Prepping for Africa

Our (Sue Rohricht and Greg Lockwood) trip, starts Thursday. We fly from Minnesota to Amsterdam. Landing there Friday morning with continuing flight to Nairobi after a short layover.

But this trip really isn't just starting, but just the next leg of a journey that's now into it's third year. The true trip started when a mutual friend of ours (Becky) asked me if I was willing to do a blind date with an old friend of hers(Sue). Couple of weeks, months later, our Journey began by my meeting her at her shop. Suka-Rama Boutique in the Park.

The unique name, Suka-Rama, goes further back into our reason for this current trip. Sue has made two prior trips to Kenya. She has visited the people we are going to see and gone from Africa to India where she got the nickname of Suka (Big Sister) from Shilpa and Shilpa's mother Prima. The Rama part comes from a resturant visit where Sue made up a fictitious husband's name using a very common Indian God's name.

How does all of this relate, well Shilpa is getting married. She and Shyam, her fiancé, are both born and raised in Africa, both of Indian decent, and both work in Minneapolis. They are celebrating their wedding in Nairobi and have asked us to join them.

Sue's been bugging me fo some time to get my passport, which I now have and am now ready to go. The first of our trips away from North America. Last year we did take a wonderful cruise up to the inside passage of Alaska, but passport wasn't required for that trip. Picture above was taken on that trip.

More later on our preparations.