This is going to be a long read. Consider yourself warned. Maybe I should use a table of contents:
- Uganda’s covid-19 testing
- Lancet’s “24 hour” covid-19 testing
- Wedding mishap
- F.R.I.E.N.D.S
- M.Wangai
- Mrs. Adrian and the Indian visa
So weird how excited I was to be spending a weekend in Nairobi. I had a full calendar and couldn’t wait to see people and generally just replenish my happiness quotient.
Uganda stays winning. All COVID-19 tests data is collected by the government so when you check in at the airport, they use your passport info to pull up all your data. No chance for Kenyans who thrive in corruption and use fake certificates. In Uganda, your certification is real. And if you test positive, the government has your data and you aren’t travelling anywhere….. The airport that I found was so empty! It was so strange not having to queue for long, no need for priority queues to move faster. There were only 3 flights departing that evening, and the flight board was showing flights up to the next day at 6pm. So weird!
Anyhow, where Kenya won in my opinion was the turn around time for COVID-19 testing. When I went to Lancet for testing, they indicated that they would take about 24 – 36 hours for the testing and reporting process. I was skeptical about them meeting this timeline but I received the shock of my life. The results came through in 6 hours. I had to check the date to confirm that they hadn’t re-sent an old report. It was the new report and I was so pleasantly surprised. I can’t believe that the first time I went for a test, it took more than 72 hours to receive a response and now reports are being released in 6 hours. Wow.
The reason I travelled to Nairobi was to attend my friends‘ wedding. I was looking forward to this, I was supposedly the Chief Usher (haha!). Even though I just wanted to sit down and enjoy the wedding, I decided to be a good sport and be of service. I slept at Mrs. Adrian’s place then early in the morning, I went to Hipilicious’ house since that’s where my car was parked. The ceremony was starting at 11am and I tried to leave before then. I checked out the directions to the venue on my laptop and sent the instructions to my phone. I got dolled up and off I went. At some point, the phone kept on losing the GPS signal and as per the map, I should have arrived at my location. And that was when I realized that I had only carried my Ugandan line, it had run out of bundles and airtime and there was no way for me to top up. Also, the GPS was wrong and I was on the wrong road.
To cut a long story short, I drove between Limuru and Kiambu for about 5 hours – back and forth – trying to find the wedding venue, which in the end, I didn’t locate! I decided not to go back to look for my phone since I had no idea where I had left it – at Mrs. Adrian’s, at Hipilicious’s place or in her car. I also couldn’t call anyone to ask because, well, I had no airtime. And I didn’t carry any cash so I couldn’t stop at some random shop for help. The silver lining to this whole story was that when the bride and groom heard about my horrible experience, they visited us at Mrs. Adrian’s and we got to spend some quality time with them before they departed for their honeymoon! Also, I got to see how beautiful Limuru/Kiambu was, especially since I had never been to Kiambu before.
I got to meet up with JINK! Excitement galore. When IO’s hubby eavesdrops our conversations, he keeps saying, ‘How do you guys discuss such serious stuff?’. I love the discussions we have about life, experiences and growth. I love that we talk about anything, everything and nothing. This time, we spoke mostly about self-care and how to improve our lives. I also regalled them with the new horrors of online dating, they were looking at me like “OMG, we’re so lucky we don’t have to go through that!” The icing on the cake, was this cake.
Khairun and I love walking and our plan was to go on one of our long walks but it didn’t really happen. Too much work got in the way of that, but we got to spend some extra special minutes with each other and as usual, I was so grateful to God for giving me such an awesome friend. If everyone in the world had a Khairun, the world would be such an amazing place.
I also got to visit the Kingdom to hang out with the most awesome family ever. Pappa and Queen, Prince and Princess are the family I never knew was family until my own family started sneaking off to meet them without me. Mrs. Adrian hasn’t visited anyone or been in an indoor space that’s not her house (or the hospital!) since February and so this was an extra special visit. Other than over eating and laughing like crazy, the highlight of this trip to Nairobi was seeing Mrs. Adrian so happy and interacting with other people who actually make her happy.
My other highlight was spending some time with M.Wangai. He is the best stress reliever and he makes me so happy. God bless Sippa and Wambu for bringing this amazing unicorn to the world. I forgot to take a pic of us but he sent me a video which totally makes up for this.
Mrs. Adrian hasn’t been feeling so well so we were so relieved that India opened up their airspace and she could now plan to travel for more investigations. Till the most Kenyan thing happened. Kenyans started faking COVID-19 certificates so Kenyans started getting banned from travelling to certain countries. Now since the Indian High Commission couldn’t do that, they just blocked their website from having any Kenyans being able to book appointments to get visas. So it means that even if you had a genuine need for travelling to India, you can’t because some random Kenyans had fake certificates and got to India only to test positive when they got there. It’s been a time of serious prayer asking God to provide a solution for this travel and it seems that the prayers might just have touched the heart of God and the travel might be happening soon. This might be the first time EVER that our family will not spend Christmas together or at least in the same country…. Let’s wait and see. Either way, please keep Mrs. Adrian in your prayers, send her positive vibes and send her virtual hugs – she really needs this.
I am looking forward to this weekend, I can’t wait to just chill and do nothing. Ah, why am I lying? I’m sure I’ll be up, down, sideways, gallivanting all over this beautiful country that is Uganda, seeking adventure and finding laughter.
BTW, doing all these activities while observing COVID-19 protocols was really hard!
Njenva's Ramblings 