Crossing running water on the road to Magadi.

Sundays out in Maasailand are always a wonderful adventure, though I must say that one Sunday was particularly adventuresome.  First of all, it was the longest one-hour drive I have ever been on in my entire life. (It took two hours and forty minutes.)  Secondly, we weren’t just going it alone – we had our family plus Jacob Auma from CMA and a nineteen-member mission team from Canada.  Finally, it is the rainy season, which means that the pothole-filled dirt roads have turned into veritable mud-slides, or, in this case, rivers.  (At the point we found this out, I was congratulating myself for choosing to ride in one of the tour buses with the team instead of the small sedan with my family.)  Perhaps most people would have turned around, but not us.  After all, it’s just another adventure, right?

Oh, what a ride it was! We crossed all those rivers and drove through “puddles” big enough to be ponds, until we finally got to Magadi. The location where we were having a church service: a large, leafy old tree in the middle of nowhere. There was a small church building, but there were far too many people to hold a service in it! Together we worshipped, prayed, and listened to a sermon beneath the big tree that shaded us from the blazing sun. Afterwards we distributed care packages of food.

Out so far into Maasailand, groceries are exceedingly difficult to come by, and, though the rainy season had begun, there had not yet been enough time after the drought for the crops to grow back. Seeing the thankful, excited faces of so many people, old and young alike, made for a lovely last memory to take with us as we began our long drive home.

Upon further investigation, I found out that we were almost at the Tanzania border. Here is a link that shows some interesting facts about Magadi and its “soda lake.”   http://www.webkenya.com/eng/safari/magadi.php