Three weeks after coming home...

I have managed to get myself back to work and can, amazingly, find the words in real time to express some of what the experience has brought me. I am sleeping better and no longer have nightmares. My physical strength and energy are returning. Being back at work I can allow myself several hours a day to be consumed by the needs of disabled children right here in my home town and thus, am marginally less haunted by the little ones in Kenya. They remain dear to me, however, and I won't ever forget them. The idea of returning is not out of my mind.

I am almost daily touched my emails from Julius and his responses to being back here after a month in Kenya. What an amazing man Julius is! The depth, complexity, intelligence, and compassion have been seldom matched in people I have known. I try to comprehend what a challenge it must be to have come to the US (for the love of an equally amazing woman) and maintain such a strong link to his family and friends on another continent. I know that it would have been impossibly difficult for me at that age...and would remain so at this age. I know he must often feel like he is literally being stretched between the two countries/continents.

I am looking forward to a Kenyan style lunch with Sarah, Julius, Jen, Bri, and Josie today. As Bri notes in her blog, it will be good to talk at length with people who have had a similar experience. We certainly have not made the same interpretation of Kenya, Nairobi, Humara, and the Missionaries of Charity in part because we each took such different experiences into it but it will be interesting to compare notes. And to have to explain less.