Hello Volker

Sunday morning we arrived back in Nairobi after a hellish time at the Mumbai airport.

It all started when we arrived at 1am for our 3:10am departure. We walked inside to notice the line for Kenya Airways was 2,000 people long!!! Ok, not quite 2,000 but about 300 give or take. We soon learned that the flight had been delayed to 5:30am and people were trying to change their flights, hence the long line. We had no option but to make our way to the end and set up camp.

I monitored the luggage cart while Brian inquired about checking in through the fast lane for those folks who hold silver, gold or platinum airline member status. Brian asked, "can I check in here with Silver Elite status?" Guy at counter, "do you have Gold or Platinum?" Brian, "no I have Silver Elite, can I check in here?" Guy, "do you have Gold or Platinum?" Brian, "ok, got it."

So we waited for about an hour, dancing our luggage cart around as people wanted to break through the line with their carts or body check us in order to get to the other side. It was kind of like a game of Red Rover except nobody was calling out names.

An hour passed and we were almost to the halfway point when Brian decided to ask another attendant if we could check in with our sweet Silver Elite status. This time around successful!

We made our way through to the counter, trying to avoid all the glares from those standing in line. I could feel the heat on my neck from all the death looks as we received our boarding passes. We scurried along as quickly as we could to Immigration.

This time the line was quick and we made our way to the gate. Finally, sleep time. It wasn't long until we were soaring across the ocean towards the African continent.

Sunday morning we set foot in Nairobi and arrived back at Volker's Garden Apartments despite our best efforts. We wanted to live somewhere new as to treat this time around as a completely different experience but the other apartment accommodation fell through at the last minute.

So there we were getting settled into our apartment at Volker's, greeted warmly by both Volker and his wife Nancy. They showed us our new home and Volker tended to the gas for the stove and the shower head to ensure we had a hot shower. 


A nice welcome back indeed.

We were quickly reminded of all the Volkerisms (those little nuggets of information one just doesn't know what to do with). Here are just a few from the last two days:

1. "Do you know what people living in the desert use to take showers? (he says as he's replacing our shower head in the bathroom) They use camel pee."

2. "You know many people from India drink their own pee to stay healthy because of all of the antibiotics." (I don't know how to respond and didn't come across any such thing while in India)

3. "Discipline is the most important thing you can have. You know I went through boarding school in East Germany."

4. "I knew Kenyatta."

Did I mention Volker kind of looks like Mr. Burns from The Simpson's?

It's good to be back....