Diary entry Number 2

We said our final farewell to family members, My eldest daughter Zahra was very emotional, well, we all were. My little one, Tasfiyya, who is very attached to me, happened to fall asleep a few minutes before we greeted, which was a good thing, 'cause she would have cried for days non- stop had she seen me leave.  I greeted my Mother, Father, Wife, Kids, Mother In Law and brother In law and waved South Africa goodbye.

 

In the Departure Lounge, I met up with Muhamed Patel and his wife, who were part of the Springs group. And I was to learn a valuable lesson on comfort and luxury from him. We decided to make wudhu  before departing, and the issue of the toilet came up. He advised me to use the low toilet, even though a high toilet was available. When I enquired to the Hikmah behind this request, he said to me that if you can struggle it out abit when comfort is available, you expand your "circle of comfort" so when you are in a tough situation you can overcome it, and when you are not, you appreciate the luxuries a little more. Grow your circle of comfort. Thanks Dr Patel, lesson duly noted and appreciated!

The 1st leg of the journey was easy, shukr. It is in this leg of the journey that I got acquainted with an individual who would become one of my closest friends on the trip and one I jokingly refer to as my bodyguard- Brother Isfahan Ismail of Witbank. He had a wicked sense of humour and would say things to scare some of the passengers,making statements like " Check the wing of the plane, its wobbling".

 

I immediately knew that this brother would keep me going and we struck up a friendship immediately. Our First stop on the journey took us to Nairobi,Kenya. All the older members of the convoy spoke of how Nairobi had been in the old days… Seems that not much had changed in 20 years!