18 October 2009

Home, Home on the Range

Three weeks. 7 countries. 9 airports. And countless bus stations. After all this, I have to say that I’m a little exhausted. But I’m also extremely lucky. Many people don’t even get to see more than the country they are born in.

I finished up my work in Uganda, and then headed to Kenya for a week’s vacation with my Welsh buddy Tred. We passed through Obama’s father’s home area, saw Mount Kilimanjaro, stood at the site of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, and biked around zebras and giraffes at Hell’s Gate National Park. We even spent my birthday with a swim in the warm Indian Ocean near the port city of Mombasa before feasting at the Carnivore restaurant-a restaurant where they serve you unlimited amounts of all kinds of meat until you are stuffed. We ate for 4 hours!

After that, I took a long bus trip back to Uganda before boarding a plane to travel to Burkina to visit the village I used to live in. This Kenya --> Burkina trip took 5 days and required me to sleep in 5 different countries on 5 consecutive nights!

The continent of Africa is an amazing, vast area, of 52 very different countries. In fact, my flight from Uganda (in East Africa) to Mali (in West Africa, right beside Burkina Faso), is just as long as a trans-Atlantic flight from Europe to the States! My time spent in Uganda was wonderful, but very different than my time in Burkina.

As I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac in Bamako, the capital of Mali, the post-rain humidity surrounded me as the familiar smell of nearby cook fires and dust filled my nostrils. I was home again. As I made my way through customs and out into a taxi, the familiar sounds of the sing-song rhythm of the Jula language began to fill my ears. And once again, English slipped out of my mind as French instantly crept in. It was as if I had not spent 10 months away from this beautiful area of the world.

While in Uganda, I met some wonderful people, and learned and saw some amazing things. But I always felt like an outsider. Maybe it was because I never fully settled in one place. Maybe it was just because deep down I know that nowhere will live up to my wonderful time living in Burkina Faso.

I boarded a bus to take me back to Burkina, a trip that would take me into the following morning. As we drove along, we passed the familiar shea and mango trees, the bright green a stark contrast to the red clay they stuck out of. We passed the familiar mud huts with thatched roofs. And the familiar dry, flat landscape that follows for miles.

As we made it to the border town the following day, the policeman who was checking my passport remembered me. I remembered him too. The last time I passed through this border, he made me profess my love for Obama before allowing me to pass through.

I finally made it the town where my friends Zoom and Lassina were going to meet me with motorbikes to take me to the village. I got off the bus, and waited at the bus station. After a few minutes, the bright smile of my best friend Zoom arrived with a shiny new motorbike—his uncle’s.

After a while of catching up, we loaded up the motorbikes and headed for the village. It was so nice to be warm again! Uganda was comfortable, but chilly at times, and I (much to my mother’s dismay) love hot weather. My pores were crying out in joy at finally being able to work again!

After just over an hour (or 2 hours on a bicycle, something I all too well know), we made it back to the village. We started saying hi to everyone. It was so nice to be back, and it honestly was as if I’d never left. Sure, kids had grown some (too much if you ask me), and a few buildings here and there had changed, but the feeling was the same. The general attitude and character of the village hadn’t changed a bit.

I was so humbled at the welcome the village had given me. Just in the first afternoon, I had more visitors than I did during my Christmas visit to America last year. I quickly remembered why I loved this place so much. They make me feel like I am the most important person in their lives. I’m still trying to learn to love others with this same sense of urgency.

The only person who didn’t extend a warm welcome was Payjay, Zoom’s son, and my godson. He remembered me, and my voice, as we spoke several times on the phone in the 10 months I’d been gone. But he just happened to forget in his 2 year old little mind that I was white. So the sight of me scared him to death. He also was just getting over a bad cold, which as you know can make any youngster cranky. So it took us a few days before we were able to bond again.

As I sat there, in the warm West African sun, I realized that I was a very lucky individual. Where I was sitting had, in the two years I lived there, become home. Being back felt just like coming home, as much as coming back home to America. This may sound very strange, but it’s amazingly true.

I feel very young, as if I’m still a child in many ways. But I have been very fortunate in my short life to have experienced so much. I have lived in some very wonderful places, and met some really incredible people. I’ve made a lot of mistakes—learned from some, not from others.

When I left that beautiful mango-filled village last year, I walked away a changed man. The village had made an incredible impact on my life, and the people really had a profound impact on me. Never did I realize the difference that God had made in many of their lives through me. I was humbled to see this. A woman’s group I started as an enterprise group has now grown to over 50 women, all who have now received small loans to start small business ventures (no small task in corrupt governments). The theater group I helped form have continued to perform, and are getting requests from various villages to perform there. They even just recently received a large cash prize from the local health district!

Leaving this time was hard again, as I assume it always will be, no matter how many times I go back. Seeing Payjay’s confused face at why I have to leave will always be painful. And so will all the goodbyes with my loved ones in the village. They have opened themselves up to a relationship with someone far different from themselves, and risked loving me. I think we as Americans often think of all the help that we can provide the impoverished around the world. Sometimes, though, I think it is us that need the help. They may not have much, but they know how to love.

It is amazing to me, still, that God could take some little guy from Kentucky, and use him in a far away village.

That is why, now, looking back, I feel so incredibly lucky. Many people often ask me how I do the kind of work I do, as if it is a sacrifice. Truth is, I don’t know how I couldn’t do it. I’m incredibly blessed to be able to work with the people that I do. For me, it would be a sacrifice not to do it. I have experienced so much in my short life, and can only imagine what God has planned for me for the future.

As I sit here, in Elizabethtown, KY, it is 40 degrees outside. I don’t know how much longer I can endure these frigid temperatures, but I am going to enjoy the time with my family as I look for the next adventure I can find myself in.

In the next email, I’ll tell you a little bit more about my time in Kenya.