Tomorrow, on December 7th, we will be setting off
on our Christmas vacation! It’s hard to believe that it was just a little under
3 months ago that we left home for Africa and now we’re less than 3 weeks away
from Christmas. Time really does fly! This Christmas, we’ll be taking the
opportunity to travel around Africa and to finally experience being a tourist
here after all this time! As excited as we are to make this trip, it’s
definitely bittersweet, as this will be the first Christmas away from our
families for both of us. To make it an even tougher pill to swallow, this just
happens to be the worst Christmas for us to be away from home! First, we are
missing out on Byron’s mom’s 60th birthday celebration (apparently
the most celebrated of all birthdays in Chinese culture) on December 18th,
which we know she is quite disappointed about. Second, we are missing out on
the first Christmas for the two newest additions (Reese and Teddy) to the
extended Chan family. With all that considered, with a four-week break from
work, we may never get a better chance to explore other parts of Africa.
Below is a rough itinerary of our upcoming journey:
First Stop – Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania
This isn’t so much a chosen destination as it is a
destination by necessity. Due to the very expensive cost of flights from Zambia
to Kenya, we are taking the train from Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia to Dar es Salaam,
en route to our intended destination of Mombasa, Kenya. The train is scheduled
to take three days and two nights but we have heard of many instances where the
train has been delayed – sometimes up to 24 hours! As if three days on an
African train isn’t already long enough! While on the train, we have tickets
for a “first class” sleeper cabin, complete with its own toilet and shower.
First class is in quotation marks because everything here is relative. The
train itself is pretty old and, from the reviews online, there seems to be a
50/50 chance that we’ll have running water in our bathroom! Gotta love those odds!
We are scheduled to arrive into Dar on Dec. 9th,
and with our flight not leaving to Mombasa until Dec. 11th, we
should have plenty of leeway to accommodate any lengthy train delays. Should we
get to Dar on time, we will take the opportunity to explore the city. However,
we’ve heard from quite a few people that Dar is a bit of a craphole, to put it
nicely (apologies to any native Tanzanians reading this blog!), so we’re not
too bothered either way!
Second Stop –
Mombasa, Kenya
The reason behind the entire trip. In 2010, we became sponsor
parents to two children in Kenya through Compassion Canada. Their names are
Faith (Diane’s little girl) and Silas (Byron’s little boy). One lives 40 km
north of Mombasa, while the other one lives 40 km south. Over the last few
years, we have exchanged letters with them in the mail about once every few
months. It’s been neat for us to develop a relationship with these children
halfway across the world and now we are thrilled to have the opportunity to
finally meet them! We’re also very interested to see what visiting
our children’s homes will be like compared to the home visits we have done here
in Zambia and in South Africa. Hopefully our experience over the last few
months will really help prepare us for this very special moment and to be a
real blessing for our children and their families!
Third Stop – Nairobi,
Kenya
After Mombasa, we fly to Nairobi, Kenya where we will meet
up with one of our fellow Hands volunteers, Jackie, a local Kenyan. We are very
excited about this because there’s no better way to experience a country than
to do it with a local! Jackie has also hooked us up with one of her friends in
Kenya who has graciously helped us plan our entire trip. A few things in store
for us in Kenya: giraffe feeding, elephant orphanage, flamingo park, local
markets, Carnivore Restaurant (a famous all-you-can-eat meat restaurant!),
local Kenyan church, a visit to Kibera (apparently the largest slum in Africa)
and, of course, lots of Kenyan coffee!
Fourth Stop – Arusha,
Tanzania
After Nairobi, we will travel by shuttle bus (approximately
5 hours) back down to Arusha, Tanzania, where we’ll stay with our friend,
Terry, a pilot who’s been living in different parts of Africa for the past few
years. Arusha is only a short drive from Mount Kilimanjaro and, while we put
some serious consideration into doing the 7-day hike to the top of the famed mountain,
it was a bit too expensive and a bit too time consuming for us to do this time
around. I know you’re probably thinking, “as if you two could do a 7-day hike
anyways!” which is a legitimate thought. But, apparently, Kilimanjaro can be a
relatively easy hike, especially when you have porters carrying your packs and
cooking all your food! The only thing we would have needed to worry about is
the altitude sickness, which is the main reason the hike takes 7 days. That’s
what Terry tells us, anyway. So, instead, our actual plans in Arusha will
involve a 3-day safari in the Saharan desert! Terry tells us there’s no better
place to do a safari. We’ll see if he’s right.
Last Stop – Zanzibar,
Tanzania
Last, but not least, we will make our way by plane to
Zanzibar, Tanzania, to take in the Indian Ocean and do some much needed relaxing
on the beach. A day trip into the city to do a tour of Stonetown may be on the
agenda but, other than that, we anticipate our days to look like this – Sleep.
Eat. Beach. Repeat. We keep hearing about how Zanzibar is a must see if you’re
in Tanzania, so let’s hope it doesn’t disappoint! Sounds like the perfect way
to end the trip!
Contacting ...
If you want to contact us while we are away, email may be
the best bet. We plan on getting local Tanzania and Kenya SIM cards during our
travels but who knows what difficulties we may run into. We will have internet
access from our hotels along every stop so we will be checking emails and you
can expect a few blog posts along the way – both about our travels and about
some stuff we wanted to write about in Zambia but didn’t get around to before we left.
Please also check out our prayer requests in our Prayer
Requests tab. We will definitely need your prayers during our journey. Thank
you!