Four Months – Already

I am down to only 24 days left for in trip to Kenya. There are a million loose ends to tie up, funds to be withdrawn and to be assigned, people to meet with and get organized to continue things while I am gone. As much as I am happy to come home and visit, it is a difficult goodbye. I am never really sure if this will be my last trip to Kenya for a while. When I talk to my friends about leaving or about my feelings toward them, I can feel tears right at the surface – even now as I write this. The folks here have come to rely on me for some income or food or advice and direction. I rely on them as friends and as guides to navigate through this culture and this sometimes frightening life in Nairobi. I also rely on them to teach me about what matters most.
The reason I return home is to check on my mom and family, to raise some money for future projects and to get some rest and decent food. I would come home more often if the flights were not so expensive. I also have to stay overnight in London to get the next day’s flight – and that is always pricey.
When the Kenyans realize my time here is running short, my phone begins to ring. Some think that I barely got here and that I did not spend enough time with them – like my good friends Pascal, or George and some of the other Kenyans. There is no good reason for our lack of contact. It just didn’t happen much. So I am sure to get calls from them and we must get together one more time.
Then there are others, for example, the “retired” Chief of Athi River, who recently got his “priest papers” and tries to call me for food and money for whatever. Maybe it was a correspondence course or something, but he swears he is now a Catholic priest. I am not sure if he has told his wife. He was informed that I helped with the construction of a Maasai church and now he calls wanting money to build his own church. He is quite a character. I don’t answer his calls. There are also the calls that come from the high school students at Nyumbani Village. They have a mid-term break coming and will want me to come to visit in Kitui one last time before I fly. It is doubtful that I’ll make it out to Kitui again this trip.
I had wanted to do a little traveling. Not big safaris but small trips – maybe to Kilimanjaro by bus or to the escarpment at Kajiado to camp out with the lions and the Maasai – It never happened. I didn’t chicken out – the Maasai did. They said there is too much grass to sleep outside. The lions will get you. I also wanted to go to Nakuru to see George’s parents and to Turkana to see Benson’s mom and the two kids we support with school fees. These kids had never gone to school before. Benson’s mom is fading fast, having epileptic seizures nightly and her vision is almost gone. And they are all quite literally starving to death. There is no money, no help from anywhere. No help for a doctor or medication. We help all we can but it is not enough for all the people there who need it. They just die. Older people are left to starve. If there is a little food, it goes to those with most possibility for survival. So the old just sit and wait, wishing to die. You see it all over as we walked Turkana. Sometimes blindness comes first, then death. Anyway, next trip I’ll return to Turkana – maybe with a plan or some hope for the older people.
The Kamba widows in Ngelani know that I am preparing to leave. They said “goodbye” with a reminder that they too are hungry. They have planted but the crops are not yet in. We deliver more maize flour for them, their children and grandchildren on Tuesday.
And so you can see that I am tremendously torn. I want to go home and need to go home but my life has been diverted to Africa. To leave here is like leaving home. I’ll worry. I’ll cry. I’ll return. But the question always asked of me is “when?”