With only a few short days left here in Kenya anything and everything makes me feel like a nostalgic mess even though I am still here. I daydream too much and try to take mental pictures of everything I can. I pay attention to small things like the crushed charcoal I walk over in my sandals. The weight of carrying a liter of milk in a bag in my left hand from the shop below me. The sounds of the tap tap tapping the woodworkers make while carving their wood with hand tools outside of my favorite place for chai in the morning (which costs slightly more than a dollar, is full of spices and the pot fills two mugs worth). The taste and texture of mango. The smell of udi burning in the shops below me in the morning when they first open. The fact that I can now successfully sleep through the super loud tuk tuks on my street when I really need to. Even with both windows open!
The way I am no longer annoyed to shower in salt water. How I can walk through piles of garbage floating loosely on the ground and with dust and exhaust flying at my face and keep my concentration on whatever I wish instead of those things themselves. I used to avoid each piece of garbage and cover my face with every passing car. The way I make people laugh by using correct Swahili in comical ways. How people on my way home from town know me in these back alleys. Many of them greet me as if we had been lifelong friends and I don't even know their names. Yesterday, someone greeted me by name and gave me a real surprise and then today I finally realized who he was.
I have become stronger in using my "emotional raincoat" and not letting every sad thing around me let me spiral into despair and lack of hope in humanity. Yes there are many, many tragic things happening, being said, being done, destruction, corruption and everything else. But we are all just doing our best, or I feel we are, most of us. Someone who I have come to love has taught me something important about life. Some people are living and others are just existing. You can look at that from countless angles. Believe me, because I have. Living and existing are honestly relative to whom you are asking about which is taking place.
I came for an internship and then to hopefully find work here in Kenya. While a huge portion of the population here would really prefer to go find work in the U.S. I have been noticing something that reminds me of this. Every couple days or so when I am moving around, I see Swahili women (with Arabic family backgrounds) who have done facial bleaching and applied white-ish makeup to make their absolutely stunning, naturally tawny honey skin look white (like the color of printer paper). It hurts me in a place deep in my soul because loads of people back home are also spending their hard earned money on tanning salons and tanning lotions in order to hide their "too white" skin. Aren't we humans absurd??
I have been wishing that I could buy every banana, every coconut, every mango from every street vendor. In the past few days I have wanted to place generous money into the hand of every begging child. I have wanted to carry home no fewer than three tiny kittens from the center part of town. I think of every place I haven't seen, even those just close to Mombasa and supposed to be great fun. However someone really had something when they proclaimed that "enough is enough". We each stumble through our lives under the illusion of feeling organized and having great purpose but in the end we all just add our unique, little drop of self into the giant, chaotic bucket. It may not be what we want, it may not make a huge difference, but at least the bucket is swirling with diversity and hope.
