Headed Home, Alone

I closed my 2010 East Africa blog with this same quote. And it’s not that I lack creativity (although I probably do) it’s just that I’ve never found another writer who has so accurately, and succinctly, described exactly what I feel on the cusp of every returning home moment.



“I have watched the sun set, shrunken and mean, over a cold, drab [Seattle] street and stood outside a mud hut next morning on a Kenyan hillside and seen it rise in glory over the East African plains.

Africa is close.

Yet, few go there. Africa has a reputation: poverty, disease, war. But when outsiders do go they are often surprised by Africa's welcome, entranced rather than frightened. Visitors are welcomed and cared for in Africa. If you go you will find most Africans friendly, gentle and infinitely polite. You will frequently be humbled by African generosity. Africans meet, greet and talk, look you in the eye and empathize, hold hands and embrace, share and accept from others without twitchy self-consciousness. All these things are as natural as music in Africa.


Westerners arriving in Africa for the first time are always struck by its beauty and size--even the sky seems higher. And they often find themselves suddenly cracked open. They lose inhibitions, feel more alive, more themselves, and they begin to understand why, until then, they have only half lived.


In Africa the essentials of existence--light, earth, water, food, family, love, sickness, death--are more immediate, more intense. Visitors suddenly realize what life is for. To risk a huge generalization: amid our wasteful wealth and time-pressed lives we have lost human values that still abound in Africa."

From: Africa: Altered States; Ordinary Miracles
by Richard Dowden


Kristin is in Kijabe with Mama Chiku and her family. To follow her further adventures, click on the link on the right sidebar of my blog, ‘Hakuna Matata!’

Please understand that Mama Chiku is more motherly than I ever was or ever will be. Kristin will be in very capable hands. And know that Kim, Mama Chiku's son, has vowed to take very good care of Kristin.


I’m thankful for the privilege of having traveled with my daughter. I would ask all of you, in whatever way you do it—on a mountain in a snowstorm, on a lake in the early morning, driving in your car on a busy freeway—to remember Kristin in your prayers. Yes, she will be the same person when she returns that she was when she left. But she will be that person in a completely different context, and she will never think of herself in quite the same way, ever again.


I know.

P.S.
I will be posting one last entry after I arrive home. I attended Nairobi Chapel this morning with Gideon and Mwix and I have to tell you that if you ever wanted a down and dirty review of post-colonial East Africa, Pastor Oscar is your man. Please take the time to listen. It will make even you want to be a Kenyan.

Photos: Kijabe woman; sunset in Tsavo; kids dancing, Siyiapei; Kristin and Mama Chiku's family; Mama Chiku; Kristin and Kim; Kristin and Pauline.