Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Saying see Ya Later Aligator To Moses

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Well, just to let you know, we did finally make it all the way back to AZ! But not without a couple of trials.

First on our way to the airport in Nairobi we were pulled over at one of the nightly "police check points". The two officers made a huge fuss, opening the doors to our van and ordering JoJo and Greer (one of our team gals) out of the van of 12 people. They were yelling at us in a quite agitated way "why aren't you wearing your seat belts?". It took us sometime to even understand this question (we didn't realize it had belts!). Then we all started putting our belts on and they yelled at us for doing that. This continued for several minutes with them opening the doors, shutting the doors, yelling things we could not understand. To be honest it did become a tad freaky. They announced that they were arresting JoJo and Greer. Then they put Greer back into the van and shut the door to only minutes later reopen the van and ask her why she got back in because she was under arrest. Long story short, they eventually put her back in the van and took JoJo back behind the van. After several tense minutes JoJo jumped back into the van and told David to drive away. Turns out the police just wanted a bribe! 200 Kenya Shillings, about $2.50 us Dollars!!!

Second, we had a pretty tight connection in NY and our plane was not early as expected, but 20 minutes late. Guess what, we missed our flight to PHX. So we went to the USAir counter to discover that the next available flight out was in 2 days! No kidding! There were NO flights to PHX for the rest of the day, all completely booked, all airlines. Turns out there was lots of cancelled flights for weather the day before. We were finally able to get seats on SW out of LaGuardia Friday morning. So we took a taxi to a hotel close to that airport, ordered room service (including NY cheesecake) took a shower and proceeded to pass out!!! Up at 3:45 am (you can tell by the photo!) to catch the shuttle to the airport, then after a brief stop in Chicago we went onto PHX where our lovely men were waiting for us with flowers.

It has been great to be reunited with Dave and Johnny. Jayna wanted Chipotle for our first meal so went there for an early lunch and ran into our office crew.