” We relaxed a bit. On to the Hotel. Wow again. We have a voucher for a free room, 2 buffet meals and 2 ‘light refreshments’. We bought a bottle of wine at the airport. So we are all set. Our room was very nice. Single beds, but still nice. We even had our very own room safe! Yea! We started by going for the buffet. They maintained the level of the food quality. Buffet of all kinds of Indian / Middle East foods. Fantastic! It surpassed the meal we had in a restaurant just before leaving Canada. We went back to our room and had our wine. We then had about 4 hours sleep before heading out. Very restful, very nice. After that we had cake & coffee before heading out again. At the airport we went through all Continue Reading →
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Air Emirates
So last we left this that we ran for the plane. We made it on and the panic eased off. Whew! Now we are on Air Emirates. It has been said that Economy on Air Emirates is like First Class on any other airline. I haven’t traveled much, but I would certainly agree. To start they come around with steaming hot cloths for all the passengers to refresh themselves. Surprisingly nice. You get a little gift pack to keep with a pair of socks, a travel toothbrush and eye shades (to help sleep). Actually the pack is the nicest part of that. We are going to keep our to use at home (maybe a first aid kit, or something). Each seat (as you can see in the photo) has its own entertainment unit. You have hundreds of movies, tv shows, and music channels. It is all “on demand” so you can play what you want when you want. Nice! They give you nice headphones to use too, better that the ones we had with us. The food! The constant food! It is gourmet deluxe. I haven’t eaten in many restaurants that are better. And it just keeps coming. They give you a menu when you get on so that you can anticipate the choices. Drinks too, of course. Water, juice, coffee, tea …. and *real* drinks. Which they mix for you and serve in a nice glass with a swizzle stick. Ah luxury! It turns out that, while I don’t Continue Reading →
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Montreal to New York …. Running
It was calling for ‘weather’ …. don’t we always have weather? … so we decided to boot to the airport early. Good thing. We arrived in PE Trudeau airport at about 3:00 pm. Our flight was supposed to leave at 7:30. They told us that it was already delayed about 1 1/2 hours. The earlier flight was also delayed and they would put us on it. We boarded at 5:15 to leave at 6:30 …. ha! We sat on the plane with one delay after another and the snow picking up. De-icing …. waiting …. de-icing … waiting. Finally, at about 8:30 we took off. Most of the other passengers had decided to vacate by this time so we were about 15 on the plane. JFK …. … we knew we didn’t have much time, but this was crazy. We arrived with one hour before take off. We ran … almost literally for 30 minutes to get to our gate. They said “Too late”. Then they found out we had no checked baggage and decided that if we ran we could still make it. We ran. They explained on the way that our luggage would not make it with us. Not enough time. More on this later. We sneaked on to the Dubai flight just before take off. All went well from there, but that’s another story.
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And we catch up slowly …
Yesterday was a killer. We were up almost 22 hours. Today we got up late … sorta. It was 7:00 am, but that is our 8:30. We spent the day running around getting all the last things that were on our list before the last trip. We ate good food and Lisa took us to the shopping spots. We had a nice Indian meal with Jason & Lisa. Now we are going to chill with a little merlot and rest up.. Tomorrow is repacking day. Leslie's parents are coming in and we will send all our "winter" stuff back with them. Then we head on to the airport. I don't know if I will get a connection in Dubai, so I may not blog much before the weekend. Hang in there!
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