Putting one foot in front of the other

When my daughter died I spent a lot of days just putting one foot in front of the other, breathing in and breathing out. I can't honestly compare my feelings now to my feelings then but I do feel that right now I'm just having to put one foot in front of the other and breathe in and breathe out. And when I think about that I think about Sarah, who is feeling both physically ill and emotionally vulnerable right now. I think about how she is doing her best to keep putting one foot in front of the other, breathing in and breathing out, trying to strong for Julius and the baby inside her. It must be very hard.

I just spent a lovely evening with Sarah, Josie, their parents (Connie and Terry) and one of thier friends. We ate spagetti and drank wine and talked and ate strawberry rhubarb pie and drank coffee and talked. We talked about our faith that humans are basically good and want to do the right thing. Unfortunately anger and resentment too often get in the way and people behave in ways that are horrendously counterproductive. But we have all had the opportunity, out of this tragedy, to see people behaving in very positive ways.

I have been having the very interesting experience of asking people for money. I have learned over the past week just to walk up to people and boldly ask them to give me money to help the Were family to safety. If I find myself hesitating I just say to myself "What's the worst thing that can happen?" I realize that the worst thing that can happen is that they can say "No." But I am no worse off...and my envelope of money I am collecting is no smaller...than before I asked. One of the joys is that a number of people who have given me money...from $5 to $200...have thanked me for giving them a way to help. They appreciate having the opportunity to do something other than wring their hands and feel sorry. One friend, who is having lots of physical health problems right now, told me the appreciated the opportunity to put things in perspective. God bless them all. It has been a blessing to me to be able to feel like I am actually doing something.

But I don't want to overlook the help that comes from those who don't have the financial resources to give money but who have prayed for my friends. People who are friends of friends have been on their knees praying daily for this dire situation to settle down and for my friends to be safe. Friends of friends praying for friends of friends. Wow! It really is incredible. But actually, I think the "personalization" of this crisis that has caused people who know Andy who knows me who knows Emmanuel and Juliana to actually pay close attention to events that they might have barely noticed in passing. It has caused people in Arkansas who know Susanne and Betty who know me who knows the Were children to pray in a personal way for people they would never have even known to think about before. I believe that is the way the world will eventually come closer together. We will become real humans to one another...not just televised images. And maybe that will help to lessen man's inhumanity to man.

The situation in Kenya only worsens

Just when I think it can't get any worse.....

Last night Sarah called to tell me that they had received word that Julius's brother, Melitus, has been murdered in Nairobi. He had recently been elected to Parliment (equavalent to a US Congressman) and, although the government declares that they don't know the motive, I can't believe that the killing was not politically motivated.

My biggest concern right now is for the safety of his family, who are friends of mine. Julius will go to Nairobi to help make arrangements not only for the funeral but also to find secure living arrangements for siblings Emmanuel and Juliana and Emmanuel's three children. I can't imagine that if people were willing to shoot Melitus is cold blood that they might not also target his family. Emmanuel has already be subjected to robbery, jail, and plice beating.

I have decided not to return to Nairobi next summer. I believe that my money is better spent helping Julius and his family. Perhaps I can go again the next year, if and when things have settled down there. Now I need to help in other ways. My prayers go up every day but sometimes I am skeptical as to whether it makes any difference. I know, in my heart, that it does but I've been praying every day and many people I know have been praying everyday and things just seem to get worse.

I'm just being pessimistic, I know. Prayer works. Emmanuel is alive. The children are safe. God works in mysterious ways and he doesn't always give me exactly what I ask for. God knows what is in my heart and I can only pray that His will be done. But, Damn! I sure want what I want. And I want Julius to be safe while he is in country and that he is able to find a way to get Emmanuel, the children, and Juliana to safe haven.

The New Year and the Trouble in Kenya

I am deeply troubled by what is happening in Kenya today. I know that ordinary Kenyans like my friends Emmanuel, Kym, Kwame, Nelson, Gloria, Angela, Grace, Margaret, Salim, Helen, Gordon, and Pamela want nothing more than to be safe in their homes and on the streets. They want peace.

I'm sure that powerful politicians have exploited this business of tribal rivalries to concentrate their own power and/or to gain power. The people that I know don't care if their neighbor is Luo or Kukuyu or Louya (I know I'm not spelling some of this right). They care if their neighbor is a good and decent person.

I have depended on what I hear from Julius and Sarah to know what is going on with Julius's family and our friends. I have not called because I don't want to have my friends waste their precious cell phone energy on reassuring me. Julius tells us that the members of his family and his closest friends are safe. I don't know about the good women from the autism unit. I am concerned about workers at Villa Teag. The sisters and the children and the old dears at Missionaries of Charity should be safe in their "fortress."

Had I not gone to Kenya with Soulfari Kenya last summer this would have meant little to me. I would have been saddened that there was more strife in the world but I wouldn't have faces to remember and actual names to put on people who are suffering from these dreadful events.

One of the faces and names that I remember and think most about is Francie. She is seven, I think. When I knew her last summer she spent all her time when she was not in school with her father. She is shy but quite bright. To my knowledge her mother is not in her life. Some other friends and I pooled some money so that she could go to boarding school this year. She is on the Christmas holiday from school now so is staying with her father in Dandora. It is summer in Nairobi and I'm sure it is quite hot. I'm afraid that she is having to stay inside to avoid the violence. I am worried that her father isn't able to get food for her. I am afraid that she is afraid.

Four months after coming home

Kenya isn't in my thoughts every hour but certainly in my thoughts every day. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit such an amazing country and to get to know some of the absolutely amazing people. I must get back.

The gears are turning for my return to Nairobi next July. I have contacted the administrator of the Autism Unity at the Nairobi Primary School and she is agreeable to my return. I may stay a few days to a week longer to be able to do some additional training for the school. I will submit my deposit to Soulfari this week.

I now sleep well and without aids. I continue to be fascinated by the forebearance and creativity of my Kenyan friends. I am reminded daily of how fortunate I am. My blessings have been great...family, friends, health, profession, talents, comforts. As Christmas approaches I realize that I am really not grateful enough...whatever that means.

Andy said in his sermon this morning that we must attend to our need to give as much as to our recipient's need to receive. That need to give is what drives me. I must be careful, however, to give in the forms my recipient needs, not in the forms that I want to give. It gets dicey there, I think. My talents may lie in one area and the needs may be in another. This will require much thought and prayer.

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.

I've been home a week now

I don't have myself as much together as I had so smugly thought I would. Days are fine. I occupy myself with mundane tasks of life and they seem appropriately mundane. I have often said that my life is typically blissfully uneventful. At night, however, I seem to often have semi-nightmares that involve being cold, frightened, dependant, and alone. I am sometimes back in Kenya. It's interesting because I seldom, if ever, recall dreams. Hmmmmmmmm.

I pretty much avoid the news and found myself almost sneaking in and out of my office Tuesday when I went in to retrieve a forgotten item. I havn't fully developed my three sentence response to "How was Africa?" and I didn't really want anybody to ask that question quite yet. I have to prepare myself because I go back to work next Thursday.

"How was Africa?"

Let's see. Africa was beautiful, filthy, friendly, frightening, throbbing, charming, moving, disturbing, thrilling, loving, creative, slow, intelligent, forward looking, backward, exotic, comfortable, hot, occasionally boring, amazing, smelly, glorious, eager, simple, defensive, fast-moving, scenic, distastful, different, exquisite, industrious, dark, inconvenient, cold, brilliant, complex, familiar, the very face of God...........Hey, I can say all these things about the USA. And all the world. Now that I've said all that I am more confused than ever.

Somehow this reminds me of a talk I had with my counselor, Joan, in the months after my Thea died. In my grief I had complained that Thea was and was going to be everthing that I had always wanted to be. The counselor asked me what she was that I wanted to be. When I had listed out all of her wonderfulness Joan asked me to list them again. She then said, "Name just one of those things that you are not now already." I really couldn't think of any. It was at that point that I realized that I could not expect to live my life through my daughter and that I didn't need to. Thea's life was about her and my life was about me. Although we had shared a path for a while our paths had now diverged. I could not take her place on her path for her nor could I expect my daughter to somehow walk mine for me, even if she had lived. That realization helped me to refocus my life on making my life the best it could be rather than thinking that everything was about my almost adult children.

Perhaps it is so with Americans and Kenyans. Maybe we need to do what we need to do as Americans such as clean up our own air, and water, and garbage dumps. We need to help American families feed their children and get health care for them. Kenyans will have to do those things for Kenyans. Americans can not do what Kenyans must do for themselves. Certainly we can support them and share resources but we must be very careful not to think that we know what is best for Kenya and Kenyans.

I'm not thinking isolationism here. It is a principle that I will have to think more about in order to determine what I can do to put it into practice.

Why did I wait until I was 65 years old to allow this to happen to myself?

Damn! I still don't have that three sentence response worked out.

I promised to share something about our safari so here goes...

We left Sunday morning, July 22nd to fly to an airstrip somewhere near the David Livingston Lodge. May I add that "near" is a relative term. I have no idea where the airstrip is in relation to the lodge. It could be half a mile for all I know. We were taken on a three hour "game drive" on our way to the lodge. I am not complaining...just describing. But before I get into that I have to mention that at the air strip there were two interesting structures. One looked very much like a park shelter house and it had a sign indicating that it was the "Arrivals and Departure Lounge." Nearby was a shed with some bleached animal bones outside and a sign that said "Duty Free Shop." Oh, I forgot, there was a toilet.

We saw numerous animals that morning...zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, a couple of different kinds of antelope. One of the best decisions I made on this whole trip was to enjoy the moment and let others take the pictures.

The animals that we saw were absolutely amazing. Seeing them in the flesh and moving freely about is utterly unlike the movies, TV, or the zoo. I have to admit to being a tad disappointed because the migration from Tanzania had not yet started so we didn't see the huge herds of zebras that I had hoped for. They are still incredibly beautiful creatures. On the contrary, the wildebeest (the zebras' almost constant companions) are incredibly ugly.

We arrived at the lodge at straight up noon and had time to check into our rooms before lunch on the lawn at about 12:30. The food at Livingston is reputedly wonderful but I liked the soups and the breakfast omelets the best. Otherwise what we had at Kolping Guesthouse in Nairobi was better.

The lodge is located on a bend in the Mara River. You can sit in the outdoor bar and see (and hear) about 50 hippos in the river about 20 yards away. You definitely don't go down to pay them a visit, however. There is an electric fence and two crocodiles between the lodge and the river. I don't think I realized how noisy hippos are. You could hear them snorting and bellowing even when you went to bed at night. The bellow reminded me of an old man's very low pitched "Har har har" type laugh. As I sat on a bench watching the hippos a three foot monitor lizard appeared in the grass and several spider monkeys ran along the wall. A Masai in full regalia walks around the bar and dining room with a sling shot to keep the monkeys out of the people areas.

I shared a room with two other women...Jen, a delightful and beautiful project manager for Sprint out of Chicago and Jodi, an equally delightful and beautiful lawyer from Colorado. Both are at least 30 years my junior but they were very tolerant of me. Our room was tiny. There was room for the three twin beds with about ten inches between them and perhaps three feet at the foot. Shadrach was our assigned housekeeper and after the first night we had hot water bottles in our turned down beds when we got in. I found the shower to be fairly reliable but unfortunately, the toilet was not. Oh, well. You win some and lose some.

We went on an evening game drive from 3:30 until almost 7:00 on Sunday. Then we saw a mother cheetah and two cubs and 23 lions. The lions were in two groups not far apart so we assumed they were part of the same pride although that seems really huge. Our driver, Teddy, had never seen so many that close together. As we were watching the second group of 16 when a large tusker (elephant) came strolling in from stage left, soon to be followed by another. We were spellbound.

Of course we saw more antelope (Thompson's, Grants, impala, kopi, and eland), zebras, giraffes, baboons, ostrich, and wildebeest on that afternoon. I cannot describe how awful the roads were. They made the road on which we returned from Lake Nakuru seem like a super highway. But more about that in Monday's episode.

Monday morning we went on another three hour game drive starting at 6:30 a.m. More lions and cheetahs as well as their prey (ho hum). I don't mean the ho hum part, of course.

When we set out on the Monday afternoon drive it looked a little threatening in the far distance. We asked the drivers if it was going to rain. They said no and we believed them. No reason not to. About 45 minutes into the drive it started to sprinkle and within minutes there was a deluge. Within a few more minutes the roads (such as they are) had turned to something slicker than any icy road I have ever experienced. Teddy (our very competent driver) tried driving on the grass when he could but sometimes the boulders were just too big. We got stuck in a nasty mud hole and were dragged out by a passing Land Cruiser (painted with zebra stripes, by the way). We went a little further and got stuck again. I should say here that we were in a rear wheel drive Nissan van while our companions were in a 4 X 4 Toyota van. They pulled us out and we made it back to the lodge three hours later still at the end of their tow rope. Some people in other vans were still out there at 11 p.m. I wasn't sure if it was an adventure or an ordeal. We decided that if nobody was hurt it must have been an adventure.

We cancelled the Tuesday morning game drive.

Mid-morning Tuesday I started feeling a little unwell so I headed back to our room and slept for three hours. Only two of our number chose to go on the afternoon game drive...my intrepid friends from Joplin, Jim and Brenda.

Wednesday morning we set off after breakfast for another game drive on our way back to the airport. It was on this trip that we saw a herd of nine elephants and spied a black rhino through the binoculars Betty had sent with me. Teddy had spotted the rhino from about a mile away and asked for the binoculars. He dragged my backpack out of the back of the van and I dug them out. He was quite excited to see the rhino and we "sped" off (probably 10 mph instead of our usual 5) to get a closer look. Unfortunately we couldn't find it.

Somewhere along the way we stopped at a Masai village and were allowed to visit a home inside for $20 each. Pretty interesting.

Finally back at the Arrivals and Departures Lounge, we ate the huge box lunches that had been sent from the lodge. Then we visited the Duty Free Shop. My plastic water bottle from Walmart was traded for a necklace for Jen and somebody else traded one of my bandannas for earrings, I think. Brenda brought back a handful of stuff in exchange for her $18 watch and a baseball cap. I traded a pair of beaded flip flops that I had bought at a market in Nairobi (and which hurt my feet to wear) for a carved statue of a Masai family and a small beaded basket. I gave Teddy the binoculars. I don't think I have ever given anyone a gift who was more appreciative.

When we got back to Kolping Guesthouse in Nairobi Helen and Gordon had prepared a wonderful feast for us. The tables were set on the lawn and there were streamers and balloons. Our Kenyan friends, Nelson, Kym, Kwami, Obayou (Emmanuel), Gloria, and Marcus were there to eat with us and then accompany us to the airport. Saying farewell to Kenya was really, really difficult. God willing, I will get back there somehow.

I am glad to be back home.