I'm going to be perfectly blunt with ya'll right now. I have not been a good little volunteer during my first month at site. I have been lazy, ungrateful, annoyed, and insensitive to the hardships around me. What is even worse is that for a little bit I forgot why I am here. I was in one of those places where I convinced myself to be unhappy. I looked at this experience with the attitude of a hormonal teenager. Then, I realized how difficult I was being. If I wanted to get anything done I was going to have to quit being such a baby. It sucks, you know, making that decision to try and put forth some sincere effort even if it won't be reciprocated. I mean I think we all knew that coming into it, that this would be a lot of work with potentially minute results, but we all had this little reserve of hope that maybe life-changing projects would fall into our laps and the negative experiences we heard about were just exceptions. I do think that this decision requires a very open-minded, resiliently positive and flexible person, because it's easy to get sucked into a state of mind that is desensitized to living here.
What I mean by that is letting Kenya get to you. Another volunteer phrased life here as "Definitely simpler, but never easier". Knowing what life is like in America and expecting life in Kenya to be the same will make you lose your patience very fast. The past two weeks I've tried to appreciate the small differences and how they affect the people who live their entire lives dealing with them. I really feel so much better. I've set a goal for myself; to asses the rehabilitation programs for what the Kenyans so affectionately call "street children"here in Kitale. I'm going to focus on the Mental Health aspect and its importance. I already started observing one program and was able to participate in an HIV/AIDS lesson and free lunch for around 100 kids. It was really great getting to meet so many of them because now they know me around Kitale and I don't feel so nervous around them.
So I haven't done too much else. Just a lot of research and information gathering. I also made my mama a rocket stove yesterday! She is just such a sweet lady I wanted to surprise her with something because she is always making sure I am okay. I can't wait until she can actually use it; our kitchen is always filled with smoke because we just do the 3 stone method (a pot sitting on the edge of three stones and the fire in between the stones) which is also pretty inefficient for burning wood compared to the Rocket stove. Plus Peter helped me do a lot and we got to spend the better part of a day doing it so it was a lot of fun!
I am really starting to love my life here! My family is really great, I've started making friends and people know me around town and are really nice. And I've found some motivation to do work! Of course that doesn't mean that I don't miss home. Today is actually my boyfriend's birthday and one of our best friend's birthdays so I am pretty bummed that I can't be there to help them celebrate because we always have a good time. But I'm sure they will still have a great time- so I hope they both just have fun for me :) Also I only have 50 days until Jarred comes to visit me! Yay! My dad is really awesome and they worked together this week to make sure he got his flight booked and everything. I was really excited about that. Well I don't think I have much else going on... I didn't think it had been that long since my last blog post but it has actually been a few weeks! It is crazy how time flies here! It's not like I have even been that busy I don't think, the days themselves feel fairly slow but overall... kind of hard to imagine that I've already been in Kenya 110 days! Wowza.
Until next time :)
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