There and not yet back again

Our trip started on Wednesday afternoon with a two hour drive to the airport. The flight was already delayed an hour and a half so we hung out for a while. There were severe thunderstorms all along the east coast that day, but thankfully we left just an hour or two before they were supposed to hit. If we had been delayed any longer than an hour or two we would have missed our other flights and we would not have arrived until Monday. Thankfully, God kept the storms from the airport so we could fly. From Raleigh we flew seven hours to London. The plane only had boring movies playing so I slept a little, listened to music, and tried not to think of the vast body of water below me that makes me nervous.

We arrived in London at around 7am and spent an hour trying to get to our terminal. That airport is huge, but its one of my favorites due to the fact that most of the employees have wonderful British accents. I can listen to boring airport announcements when they are spoken in a British accent. I, also, kept an eye out for any famous British actors; I, sadly, didn’t see any. We enjoyed a lovely English breakfast and than headed out on our 9 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda. I watched a couple movies and enjoyed a dinner of lamb and chocolate mousse for dinner. I think that might be the nicest plane dinner I’ve ever had.  Christine was sneaky and got a second chocolate mousse (though to be fair she didn't eat the rest of the dinner).

 I woke up the soothing sound of rain, that is until it reminded me that I had forgotten my rain coat. After splashing through some puddles to breakfast I enjoyed some fresh African fruit which simply cannot compare to American. 

 

At noon we headed back to the airport for our MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) to Bunia, Congo. One amusing thing about the Entebbe airport is this random metal detector. At the gate to the airport they made us get out of our car and walk through this metal detector which, was outside on the side of the road, in the dirt. I’m personally not convinced that it actually worked, due to the fact that I had bobby pins in my hair which will set off a working metal detector, this one didn’t beep. Just another African “thing” to keep us on our toes. 

For this particular flight, you wait in the lobby of the airport until someone comes up and asks you if you are flying with MAF, apparently we must look MAFish, possibly the white skin and numerous trunks gives us away. The flight from Entebbe to Bunia is just an hour, unfortunately it was cloudy so we couldn’t see some of the beautiful mountains we flew over. The hard part came after landing in Bunia, getting out of customs. Thanks to our missionary friend who knows the culture and the language, we finally made it out after an hour of arguing which ment we didn’t have to pay tons of money.

Here is what the typical road looks like, except this is an exceptionally smooth part of the road, I couldn't take a picture of the bumpy parts because I was bumping up and down so much. 

After an hour in a rather cramped car, on extremely rough “roads” (unpaved rocky, path filled with puddles might be a better way to describe it), we made it to Nyankunde 47 hours after we left home. Not much as changed and it was great to be back. This time around we have more people stayed in the guesthouse. We have Dr. Cooper and his wife Lindsay who are both doctors and now live here, along with two medical students Ian and Josh, and then Dad, Christine, and I. So far we all get along quite well and I look forward to getting to know these people better.