Dear blog friends and family,
O boy. I fully acknowledge that the blog is fizzling. While I should have spent the past two weeks completing a riveting travel writing series on my most recent adventures in Tsavo East, Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Nairobi and Nakuru, my heart has been poignantly in meditation about this country and the community which I have been serving for nearly 6 months as I approach my departure date.
It was a striking moment for me this evening at dinner. We were watching a program called “Hatua,” a talk show of sorts addressing current issues in Kenya. Tonight’s program was focused on the question, “What makes us Kenyan?” No answer. The host proposed a second question: “Why do Kenyans consistently use the term ‘my people’ and not refer to the whole of this country in that context? Why are nepotism and tribalism before patriotism and humanism?” No conclusive response, no surprise to me based on conversations I’ve muddled through perplexed with new friends here, exit Tiffany to join the bed bugs {literally, I’m pretty sure they’re back}.
Stick with me here…
I must give a shout out to Mr. Andrew Dodd for sending along a care package at the beginning of August containing a book that was personal to him and to which I initially had difficulty relating. And then tonight post-dinner I made it to Chapter Nine: Widening the Circles of Compassion. And then so much of my recent frustrations here in Nakuru made sense. My problems are not solved and I cannot say that I have opened my heart to my foes, but it makes sense now.
Would it not be such an incredibly better world if we all lived as if everyone is
real, that we look upon
no one as irrelevant? If everyone, including the postman, a distant relative, the spouse of a friend, a clerk at the grocery store or the many in conflict-ridden and devastatingly poor places on this globe, is a human with wants and fears?
Our human capacity to look away from the realness and the suffering of ‘others’ has horrendous consequences.
I cannot claim to be Kenyan by any means. I fully admit to not knowing enough about the history of this young country or of this entire continent for that matter. I question if I am qualified to make these remarks—I grew up in a largely free and prosperous country, with a considerably high level of comfort that many people here may never attain.
It just makes me ill and deeply saddened to witness so many showing so little compassion for their own.
I expect backlash will ensue.
Signing off for the night, travelogues in the works…
tnick
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