Thoughts on leaving...

As we get ready to go back to the states this week it is occurring to me that while I am at peace with the need to do so, that I have only had a small sampling of what I feel I've waited 33 years to do. While I'm not sure how, when, or where I will be working in this capacity again, I know I will. Something refreshing about the ability to provide hope and opportunities to people who already possess a strength, determination, and will to survive that far surpasses most of us in the western world, and the gifts I have received in the forms of human interaction and connectedness far beyond anything I have ever experienced has hooked me. My conversations with Beatrice and Naomi over stirring steaming pots has given me more insight than any worldly travel experience could provide. I would trade every opportunity for 5 star vacations, beautiful beaches in Lamu, Jamaica, Mexico and Hawaii to sit in the kitchen stirring a pot of Mokimo, singing along to loud crackly African music, while looking out over thousands of miles of rolling jungle and tea fields listening to the insight and questions about our modernized culture from those who possess so little in material wealth but so much in heart. While the curious queries come across rather blunt in nature with the limited English, they are humorously to the point without all the BS that usually glosses conversations. One thing that comes to mind is a simple statement from Beatrice the other day in which she said...it seems like you Americans have more money, more worries and we have less money but less problems....She almost said it as if she might be saying something WAY from left field. Ha! As I listen to her singing to the radio in the kitchen as she does the same thing day in and day out and laughing a laugh that you can hear for a mile at least 5 times a day, it occurs to me that she is exactly right. I bet if I asked an American the last time they laughed until they cried it wouldn't be at least once a day and probably not once a month. Naomi asked me one day if I thought that maybe Americans get so many divorces because they have lost contact with their 'tribes' and especially that the women don't seem to have the women in their families to help and support on a daily basis. When I told her that it is more common for the women to "visit" their mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins, etc., on holidays rather than spending every day gathering food, taking tea, washing clothes, and raising children together, she was sadened by the prospect that the majority of family support that we have is from our husbands! :))) hee. I tried multiple ways to explain that American husbands are different from African husbands in that they help with the children, wash clothes, clean, talk to the women when they are upset and even when they cry! (They both think it's ridiculous how much american women cry and swear they would be "sent away" back to their families for acting like that). I told her that American men even attend the births of their children. That was it....she looked at me wrinkled her nose and looked at me like I had just grown 2 heads and said....'well I would get tired of him then and get a divorce too...but until then I would cry every 2 days to make sure that he did my housework!' I started laughing so hard that I almost fell off my stool at this surprisingly accurate analysis of the 'games' that are played in our culture that aren't even an option here where survival fills 95% of the brain and taking tea with your friends and family fills the other 5% :)). By the way, taking tea is very serious business. It's served sweet, milky, and scaldingly hot! If you are asked to take tea or invited later to take tea it is not a "maybe" kind of thing. There is no such thing as a day to busy or a brain to stressed to stop and take tea with your neighbor. We have been in the middle of a long day, 3 matatu rides, carrying about 100 pounds in goods (the trips are like costco bulk buying without a costco cart or car to load it all into!) and almost home when we have run into a neigbor and were asked to 'take tea'. It took about 3 invitations to figure out that saying that you are busy, tired, almost home, blah blah blah, is a ridiculous answer when obviously sitting and taking tea with would alleviate all of those things-in their mind. Why would we continue to rush and hurry and stress if we are already rushed and hurried and stressed!?!? We have also been on the invititing end of this when we had passed through a neighbors property on the way to town and asked her if, when we returned from town she would like to have tea. She said yes, and upon returning 4 hours later, while descending the trail into the valley we spotted her a good 1/4 mile and about 700 vertical feet below her house barefoot and strenuously planting everything she could since the "rains had just come" and this was the one and only time for success for this round of crops. Instead of being rushed, stressed, or aware of the fact that she had 3 more daylight hours, 300 more vertical feet to plant and 4 hours had passed since we had last seen her, she stood up and waved to us with a beaming smile and began to head back up the 700 feet to her house as we, in our westerized way begin to apologize for the long delay and tell her that if she is too busy or in the middle of.....blah blah...she just wagged her hand in front of us, smiled and headed up the trail-all 60 years of her barefoot and moving faster than my specialized "hiking" boots could carry me. :)) The logic is so simple yet so lost on our busy, anxiety ridden westernized minds that we hadn't even thought that stopping and going through the ritual of taking tea, talking mindlessly and enjoying the moment might leave us relaxed and even refreshed when we left and picked up our heavy sacks to continue the journey home. Of course it did and that's when I started to feel the change. The change in accepting that when the transport breaks down 2 hours from your destination and you are carrying piles of goods wrapped in twine that you patiently pick your stuff up and even pay the driver half (for half of the journey completed!?!?)...grateful that he got you this far as he points off into the horizon in the direction you should start walking along with the other 9 people that were crammed into the 4 door sedan. I could only imagine in America how this scene would have played out. The change in accepting that time and agendas are relative and pointless and that relationships are the cornerstones to success. The change in realizing that interactions are meaningles and shallow when they are filled with people's projections and agendas rather than authentic interest and support. On this note, when we were at the Mayfield hotel in Nairobi last week for 2 nights, I found myself almost suffocated by western missionaries and tourists and the conciously or unconciously agenda driven, projection littered, probing conversations that seemed to dominate each family style mealtime. I wasn't even aware of what exactly the feelings were until a guy named Thomas arrived with his parents, a Kenyan family, visiting from Nakuru(??), a town a few hours away. Suddenly, the sparkling eyes, and jovial laughs returned to our table and conversation was ignitied out of genuine interest rather the need to exhange pleasantries, war stories, and individual goals. In fact, the term "individual" as far as success, happiness, goals, and anything that we hope to attain as individuals is almost laughable here in a culture where the individual would never succeed without the whole. Isn't it interesting that this is the way every creature on earth operates- plant, animal, and human except those of us from the western world? I know that this interconnectedness is what makes sense to me now that I have had the opportunity to be part of it. Not interconnectedness out of principle, religion, common goals and interests or personal need but because there is absolutely no other way to survive with a full heart and spirit and it would be unthinkable to do otherwise. As I get ready to leave I'm refusing to take souveneirs and momentos, as it seems that these items imply a finality that I know is not the case. Instead I am treating it like a quick goodbye and "see you soon" situation becasue I know I will, in one way or another and will just wait for the chance to arrive.

"It may seem absurd to believe that a 'primitive' culture has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned" -Helena Norberg-Hodge