Nakupenda

Well! It's been a while but I'm back! There are so many things to address but this blog is simply going to talk about my after-Kenya woes, so let's get to it!

As I had said before, Kenya was a place I'd only dreamed about. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would actually make it there, Incredible. And yet for some reason I was incredibly un-effected when I arrived there. Everything seemed so familiar, so comfortable, nothing really "spoke" to me. Which disappointed my quite honestly. All my anxiousness, and nerves seemed soo... trivial at this point. Kenya was beautiful, Kenya was fun, Kenya was different, but all the adjectives in the world wouldn't compare to the IDEA of what Kenya was. That being said, I LOVED EVERY STINKIN' MINUTE OF IT! 

Post-trip: What a wave of nostalgia  What an absolute disdain for my life and environment, what a freaking wake-up call!I didn't realize how much I was affected by Kenya until it was time to leave. Until we drove up to the street boys for the last time and I knew that the chances of us ever running into each other again were slim to none. All of it just resonated so powerfully in my mind of how many lives I can't touch, and how selfish it is and feels to be here, on campus when there is so much more out there. How upsetting! to sit at the lunch table with my friends and listen to their boy problems and their small life issues, for the first time I felt so far outside of my bubble that every day just felt like I was moving along the outside of a window, looking in. I hated that feeling. It's like being orphaned, having a family and just abruptly losing it, knowing they are carrying on without you somewhere to far to reach. I just wanted to go away for a while. Re-group, re-think about all of my decisions and why they suddenly are making me unhappy. I clung to my class group, to some extent we clung to each other. Each of us knowing suddenly, how out of place we felt on this juvenile campus. Having met people who struck as more mature than ourselves at younger ages. How does one cope with the idea that the place you have visited now feels more like home than home itself? I think that was the question we cried, laughed, and sighed over... in the end that's also what brought us so much closer.

That feeling has subsided slowly as I've assimilated back into campus culture, but it hasn't completely gone away. The work that we put into this class now has become a necessity  We no longer meet out of obligation, we meet because there is a part of everyone in this group that only we can understand. The things that we do, and the way that we feel, is a direct reflection of the impact of every person we met on our trip. Michael, Michael M., David, Amos, Cabro, Allan, Cetrick, Soccer Queens, Rachel, Roman, Tony, David, Simon, Ezekial, King Pin (Simon), Councilman Karanja, Peter, ... even as I list their names now I have the stark image of Michael Mungai sitting in the corner of Dagoretti Market, surrounded by familiar faces. He looks different than they do, but the feeling, the feeling in that moment is unmistakable. It's a welcome home that is bittersweet. It's everything you love and everything you've lost at the same time... the only way I can explain it. Our mission as a group has become less about the grade and more about our friends. The friends that we may or may not encounter again are the people we want to empower now, at this moment, in any way that we can. That's why we commit as much time and effort as we do, we now share the same dreams as they do.

So that's why the coming home transition felt like hell. One moment you're truly understanding what it means to live in every moment, and the next you're dropped back into your superficial lifestyle. For me personally? I had no one to turn to. Recently, I lost my closest friends due to unresolved differences and... I felt so alone in this. It was nice to be treated so nicely by the people we met in Kenya, and it was nice to witness/feel support from every angle. The moment we left was the first time within that week & change, that I remembered what it felt like to be alone, and of course I hated that as well. A part of me still feels like I belong somewhere, with the friends that I made and their memory of me. I hope at least, that they will always consider me (for however short our time was) a close friend. I am granted relief in every moment I get a FB post, or message from someone who hasn't forgotten me yet. And I look forward to meeting Andrew who is now living with a host family in Brooklyn and always has a lot to share with me about his culture, his past, and our friends. I don't know if this blog post conveyed my feelings accurately, but this was my stream of though when asked how I felt after the trip. It was all this, and more.