6/24/98: Last-minute errands, the pharmacy and some photos for Doug & Nancy E. Hard to leave after such a great experience…
NOTE: The photo above shows a photo of Joe Kadenge, a Kenyan soccer legend that we met upon our arrival in Nairobi.
6/24/23: Our time in Zimbabwe was such a great experience that we had a difficult time saying goodbye, and we still miss the people and the country. Yet looking back twenty-five years later, we also know that we had similar positive experience in all the other countries we visited and all the other missionaries with whom we had the pleasure to work. Our next stop in Kenya was no exception.
We arrived safely in Nairobi and were met by the driver that our hosts had sent to pick us up. This expected connection had an unexpected twist: the driver turned out to be a retired Kenyan sports hero! Joe Kadenge (1935–2019) was a soccer star in Kenya, playing as a striker from 1957–1970 and coaching from 1975–1980. People called him “the Kenyan Pele” because of his incredible skill in dribbling up the pitch. In this interview Joe recounts the story of his legendary 1958 goal against Uganda National Team, in which he dribbled past 6 players and scored against the goalie. For all that, he was a humble and generous man who didn’t actually brag about himself at all. We only learned about his fame and history after the fact, when we met with the missionaries for whom he then occasionally worked as a driver in his later years. On our drive from the airport to the guesthouse, Joe simply and cheerfully pointed out several points of interest in and around Nairobi.
He dropped us off at the missionary guesthouse where we met the hosts, Stan and Martha B. They were missionaries with SIM, a mission agency founded in 1893 as “Sudan Interior Mission,” but now the agency has ministry works that span the globe, so they simply stick with the acronym. After settling in to a very cozy little guest cottage, they invited us to eat dinner with them, and we had a very pleasant time getting to know them. When they had us sign their guest book, I browsed the names, and it turns out we knew some of the same people! The B’s had worked in radio ministry in Nigeria before coming to Kenya and had worked closely with Dr. William Ardill, who wrote a powerful autobiography about his experiences as a missionary during the civil war in Liberia, called: “Where Elephants Fight.” I knew Dr. Ardill’s wife, Dorothy, from my years at Moody Bible Institute. This was not the last time that unexpected connections would pop up for us on our trip.