Rainbolt Travel Diary

We will never forget that Friday in early June when the bell on the AIS Campus rang for the final time that school year. As cheers from happy children freed for the summer mingled with the tears of those who were moving to new places, the Rainbolt’s became homeless. A huge list of renovations, along with the fact that no sane person stays in Lagos for the summer forced them out of the cozy comfort of historic Flat 6. Bravely the Rainbolt Family would face the long, hot months of summer with little more than five suitcases and a very long plane ticket.
As always, our wandering began at the Lagos Airport. This time the customs agents took no interest in our bags, probably because we only had shirts, shorts, and underwear in the bags. No wrapped Christmas gifts or beads this time, so the suitcases were much less interesting. This did not mean our time at the airport was trouble free. We had a slight problem with getting on the right plane to Cape Town, South Africa. Now really how hard could that be? You look at the boarding pass, walk to the gate and get on the plane, but when we looked at our boarding pass it said Gate 14, and the airport monitors said the flight would leave from Gate 17. When we got to the gate, there was no plane at Gate 17 and the plane at Gate 14 was a South African Airline flight but it was headed to Frankfurt, Germany. I asked at about the flight waiting at Gate 15, and was told that it might be headed to Cape Town but nobody was sure where or when…the best available answer was “maybe.” We found our flight at Gate 16 and were soon on board and hoping that our luggage had an easier time finding the plane than we did. Eight hours later, we were racing through the Johannesburg airport to catch a quick flight to Cape Town.
Our luggage arrived safely in Cape Town but it really was pretty useless thanks to geography. (I will now interrupt this blog for a short geography lesson. The 8-hour flight from Lagos was in a southern direction. In the course of the flight, we crossed the equator. Cool! When you cross the equator, you also change seasons. Summer had become winter. Cold!) We shivered in the airport, we shivered in the cab on the way into town, and we shivered as we walked into our waterfront condo. We shivered in the condo, but it was shivers of excitement because the place was amazing. We had electricity! We had cable TV! We had a shopping mall within walking distance! Gina had wineries! Maybe being homeless wasn’t so bad!
Cape Town kept us busy for a full week. We spent a day just walking around the waterfront area because we had just spent three months in a limited walk around area. From the top of Table Mountain, we could see all of Cape Town, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the end of Africa. The week featured fine dining, penguin encounters, and rental car. Our photo album now contains a picture of the four us standing behind the Cape of Good Hope sign. Our memory book includes the sound of a baboon screaming as it pursued a bag chips across the parking lot and attempted to climb the man who owned the bag of chips. On a more somber side of things, we toured Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. It was an incredibly moving and humbling experience. We also toured one of the townships where 500 people shared eight toilets, and once again, what should be discouraging and impossible reminds you how amazingly optimistic people can be during challenging circumstances. Even in our short walk through the township, we could sense the spirit of community there. It was a place where people weren’t waiting for someone to help them make their life better. They were taking matters into their own hands.
When I was in elementary school Sunday night meant three things: a bath, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Wild Kingdom. Thirty-four years later, it wasn’t going to be Wild Kingdom on TV, we were going to live it. It started as we left the Nairobi Airport, Simon our guide told us to look out the passenger window at the giraffes. Giraffes walking next to the runway. We had only been in Kenya for 40 minutes and we were seeing wild animals. It was only the beginning. For the next 10 days, we got up close to elephants, cape buffalos, wildebeests, lions, cheetahs, leopards, warthogs, gazelles, rhinos, and hippos.
The camera got a workout as we snapped picture after picture of elephants so close we could count the wrinkles around their eyes, of a lion so close that we could hear the bones crunch as she tore into a wildebeest that she had just brought down, and a rhino and her baby so close that we felt like we were too close.



Probably the best thing about the trip was that we shared it with Lynn, Scott, and Sean. We have had such a wonderful experience, and I have tried to explain what Africa is like, but it this place is beyond description. To watch Lynn and Scott shake their head’s in amazement as we passed women who were carrying huge plastic bins filled with soda’s on their heads. We marveled at the sense of capitalism alive in Kenya where on a road in the middle of nowhere a guy was selling two roasted ears of corn. I could never describe accurately the trauma of using a pit toilet for the first time, but at least Lynn and Scott understand it.


The best example of African life was or Kenyan pit stop to fix a leaky radiator. We had stopped at a cash machine to reload our wallets after a serious encounter with a Masi Mara craft market. While Scott and I battled with the ATM, a passerby pointed out to our guide, James, that there was water under the safari van. We loaded up and went to have a mechanic look at it because we still had four or five hours of driving ahead of us. We pulled into a vacant dirt lot between two rusting hulks that at one time might have been buses. Before James was even out of the car at least five guys appeared from out of nowhere and each made a wrench, or a hammer, or a screwdriver appear from the some hidden pocket. Twenty-three seconds later the front seat was out of the van the floor boards were removed from under Gina’s seat and a new radiator cap was installed. In that 23 seconds Lynn had pulled out her camera and the 5 guys turned into 25 guys. As both she and Gina snapped pictures the group grew at the rate 10 guys per picture. When the Polaroid camera appeared we were completely surrounded. Lynn burned through the instant film and we made it back into the van and started to leave but the passenger door would not close. Once again the tools came out and the door was dismantled and put back together in less than 18 seconds with at least 150 people cheering them on. Oh, yes Africa always has a story to tell.
After 9 days of lions, wildebeests, zebras, and elephants we need a to get the dust out of our clothes, hair, and throats so we headed to the beach. We spent three nights lounging around the pool and beach at a resort on the Indian Ocean. Then it was back to Nairobi for a day of seeing baby elephants and giraffe kisses. Finally, it was a long night flight back to Amsterdam and home to Tacoma for a few weeks of intensive visiting with family and quality time at the mall and other shopping stops.