5 weeks to go!

When I was in Nairobi this weekend I received a package from my mom!!!!! She sent chocolates on Sept 20^th and it just arrived this week! While in Nairobi I spent the night with my original host family, and my younger host sister, Angel, LOVED the chocolates. She couldn’t stop asking about the different kinds of chocolate we have in America - we have a lot in common.

When I arrived in Mombasa tonight the chocolate was melted…back to the human furnace of Kenya! 

I attended a wedding this weekend for one of my Swahili professors, Omonga. He was marrying a woman from a different tribe than his, and “intercultural marriages” are not very common in Kenya, so it was neat to experience that. We met Judy our other Swahili professor at 11:00 am to travel to the rural church together, and when I asked her when the wedding actually started, I was surprised to discover that is started at 10:30 am! Judy said that Kenyan weddings can be very drawn out and use “Kenyan time” or they can be right on time – this one used Kenyan time. We arrived at about 11:30, and the bride didn’t even come until 12:30! The bride’s tribe’s (I believe Luya) tradition is to have the aunts and cousins stall the bride from departing for the wedding for as long as possible. Then when she did arrive, the women danced around her car for about 20 more minutes trying to stall her. 

The ceremony began with the congregation dancing and clapping to some traditional music and then the bridal party danced down the aisle. It was awesome – similar to the wedding that was on you tube and the office for dancing down the aisle, but this was actually part of their culture! 

After more dancing and singing, the pastor’s message was about God creating man to not be alone, so the woman is made to be his helper, his supporter, his caretaker and so on. My MSID friends and I had a hard time relating to the message, but it was all part of the experience. 

I only have 5 weeks left in Kenya! During my 9 hour bus ride back to Mombasa, I started thinking about all of the people that have been a part of my Kenyan experience. My host families, my professors, the people at my internship, the women and children in stress that I work with, the kids from the Kibera slum, the orphaned infants, and the strangers on the street who yell “Mzungu” to me every day. The world is pretty amazing and full of so many different people with different cultures and life stories. Kenya is just one dot on the globe, and there millions of people here living super hard lives and there are people here rejoicing in the gift of living each day. My home in America is just one dot on the globe and there are people there who are suffering and people who are working hard and people who are laughing. Thinking of this makes me feel so small and part of something much greater than I can explain. When I was at Passion 2010 last winter break, one of the speakers said that being a part of something greater than one’s self is a time when life’s purpose and vibrancy is very apparent. I think this is why I love the stars and is one of the reasons that this Kenya experience has been had such a huge impact on me.

See you in 5 weeks! Hakuna Matata