Coming Home

August 17, 2009 — Well, it's been a full week since I arrived back in the United States. It was disappointing, but oddly refreshing to be separated from the Internet for the later part of the trip. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to summarize everything we were able to see.
 
Let's put it this way.
 
We spent three days on safari around the Maasai mara, swimming in the afternoon and trying to skirt around the zebras and hippos who meandered around our rooms at the hotel.
 
We visited a traditional Maasai community, bringing storage containers for rainwater, school supplies, fabric, and even a soccer ball to them. It was a surreal and humbling experience, mostly because for as much as we wanted to help, it was still very clear that we were only able to do a small amount and real changes would have to come from the Kenyan government. The people were very kind to us and fed us fresh goat cooked over an open fire, danced with us to some amazing music, and were eager to show us their homes and make us feel welcome.
 
We stayed near Mount Kenya where the air feels cool and biting against your face, like in the early winter, and where in order to find our way to campus, we had to ask people on the street who then told us to let them in, they'd show us. And they did.
 
We watched as men and women pulled bright green tea leaves off of seemingly endless rows of plants, then as conveyor belts carried sacs of the fragrant leaves and dropped them into beautiful piles. Later, a weaver showed us his loom and we watched as his employees turned bits of string into gorgeous fabrics.
 
We got stuck in hours of traffic in Nairobi in our attempt to find the airport, and spent nearly two full days traveling home to the United States, where we arrived early (before our families had even had time to get to the airport).
 
Back at home, things have fallen into their normal swing. Presently though, the day to day seems exciting, maybe because I really did miss my family, my own style of food, and my bed. My photos are the bit of Kenya I've brought home, and when I look at them now, it's already difficult to believe that I saw those things, that I experienced them. but in some ways I know that my time in Kenya has altered my perceptions of the world and had changed me, irreversibly, for the better.