Curt Mader, Nancy Allen, and I have returned from Nigeria. We accomplished our objectives but I must say, “We are very glad to be home”.
We visited two orphanages. One in particular would be a wonderful place to install a water system. It was managed by Ntoro Nkanta; Ikponke’s brother. It was wonderful, and God honored, to see what Ntoro was doing with these children. They had about 100 children ranging in age from babies to young adults. They were joyous to receive our six fully packed suitcases of supplies. Everyone received their own toothbrush and they were passing out underwear, books, and crayons as fast as they could pull them out of the suitcase. We sang songs, prayed together, toured their homes, and prayed together some more. It was a really wonderful experience. They are so full of joy, hospitality, and life. I think all of our hearts were touched.
On the other hand, we had many difficulties. I believe we are all a little traumatized by the experience as a whole. I don’t know if we will return or not. We have lots to think about.
In the next six upcoming Reflexiones de Moises, I will attempt to recapture the events of the trips. I will attempt to paint a realistic picture of the trip and you can decide if it was successful or not. Here is how it began.
Airport…
We met a very nice gentleman on the Airplane named Emeka Osbon Nwaghanata. He warned us of many things. We are very thankful that God presented this angel to us. In Nigeria, it is a “demanding culture”. We wondered what that meant???
We left the MCI Airport at 3:10 pm on Saturday and arrived in the Port Harcourt Airport at about 7:00 pm on Sunday night. So, needless to say, after 28 hours in the planes we were tired. Upon arrival we were herded into a tent with no air conditioning and bugs galore swarming everything in their path. There were men with machine guns, hot long lines, and seemingly chaos everywhere. In a matter of minutes they took our passports. Yes, we got them back, but, I don’t normally like people to take my passport. We finally made it through the security after two long sweaty hours and they gave us our passports back and we discovered that only two of our six suitcases made to the airport. “In Nigeria, we do not bring you your lost bags !”, the security guard retorted. We finally did get our lost four bags on the day we left Nigeria.
We met our “host” at the airport holding a sign that said “Tropical”. This was a great encouragement. We hopped into two speeding cars and raced through town IN THE DARK to our new accommodations: The Nikky Suites. We immediately noticed that we had a communication problem. None of us could really understand each other. But, we perservered and we were glad to have an advocate with us.
We had a body guard. We noticed he was not happy. We like everyone to be happy!!!
We had a quick dinner with our hosts and began our new friendship. We asked many questions.
