Trip to Sudan/Kenya/Spain/Amsterdam

Nagishot, Sudan

Trip was amazing! I left for Sudan on June 26th and arrived back in the US from Amsterdam on July 13th. I could not have imagined how enjoyable this trip would be, even with my “high expectations” (see below post). Traveling to Nagishot was an adventure in and of itself, the trip consisted of the following flights: Austin-Detroit-Amsterdam-Nairobi-Loki-Nagishot. I was in Nagishot from Saturday-Saturday which was great because we were able to go to church in Nagishot on Sunday the day after we arrived and then have a full week (Monday – Friday) to teach all the lessons from our CHE (Community Health Evangelism) program. God truly blessed our time there. I taught 4 1-hour lessons and they all went very well and were fun! I really believe in the program (which will take about 5 years to fully implement and be self-sustaining in Nagishot) which made me feel like I was really there with a concrete purpose. There is no way I can write in a blog about all my experiences in Sudan but my week included: teaching CHE lessons, lots of dancing & singing, carrying water from a stream on my head, cleaning dishes, attending church, fireside stories and laughing, taking one shower (that’s right, one the whole week), eating some interesting food including goat intestine, taking lots of pictures, teaching kids a variation on the Macarena dance (have video), sleeping in a tent all week, watching amazing sunrises & sunsets, seeing shooting stars in a brilliantly clear sky (not any light to distract from the stars), worshiping with fellow believers who live in Nagishot, and much much more. There were a lot of hard things to see on the trip as well, behind all the smiling faces is alot of intense hardship. Seeing kids that have little to no clothing on cold days was a reminder of the poverty in the Didinga hills. Seeing the lack of education and the lack of options for kids as they grow up was hard. Knowing that 1 in 3 children will die before they are 5 years old is hard to even comprehend. But through all of this God’s love is reaching the Sudanese in the Didinga hills. And with His love comes hope. I look forward to telling anyone who will listen more about my trip and the amazing Didinga people that live in Nagishot.

Kenya – Safari

After a week of “roughing it” in Sudan a group of 8 of us headed off to the Masai Mara Game Reserve, a 5 hour drive outside of Nairobi. After the brutally bumpy car ride to the Reserve (someone compared it to riding a mechanical bull for 5 hours, not to far off) we arrived at our Safari camp. It was amazing! First off was the buffet, I’m pretty sure any weight I might have lost in Sudan I gained back in the few days at the Safari! The “tents” we stayed in can only be called tents because they had canvas walls, but they also had wood floors, king size beds, a tilled and immaculately clean bathroom and lights! During the 12 hours of game drives we had in the 2 days we were there we got to see a ton of different animals including lions, elephants, cheetah, giraffes, buffalo, hippo’s and lots of wildebeests & zebras and much more. The wildebeests had already started their annual migration which was amazing to see as there were thousands of them all moving together. The lions were within 5 feet of our vehicle so we got an up close and personal encounter. We hadn’t seen a cheetah on any of our game drives, and I really wanted to see one so I said a quick prayer and 20 minutes later we saw one on the way back from our last game drive! One of my favorite parts about the Safari was just being out in an amazing part of God’s creation where animals roam freely. I stood up in the vehicle, called a “lorry”, during all of the game drives so the only down side was I ended up with chapped lips!

Spain 

The most “thrilling” part of my trip was still yet to come. After flying from Nairobi to Amsterdam, I hopped on a flight and flew from Amsterdam to Madrid and then Madrid to Pamplona for, you guessed it, the San Fermin Festival (also know as the running of the bulls festival)! I spent 24 hours there, arriving on Thursday at 4PM and leaving Friday at 4PM. I went by myself which was exciting but also a bit intimidating. Shortly after arriving in downtown Pamplona the bull fight was going to take place, I scalped a ticket and headed in. The experience of being in the arena with thousands of people all wearing the official garb of the festival (white pants, white t-shirt and red bandanna around the neck) was amazing, however the actual “bull fight” was not exactly to my liking as the bulls really are treated brutally and its not even close to a “fair fight”. But, I meet a new friend, Pepe, and we talked and laughed the whole time. After the bull fight I joined the masses in the streets for all sorts of funfare and at 11PM there was a crazy fireworks show (best I’ve ever seen). I made friends with a group of fellow festival-goers from France, Pamplona, Austria and a few other nationalities. I spent the next several hours with them which was quite an experience. No one actually sleeps during the night hours during the festival so I didn’t have to worry about booking accommodations (which was good because a city that holds about 10,000 doesn’t exactly have room for the 100,000 that come for the festival!). At 7AM I said goodbye to my new friends and entered the area in the town square where the “runners” have to gather before the actual running of the bulls. I meet a few nice fellas who were running as well, one of whom had run before and was dispelling advice on how not to get gored (that was comforting). At 10minutes till 8AM they opened the gates and let the runners pick their spot on the course. I found out that many of the runners simply wanted to claim that they ran with the bulls but would start the run so far in front of the bulls that they would enter the arena before the bulls even got close to them! I hadn’t come all the way to Pamplonato not run with the bulls so I lined up about 1/2 way through the 1/2 mile course to make sure I got to actually run next to the bulls. I can’t imagine doing anything in my life that will give me more of an adrenaline rush then the time from when the first rocket is set off (announcing that the bulls have been released from the corral) to when I left the arena after the run. I got within about 5 feet of the 6 bulls that rushed by me, took a tumble in a big “pill-up” of runners and made it all the way into the arena before the gates were shut and the last bull made it in. After the bulls were put in a corral behind the arena if you were a runner that made in in the arena you could stay in and play full-fighter as they released, one at a time, 6 different young bulls whose horns were padded so they weren’t nearly as dangerous as the bulls we had run with. That was quite funny and I was able to get pretty close to a couple of them but not too close as a few people got run over by them. It was pretty much of game of “dodge the bull”. I spent the rest of the morning talking about the run over b-fast, picking up a few souvenirs including purchasing a copy of a picture the official photographers had taken which included me in the foreground and the bulls behind me (I was quite excited to get a bit of proof that I really did run with the bulls!), and wondering the streets one last time before heading off to catch my flight to Amsterdam. I highly recommend to anyone a little off their rocker and who loves a thrill of a lifetime.

Amsterdam

I arrived in Amsterdam at 11PM on Friday night, and a bit delirious from lack of sleep and a little too much excitement I took a train from the airport to Central Station from where I headed off to my hostel, The Flying Pig, located a short walk from the train station. After checking in I got a few hours of sleep and in the morning set off to explore Amsterdam in one day! I spent a good hour being frustrated with the public transportation as there had been a problem with the trams and everyone was confused and all the tourists (myself included) where totally lost. I decided it was best to explore on foot for the time being. After wondering the streets for a good hour I found the Anne Frank House, the home that the Frank family hide in during WWII, taken from the ”Anne Frank Diary.” The line to see the home/museum took a good hour but it was well worth it as it was very touching. I then headed off the the Albert Cuyp outdoor market which was a 1/2 mile long street lined with booths with all sorts of items for sale from cheese & whole octupuses to toothpast & clothing. I spent a few hours there and throughroughly enjoyed the experience. Next was a trip to the Van Gogh Museum. The artwork there is amazing and the museum itself was very impressive. Later in the evening I went back to my hostel and meet a woman who was traveling the world by herself until she ran out of money, quite funny story as she is a doctor and just needed a break! We hung out and talked the rest of the night and walked around the red light district in Amsterdam which was quite an eye-opening experience, and a very sad one. At this point I was beyond tired and went to bed to get a good 3 hours of sleep before getting on a plane the next morning to fly back to Austin, TX. After almost missing my flight from Amsterdam to Detroit due to a “mis-reading” of the train schedule from the Central Station to the airport I made it all the way back to Austin.

Since my trip I have been trying to catch up on sleep and process all the experiences I was privileged to have during my 2 1/2 week trip. I have pictures posted in several places including Facebook & Picasa web albums so shoot me an email if you’d like to see them. If you made it through reading this entire post I hope you enjoyed reading it and I highly encourage you to take a trip soon!