Our trip to Nairobi was on one hand a disappointment and the other a nice rest stop on our way to Europe. One of those six closest YA friends of Julia is from Kenya but currently lives in Los Angles as a worship leader for a church there. He was supposed to come help with a worship conference back in Nairobi but his US VISA needed a renewal and he was on week ten of waiting for it to come when we arrived (it is supposed to take 2-4 weeks). Since he couldn’t return to the US to his family and job without that VISA he had to cancel his trip. So it was really disappointing that he couldn’t make it, but he had arranged for us to stay with his sister and it was wonderful to be taken care of while we were there and of course, make new friends!
Julia doing a video call with her YA friend in LA from his sister’s house in Nairobi – both fun and sad 
His sister’s youngest two girls were close to our girls ages and they had a huge world map in one bedroom which our girls used to give an overview of our trip and to share pictures from the blog.
Of course the YA was supposed to be there to show us around and with the last minute cancellation, we had to fill in some time, especially since his sister’s family still had their normal routine of school and other activities. We ended up meeting at a café in a mall with the Canadian World Renew lady whom we had met in Tanzania. She is originally from Nairobi and after the World Renew trip she was visiting family before returning to Canada. We didn’t drive everywhere in Nairobi, but our overall sense of it is that it has a strong middle class with lots of nice stores and malls like this one. At the café, Annika tried the Kenyan drink called dawa which means “medicine” which is basically minced ginger and lemon tea with a side of honey. We have discovered that a lot of places around the world make use of ginger way more than we do in North America.
Driving around Nairobi we saw lots of decked out mini buses which are called matatus. They are privately operated and over the years they have gotten more and more flashy in attempts to out-do each other in order to attract customers. We liked the moto on this one “Caution – this machine has no brain. Use your own”.
The next day was Saturday so the sister’s family was free to take us to a the Giraffe Centre which is a sanctuary where you could feed the giraffes.
They had two baby giraffes which were adorable. The smallest one was so short, both Annika and the giraffe had to stretch as far as they could to make it work.
The center was started in 1979 when the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe species, which can only be found in Kenya and Uganda, was down to only about 150 giraffes in Kenya. The center is still on the estate on which it was started though the house is now a hotel.
The YA’s father joined us at the end so we got to meet more of the family. They were so welcoming to us!
We enjoyed going to church with them as well as enjoyed a lovely Sunday lunch together.
Our flight wasn’t until late Sunday night so there was enough time for them to get the girls hooked on the Netflix show “Is It Cake?” before we had to leave (okay, the parents found it intriguing as well).
In the end we were blessed by the YA’s sister’s willingness to still host us even though her brother wasn’t there and were thankful for our time, despite the disappointment. Julia and her Kenyan YA friend are now scheming about which one should travel to make a reunion in North America work!!