On Safari

Home!

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Home.  After an hour-forty-five minute drive to the Nairobi airport in rush hour traffic, after more than (?) 8 security checks in 3 airports, 20 hours in planes never built to transport bodies than need to move, 3 hours of sleep over 24 hours, nothing meant home more than that first embrace from my husband.  At that moment, this sleepless, brain-dead, zombie found her center.  If home were a place you only loved to be, then Kenya would meet that criteria.  If it were where you connected to skill sets in an affirming way, I would have stayed.  If it were where you could do good and make a difference, I would have a new address. But home is deeper and broader and less geographical than that. 

 

It is where you are known well enough so that the imbalances of new experiences and sensory overload and the clash between exhilaration and confusion can be sorted with wisdom and time.

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Kenya was a gathering assignment.  Home is a sorting time.  I conducted eleven formal interviews and more than that in informal settings. Home is where I will write through them, find the story line, share the lessons, and examine my initial perspectives.  Home is where I can leave the adrenaline rush and find the truths that I can live and hopefully will help others do the same. 

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While my Kenyan experiences were simple, I would not call them so Spartan that I am overwhelmed by the familiarity of home and its conveniences.  Though I fear the overcrowded grocery shelves may send me to my knees my first visit back.  However, it is the unexamined way I use what I have that I think I am rethinking.  Home is where I can test my lessons and keep the ones that make me who God wants me to be, for this time, for this generation, and for the culture I find myself in.

 

It is that gift that will be my best souvenir. My ebony elephant will join a small collection. I will frame my watercolor notecards.  I will wear my Masai sandals and learn how to make my new favorite drink. But the true gifts of this trip are the ones I use for my transformation.  What began at Africa Nazarene University must transform me or I cannot be used for transformation anywhere else. That is the gift my heart yearns to open.  And I must open it here, at home.

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Wednesday Morning Reflection

 

The sky clabbers,

hiding the sun for a few brief, cool moments.

It is an immense canopy this sky

that covers this far-reaching land.

I sit on the balcony looking toward the bouldered rift

Where baboons live.

I see two Kenyans begin their long walk to somewhere

Stick figures at the edge of this now-green land.

With hopes and fears I do not know.

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Birds I do not recognize

flit and tweet and whistle

And human voices come from across the rfit

But I do not understand the words.

Perhaps that is what I feel the most

on this last day before leaving.

I have seen so much

And understand so little.

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Look!

Two baboons, brown bobs

behind the green bushes

Is it breakfast the seek?

Or trouble?

They plod and gallop and move

beyond my sight quickly.

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There is a stillness here in this morning time

Broken only by bird complaint

Or maybe joy?

It is surround sound for my pondering soul.

It stills me,

Fills me.

These are my last day thoughts

And so I pray

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Gather me close, O Lord

As you did disciples

at your last supper.

Lift the cup of Thanksgiving

That I may drink

Share the bread of Heaven

That I may eat til I want no more

Of any unblessed gift

From your hand of plenty.

Help me know the full satisfaction

Of this sacrament called life

And bring others to

this bountiful buffet.

 

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Saturday Real Safari

 

Saturday was our real safari. We visited Nairobi National Park.  In a land rover with a pop-up top we explored the wild and saw amazing animals in  their habitat.

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One sight we will never forget.   A pride of lions, two mothers and their playful cups.

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Then, the mothers spotted breakfast.  What I saw prompted a piece about life and death. 

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They crouch

Bellies graze the ground

Stealth exudes

Each step calculated, focused, driven.

Breakfast waits

Unsuspecting

Oblivious to eminent death.

They are mothers on a mission

In tandem pursuit

They angle toward their prey

An African antelope, a hartebeest

Out for a morning graze.

The she-hunters move

When the moment is ripe.

Swift as air;

Deft as dawn;

And the hartebeest is is down

But not dead.

Death will come slowly.

The mothers call their babies to feed

For the one it is ecstasy;

For the other it is agony.

The gift of life robs.

It is the contrast of life on earth

And we always live in between

If not on the edges of this drama.

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Wednesday City Chapel

I was privileged to attend chapel for the city campus, a 45-minute, sometimes crazy drive into Nairobi. During chapel, the political protests were happening 8 floors down on the street.  Here's my reaction:

We Demonstrate

The Kenyan political demonstrations pick up their cry

with horns, voices, whistles

outside our window.

But on the 8th floor

At the ANU city campus

We demonstrate

In honors chapel.

We demonstrate

the gift of learning,

the hope of knowledge

and the potential of education.

And we protest anything or anyone who stands in our way!

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Sunday - Tuesday

After a 34 hour day-night-day travel marathon from Atlanta to Washington D.C. to Frankfurt to Nairobi, I arrived. We became our own human conveyor belt to stuff all our luggage on the ANU bus and somehow found room for the people, too!  Sleep was our welcomed reward.

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Though still jet-lagged today, I think I am more in sensory overload.  The stories, the passion, the new--all are the purest adrenaline rush I've ever had. 

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I am only collecting right now. I can't process. But what I know is that the story of Africa Nazarene University, its history, its students, its vision; is a story that convicts me with questions I don't know how to answer right now.

 

So the Safari begins!

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