KISII, Kenya -- Seven of us, all volunteers, had just ridden a cross-country bus eight hours from Nairobi to Kisii Town. Our team leaders, LEAMIS International Ministries founders the Rev. Debra Snellen and Gail Drake, were already in Kisii; they had been in the region for a week, leading a pastoral training program in Kegogi and making preparations for arrival.

But our arrival time wasn't fixed, and they weren't there to meet us on the streets of Kisii when we arrived. Pastor Thomas, a church official with Heroes of Faith Church in Kegogi, had made the bus ride with us. But in the rush to get to the bus stop that morning, not all of our group had even had the opportunity to meet Pastor Thomas.

Most matatus are vans, but this one, which took some of the LEAMIS mission team from Kisii to Ndonyo, is a pickup truck with an enclosed bed. Inside the bed are two lengthwise rows of seats, facing each other. T-G City Editor John I. Carney is seen here in the front passenger seat, since Kenya (a former British colony) has traffic on the left side of the road. [Click to enlarge]

I sat next to Pastor Thomas on the bus ride. I was transfixed by the Kenyan landscape, the tea plantations and wandering zebras, and had not been much of a conversationalist. Plus, Pastor Thomas' accent was so heavy that it was difficult to converse with him. I was afraid that I'd been rude to him.

At a bus stop, he slipped off the bus for a moment and I leaned forward and told Guy McDonald and April Klabzuba about my concerns. Then, a few minutes later, Pastor Thomas was back on board the bus holding an ear of roasted corn which he had purchased from one of the roadside vendors. He snapped it in half and handed me one of the pieces. The corn itself was awful -- the texture was closer to unpopped popcorn than to our American corn on the cob. But I felt much better as I ate it.

Now, however, we were standing in downtown Kisii, in what seemed like rush hour, and Pastor Thomas had rushed off with little explanation to try to find out who was supposed to pick us up. We had no idea where Gail and Debra were or how soon someone would come to retrieve us. The seven of us mzungus (white people) huddled in a dense little knot, blocking the sidewalk (if you could call it that) with our colossal mound of luggage. Each of us was traveling with more than many people in Africa own.

Members of the LEAMIS International Ministries mission team huddle around their luggage after being dropped off by a cross-country bus in Kisii, Kenya. Clockwise: Jim Upton, Guy McDonald, Audrey Lindsey, April Klabzuba and Nadina Wooding. [Click to enlarge]

I stood there, nervous and paranoid. Was my backpack zipped up? Should I tuck my neck wallet inside my shirt? Suddenly, it hit me. It was good to be cautious -- certainly, our hosts and our trip leaders wanted us to be cautious -- but that did not mean that I needed to be suspicious of each and every person walking the streets of Kisii. Not one of them had awakened that morning and said to himself, "Today, I'm going to take all of John Carney's shillings."

I laughed at myself and looked around at the traffic and the buildings. Kisii is larger than I had expected.

Soon, a car pulled up. Debra leaped out to greet us; Gail, seated inside the car, flashed an "I love you" sign at us. Everything was going to be all right.

Any member of the LEAMIS team which served the Kisii region earlier this month would list transportation as the biggest challenge we faced during our trip. In fact, during debrief we were asked to list our top five team challenges, and we were tempted to write "transportation" for all five. Our teammates in Nairobi had transportation problems as well, but our cross-country jaunts trumped their problems getting from place to place within the city.

Last year's mission trip, all in and around Nairobi, was handled by a Nairobi-based travel agency, which provided vans and drivers. This year, except for our debrief at a safari camp, we relied on public transportation, largely on matatus -- the beaten-up public transportation vans seen throughout Kenya and recognizable by a yellow stripe down the side. Debra and Gail handled the transportation, with the help of our host pastors, and what was requested was seldom what was delivered.

Some of the literature we studied during our training for Kenya talked about the difference between a "monochronic" culture like the U.S. or Western Europe and a "polychronic" culture like Latin America or Africa. In a monochronic culture, punctuality is a virtue and 5 o'clock sharp means 5 o'clock sharp. Polychronic cultures aren't so simple, and you sometimes find yourself having to wait. The names aren't meant to say which culture is right or wrong, only that you must understand with which kind of culture you're dealing.

Gail and Debra had tried to prepare us for this, and certainly knew it themselves, but that didn't necessarily mean it was any less frustrating (for us or them) when it happened. We would order a 14-passenger matatu, with a luggage rack, at 2 p.m., and we would get a 10-passenger matatu, with no luggage rack, at 3:15. Then, there would be negotiations about what needed to be done to replace the too-small matatu with one large enough to handle our group.

Of course, part of the problem was our luggage.

"We have more luggage than they could even conceive," sighed Debra at one point.

LEAMIS always encourages trip participants to pack light, but between cottage industry supplies and clean clothes, that's not always easy to do.

When we visited Pastor Abel Onchari's church in Kegogi, a matatu was supposed to pick us up. It didn't, and we had to walk out to the main highway and a half a mile or a mile down the road to a place where there were a few stores and vendors, where Pastor Abel was able to flag down some transportation for us.

We had similar problems every time we traveled.

Even when we had a vehicle for our cross-country drives, the rough, washboard-rutted roads made our progress frustratingly slow. The real hero here was my teammate Shirley Upton. Shirley suffers from fibromyalgia, and some of those rides must have been excruciating for her. I say "must have been" because you'd never know by listening to her; she never complained to the group.

At one point, my half of the team was on its way back to Nairobi, having completed our week of work in Ndonyo. Some of the women asked about stopping the bus, but our matatu driver insisted that there were no towns or service stations nearby. We finally convinced the driver to stop along the roadside, where the women went off by themselves and -- well, frankly, I have no idea what they did. Jim Upton, Guy McDonald and I were staring intently out the other side of the bus.

Some of the women later said they preferred the roadside to some of the public toilets we'd encountered on our way to Kisii a week earlier.

TOMORROW: What to do with your extra wife