Good Samaritan

I have another Good Samaritan story. Well, I don’t know if you could really call it that, but we were at the right place at the right time. First, a little background. The last few days have been really tough at school. I have been extremely frustrated and felt I need to spend every single minute studying. However, we needed to purchase some more time for our internet connections, plus John was having trouble with his modem, so he needed to go to the Safaricom store. So, on Wednesday he and Mary walked to the shopping center to take care of that. I stayed here and went outside to study in a beautiful garden.

I had been working for quite some time when an older Sister came by and stopped to chat. We had a nice visit. I learned that Sister Elizabeth was originally from Scotland and had been a teacher for over 60 years. She taught everything from the primary level to university. Eight of those years were in Michigan. I thought it was interesting that things hadn’t changed much over the years. She left the United States in 1965. While there she was a principal of a school. I gather that it must have been a new school that had just opened. She talked about how PTA meetings were the bane of her existence during that time. Always parents were complaining about teachers, wanting to make excuses and special allowances for their children.

I had been watching for her since then, but haven’t seen her since. Today is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Consolata Sisters. At the conclusion of Mass this morning the priest told us that whenever we saw a Sister over the next few days we needed to wish them a happy anniversary.

We get out of class at 1:00 on Fridays. It’s great because it gives us a chance to take care of business things and have a little more time to explore the city. Since we will be traveling to Kitale in two weeks, we needed to purchase bus tickets. (There is no such thing as making reservations or paying via internet here!) After eating lunch and resting a little, we headed out.

We had only gotten about a block away from the hostel when we saw Sister Elizabeth walking towards us with another woman. Of course we greeted and offered her congratulations. The other woman explained that she had just been on a bus with Sister Elizabeth. The bus stopped several blocks away from the usual drop off spot and Sister was disoriented and confused. This woman was on her way back to work and asked if we could escort Sister home. Of course, we were glad to. It was midafternoon and Sister was flushed so Mary asked her if she needed a drink of water. Her reply was “I really need a drink of whisky! You know I’m Scottish!”

There were two extremely busy streets to cross. Pedestrians don’t have the right-of-way here. It is dangerous to cross streets. (I have almost been hit three times walking to school and those aren’t busy streets.) Once we crossed the streets she saw a large billboard and recognized where she was and insisted that she could make it on home by herself. Just think of what might have happened if I hadn’t chatted with her a couple of days earlier, recognized her or had been a few minutes earlier or later.

On a totally different note: As we were walking home through Uhuru Park we heard music. Since we weren’t in any hurry, we decided to go investigate. Richard Roberts, son of Oral Roberts, is here for a healing crusade for the next three days. We had seen banners around town but hadn’t realized that it was going to be so close to us. In fact, I can hear music coming from there as I write.