Paul and Rebecca Mosley in Kenya: The elephants outside (and inside?) the room

MCC Africa leadership team

Paul completed our last blog while we were en route to Livingstone, Zambia, for the MCC All Africa Rep Meetings. More on the content of those meetings in a bit.

Our travels should have taken about 9 hours, with a wake up time at 4:00 am. Instead, we had a little unplanned interlude in Johannesburg. Kenya Airways cancelled our early morning flight and placed all 17 of us in our party on a slightly later flight. Then our flight departed late and arrived in Jo’burg 40 minutes past schedule. By the time we found the counter for our connecting flight, the staff had left and the desk was closed. We still had more than an hour before the flight would leave, but SAFAIR refused to help us and said it was our problem that we were late. We quickly discovered that there were no more flights to Livingstone that day – we would have to stay overnight and get a flight the next day.

Patient kids in our team

To make matters worse, in order to sort out the problem, find a transit hotel and get our stranded luggage, we needed to clear immigration and try to get help from Kenya Airways. But the 3 Ugandans in our MCC group could not possibly get visas – only the Kenyans and Americans would be allowed out of transit. Paul elected to stay with our colleague Amos and his 2 kids, while the rest of us exited and tried to rescue the situation. We met many roadblocks along the way, trying to figure out where our luggage was being held hostage (in Jo’burg? Sent to Livingstone?). The 6 kids were hungry and thirsty by 1 pm, so we had to further divide our group – kids and 2 moms to order pizza and the other to get help from Kenya Airways.

Helpful service -- finally

We were so thankful and relieved to find a reasonable person at the KQ desk, who took responsibility for our problem and started working right away on rebooking tickets for us the following day. She was able to also get us all hotel and meal vouchers. The folks stuck in transit could stay in a lounge until midnight but then would have to sleep in the transit terminal. So Paul elected to stay with them and get them into the 24-hour Premier lounge – a new perk of travel we just invested in through a credit card offer.

Once we had the hotel vouchers we sent the kids and moms to the hotel and 5 of us stayed on to get our luggage. That was the hardest part of the day was sitting for almost 4 hours in the office of the baggage service, trying to convince them to bring our bags to us. We have no idea why it was so difficult for them to attend to us – some kind of scheme?

Luggage finally

Finally after 7 pm we rolled our bags to the hotel shuttle and finally rejoined the rest of our team. After a good dinner, that was the soundest night of sleep I had enjoyed for weeks. In the morning, we all went back to the airport in good time and finally rejoined Paul and the Ugandan family at our gate, and flew on to Livingstone without further incident.

Thankfully, our Area Directors had planned for us to have a relaxed time of team building, activities and prayer. So, we didn’t miss much with our delayed arrival. On Sunday morning, we had some time together as a team and then went out sightseeing in Livingstone.

Godzilla attacking a stick

Our first stop was the reptile park, where we met quite a large gathering of crocodiles. Apparently, most of the famous crocodilians were named after the people they had killed or maimed – a bit macabre in my opinion. I also wondered about the largest, oldest crocodile named Godzilla – it must have been a monster its prime. We also had the opportunity to hold baby crocs (so cute!), tortoises and chameleons.

The kids were happy to play on the playground for a while, and I was happy to see David being a great older teen helper. We enjoyed lunch in town – a few people were brave and tried the crocodile spare ribs and croc pizza. We also had a bit of shopping, and then headed back to the hotel. It was really hot, so the pool was wonderfully cool at the end of the day. One of the features of our hotel is it's proximity to Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls) national park. Currently, Zambia is experiencing severe drought, meaning that there is little water and forage for animals. Elephants are on the move and surrounded our hotel morning and evening, looking for water in the nearby ponds and at the Zambezi river nearby.

Evening elephants at the hotel

By Monday evening, the rest of the leadership team joined us at the hotel. This included Reps from the other region of Africa, people in leadership from North America, HR staff, finance staff, people involved in the young adult exchange programs. For the rest of the week, our focus was on business meetings. Each country program shared an update; so many countries are facing massive displacement – mostly caused by conflict, but climate change is playing a major role in South Sudan as well. In fact, South Sudan may end up as the first country in the world with permanent displacement due to climate change. Millions of people have fled a region that has been underwater for more than a year now. Congo DRC, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia are all dealing with relief work for displaced people.

We also had some deep, serious discussions on complex subjects: How best can MCC work alongside Anabaptist churches in Africa? What to do if we get a call that a staff member has been kidnapped? (this is a growing reality in the world) And the contentious matter of balancing the concerns/conflicts of our North American MCC boards and constituencies with the priorities of our international programs. Western political polarization threatens the valuable humanitarian work being done by a unified MCC International program and we’re worried about it. Some of our leaders from the US and Canada were present to meet with us, discuss, learn and take back perspectives.

International program leaders

In the end, we are all facing existential crises. The election in the US is all-consuming on that side; and on this side, war, poverty, and severe hunger are also all-consuming. It's hard to see how we will face the challenges ahead if we insist on dividing more and more deeply.

Dancing Yerusalema

Outside our serious discussions in the meeting hall, we still had some fun. One evening, Paul led our smaller regional group in some folk dances and line dances – this has become a tradition at any large group event we attend. We ended meetings earlier on a different day and took a dinner cruise on the Zambezi river. It was fascinating to watch groups of elephants actually swimming across the fast moving river. Further down we watched pods of hippos playing and fighting close to the bank. We spotted a few crocodiles basking in the evening light. I was very absorbed in noting the southern African birds along the water. The kids sat together, drawing and sight-seeing and the adults had a relaxed time to chat, nibble on bites and marvel at the sunset on the water.

The next morning, we woke early for an excursion to Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria) Falls. The drought has pretty much dried up the falls except for one curtain of water on the Zimbabwean side. But even without the water and the spray, it was stunning to walk along the edge of the gorge and imagine what it must be like in full flow. Later most of us continued on down the steep path to a point below the falls where rafting trips launch. Fresh air and walking loosened our conversation and we had some pretty hilarious exchanges about how to solve the world’s problems. But when we got back, we were all super hot and tired. The meetings that afternoon were grueling to get through!

At the Falls with David

On our final evening all together, several team members hosted a night of culture and dancing – we did our best to dress up in some kind of cultural clothes, and a few different cultures presented participatory dances. I was quite proud of David as he jumped in to give a very vigorous Ugandan dance a try.

Kids at the MCC meetings cultural night

To be honest, I was proud of him the whole week – he really supported the Kid’s program leader Hannah, helping to play with and entertain the younger kids in their sessions and especially in the pool. He also had to work hard to keep up with home work in the evenings, since he missed 5 days of school to join us on this trip. Fortunately the school understands that this is often required of mission kids, and we didn’t want him to miss the chance for him to connect with his MCC peers.

On Friday morning, we left the Southern Africa team still in their own regional meetings, and the East Africa/Sahel team made our return journey back to Nairobi. On the weekend, we were TIRED and pretty much did nothing all of Saturday and Sunday. I guess there was a game night we joined, church, and a time for our small group prayer. But we really needed to recover a bit before facing an extremely busy week. Each of our staff needed time to catch us up on their work and life issues. Several days were literally non-stop meetings with various people, including some colleagues who need prayer and healing.

Bowling for 16!

We took some special time out to celebrate David’s 16^th birthday on Tuesday, picking him up straight after school in the evening. We enjoyed a round of bowling together – yes, Paul won, but all of us got better as the evening went on. And then we treated David to dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant. We also enjoyed going to our first arts event at Rosslyn Academy – the upper school Choir concert. The choir teacher is extremely gifted and energetic, instilling a love of singing and community in students who never thought they would enjoy music. David has played a significant role in his highschool tenor section, and it seems like his fellow students appreciate him. He got a short little solo in a Gershwin piece (foggy day) and we wished it were longer – he sang well!

birthday cake

gifts

All middle and high school choirs
in a joint song

David's choir duet

We have another packed week ahead -- I will be interviewing 11 candidates to select 6 good ones to participate in our young adult exchange programs. Paul will be heading on another project visit, this time to Turkana in Northern Kenya. More updates to come.

Here are lots of bonus photos: