We had Scott P. over for dinner at our house last week. He is the AIM Air representative in the United States. He was very kind & enjoyable & we wore him out with questions.
1. AIM only assigns one spouse to the mission. They do this to leave opportunity for family. CJ would be pilot/mechanic full time & I would have the freedom to do as I wish. I am interested in doing aircraft maintenance in the AIM Air hangar part time & volunteering at an orphanage or maybe even the school Lifepoint is sponsoring in Nairobi. [I already talked to the Feed the Children Rep about this]
2. AIM Air has the ability to ship some of our belongings on a 20ft shared container to Africa. This totally changes our plans for our garage sale this Spring. I guess we will keep some things we really love & need.
3. Scott recommended we also ship a comfortable bed mattress, a small gas stove, a refrigerator, & a clothes dryer for the rainy season. I think we may take him up on the mattress & stove idea. Our mattress is a Full size hand me down from a friends-boyfriend’s spare room, if that tells you anything about the quality. I hope to get a new one & shipping it to Africa would make the money actually worth it in time.
4. We can take our dog Teco. He said missionaries take their dogs over all the time & we just need to be sure & get the correct shots for her. He said purebreds are particularly susceptible to the African diseases for some reason. Good thing Teco thinks she’s a mutt.
5. According to Scott, missionaries in Nairboi live in small concrete apartments/town homes owned or rented by the organization, sometimes near other AIM people, sometimes in the community. I hope to be in the community.
6. Scott pointed out that AIM Bush Pilots are not in any way ‘cowboys’ in the way they fly. He said it is imperative to be professional as well as sharp on skills & procedures. Their soft field strips are seriously dangerous if approached incorrectly.
7. Scott told us to get used to the idea of having bars on our windows & doors. That’s the way it’s going to be in Nairobi. From what I saw in 2007, he is right.
8. Learning Swahili now may be a good idea. Scott said we will have to relearn it when we get there because of the different dialects, but everyone appreciates effort put in by foreigners to learn their language. We will have to laugh at ourselves often.
9. I need to start collecting ‘from scratch’ recipes & cookbooks. I am going to have to cook everything the old fashioned way in Africa. At least we will eat healthy!
10. I am bringing my sewing machine. Every house looks better with curtains & pillows & they have some fantastic hand dyed fabric in Africa. Thanks mom for all those lessons when I was younger!
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