The Beautiful Rift Valley

     After those two flights and that 14-hour layover in Istanbul, we arrived in Kenya at five am Wednesday morning and immediately fell into bed for several hours. That thin, hard mattress felt amazing, and the shower after those few hours of sleep felt amazing as well. I’ll share pictures later of the volunteer house, which acted as home base. Today, though, I’m going to tell you about the next morning, Thursday, when we drove out to our real home in Kenya – the Mara in the Rift Valley.

Here's our first view of the Rift Valley. Yes, on every trip, I take the exact same picture. But it never gets old. Never.

None of the views in the Rift Valley get old for me. Especially, when a few zebras sneak into the scenery.

A Maasai market somewhere along the way.

The wonderful road we take to get to the safari camp is always interesting, but it does get old after the first few hours.

Wishing they would replace the bridge across this riverbed someday. 

But we did see some Egyptian geese just after crossing the river. 

And some more zebras further along.

But in general, these are the sites I could gaze upon all day.

I’m so thankful to be able to experience God’s beauty in faraway places.

Which reminds me. Whenever I travel to a new country, I ask one of the locals to teach me how to say “thank you” in their language. When we were in Istanbul, we asked our Uber driver how to say “thank you” in Turkish. It is “teşekkürler”, which we couldn’t pronounce without making it sound like “testicular”.

Istanbul

     Okay, I’m ready to do this – share stories from my latest trip to Africa. I want to open with the disclaimer I’ve been sharing in the fine print any time I talk about this trip: we did not do any volunteering, this was strictly vacation.

With that in mind, we thought we’d start vacation before even getting to Kenya. When we booked our flights, we purposely chose one with a long layover on the way over, so we could take a couple hours to tour a city we might not otherwise visit.  

I’d never thought of Istanbul, Turkey, as a place to tour. It just worked out that we would be there for fourteen hours and that my friend who went with has been there twice before. It was a bit of a whirlwind. And we didn’t see all that much, but I thought it was still super cool. But you know me; I’m content to just wander around or even sit in one place and watch life walk by.

We had to take an Uber to the area my friend thought we should see. Unfortunately, that meant zooming by some other cool places. Like what I think is called the Marble Tower. Information I found about it on the internet confused me, so I’m not going to share any more about it.

 I was actually more fascinated by the ships out on the sea. Unfortunately, there we were still zooming down the highway, and our Uber driver didn’t even speak English, so it wasn’t like he could plop his tour guide hat on his head.

Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey and reportedly the seventh largest city in the world. Also one of the oldest.

Though the area has been inhabited since 3000 B.C., it wasn’t until sometime in 700 B.C. that the Greek’s established the city of Byzantium. A thousand years later, the Romans took over and renamed it Constantinople.

Lots of stuff happened – wars and takeovers and it was too much for me to study after that. But at some point, in the twentieth century, the city acquired its current name. 

Inside the Sultan Ahmet Tomb, which contains the tomb of Sultan Ahmet and 36 of his family members. 

The bodies are buried under the floor and the tombs are just decorative. Quite decorative. 

Sultan Ahmet park.

The Blue Mosque, which was being renovated. We went inside, but there was too much scaffolding to get any good pictures.  

Hagia Sophia. This complex has really a lot of history.  

Also, a lot of people wanted to get inside. We were wandering the area for several hours and the line was never shorter than probably three city blocks. We just didn’t have the time for that.  

A nice park and the weather was nice. I haven’t figured out the name of it. 

Just three Wisconsin girls making the most of our stay in this exotic city. 

Give Thanks to the Lord

        Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever. Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies. For he has gathered the exiles from many lands, from east and west, from north and south.

Some wandered in the wilderness, lost and homeless. Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died. “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress.

He led them straight to safety, to a city where they could live. Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. (Psalm 107:1-9, New Living Translation)

Monday night, I returned from my sixth trip to Kenya. I’m sorry that this is my first blog post, but I am still decompressing. Every time I come back home, it seems to take me longer to get over the jetlag, catch up on laundry, and get my head back on straight.

As with every trip, there were many highs and lows. I’m not going to lie – this was one of the more stressful ones. Lots of long stories, and I’ll share most of them here soon.

But today’s takeaway is that no matter what we are struggling with, God is only a prayer away. If we take our every worry and stress to Him in prayer, He will answer us. Maybe the answer isn’t always the one we want to hear, but we can rest in the peace that our Lord and Savior knows more than we do and the answer is the right one for us.

Let me praise the Lord for His great love and for the wonderful things He has done for me.