Hey, everyone..

I just want to announce that I've arrived safe-and-sound in the U.S., aside from an untimely bout with the flu.  My last few days in Kenya were, not surprisingly, bittersweet.  I was aching for the comforts only home can afford, yet I was sad to face the prospect of leaving my friends and family behind in Ugunja.

To make my departure more difficult, I was treated to some amazing displays of kindness and generosity during my last two days.  First, I was invited to preach at the local church I've been attending to commemorate my last Sunday.  Very reluctantly, I accepted--not because I had anything of pastoral merit to offer to the people, but because I sensed that they really wanted to hear me speak and I would be doing them an injustice if I didn't.  (In case you're wondering, no, I didn't present myself as some devout theological student--the church doesn't have a full-time minister/priest because the congregation can't afford to support one.  So, a different church member preaches each week; this week, it was my turn :)).  I worried all week about what I would speak about, and eventually, I ended up giving a sermon about the importance of sharing (which, of course, has occupied my thinking in many of these journal entries).  Well, to say that I was preaching to the choir would be history's greatest understatement, and thus I tried to express to the congregation (through a translator) that I was in no position of authority, that I had learned everything I knew about sharing from my time with them.  Hopefully, I got the point across, but I'm not so sure, because, afterwards, various church friends came up to me to tell me how much they "learned" from my sermon.

Well, the next day, the Nyasanda students threw a "farewell party" in my honor, which was--more so than touching--simply baffling because it was so ridiculously undeserved; I almost expected Alan Funt to rise out of the bushes and tell me that I was on Candid Camera :).  The students organized the whole affair themselves: they chipped in to buy flour, sugar, oil, and milk and then spent the whole morning making miniature mandaazis and tea (unbeknownst to me, of course; at the time, I was just wondering why the students were being so strangely absent and evasive).  And they bought me a going-away gift: a model hut made of the fibers of a locally grown plant.  And then there was the party/ceremony itself, replete with eloquently orated speeches by the students.  So, I think you'd agree that I'm not just feigning self-deprecation when I say that the whole event was absurdly excessive in its gratitude--something fit for a king, not for an inexperienced volunteer who has been the prime beneficiary of his stay in Kenya.  I tried to tell them that it is they who have been my teachers, and not the other way around, and I tried my best to return the gratitude, but words can only say so much.

The next day, I was set to depart on a bus for Nairobi in the evening, so I spent the morning packing and most of the day saying goodbyes to the local villagers.  After such a comprehensive attempt at closure, I expected my departure that night to be quiet and private, but it turns out that many people walked (some from fairly large distances) in the dark to meet me at the bus station and wish me a "safe journey."  It was an (almost literally) unbelievable display of kindness that these people would go so out of their way just to say farewell...

So, my last memories of Ugunja are wonderful but convicting ones--touching on the one hand, but self-indicting on the other.  Inside, I know of all the ways that I could have done more, but didn't.  And I know how cruel it was just to jump on a plane and return to a life of privilege and luxury, leaving my "friends" behind in lives of struggle and suffering (is this how one treats friends?)....

With these memories in mind, it feels strange to be in the U.S. again.  I look around me--at this culture of mass consumption--and my heart just sinks when I consider that so much of the hardship on the other side could be alleviated if things were different on this side.  Life here is so frivolous, so ostentatious--I just don't understand it anymore...

I want to go back to Ugunja, for the sweetness, the earnestness, the real-ness (as in, "keeping it real") of life there.  I want to go back to the moral peacefulness of being with and learning from those wonderful students, that wonderful community.

But, alas, I lack such courage.  Until I find such courage, I guess I'll have to deal with my inner pangs of guilt as I negotiate life as an uncomfortable child of affluence, a cultural misfit.  Maybe--hopefully--one of these days, these pangs will overcome me, and I'll have no choice but to "arise and go."

So, with that, I think I'll sign off, for now at least.  Thank you so very much if you've had the patience and interest to read along as I've written these entries during the past three months.  I hope that it's been edifying in some small way, and I pray that we will all have the strength, grace, and wisdom to always, always listen to our deep heart's core, whatever it may say to us, wherever it may lead us.

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I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
     And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
    And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore:
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
    I hear it in the deep heart’s core. 

                    -- W.B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree