Thanksgiving

My family and I woke up this morning, ate breakfast at the hotel, and read until their taxi came.  I waved goodbye to the darkly tinted car as they drove away, unable to see anyone waving back. I turned on my heel, climbed the stairs to my room, and lay on my bed – completely and utterly alone for the first time in about five months. I soaked in the silence for five minutes, thinking about what I would be doing if we were back in my Olympia home right about now.

I spent most of the afternoon being consumed by William Faulkner’s Light in August and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I fell face first into both of these stories, sitting in the mill listening to Brown talk, and eating dinner with Woolf. No Macy’s Day Parade noise filled the background, and I wasn’t in the kitchen constructing my latest apple pie creation.

I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner with other Americans that were living in Kisumu. I accepted whole heartedly, and carried a bottle of white wine from Chile in my purse as I caught a piki piki with other people heading to the destination.  The house was enormous and full of people of all ages. I knew one person well enough to greet her, but that was about it. 

I filled my plate with all the usual Thanksgiving helpings, and sat down at a table covered in plastic, steering away from the plush white armchairs, thinking the table was better prepared for my glass of red wine and full paper plate. There was a Yale student also between her Junior and Senior year sitting with me, people working for CDC, someone working for the Embassy, and a lady working for an NGO with roots in Seattle. Dinner conversation was academic, interesting, and delightful. I learned about becoming an Ambassador, life in Barbados, and just how many security checks there are for people working for the US Embassy.

I returned home around 8 in a coughing piki piki, thinking about just how thankful I was for where I currently am.  I am thankful for the incredible family that has come to visit me, and for the family that has accepted me so warmly in Kochia. I’m thankful for intellectual conversation, for being listened to, and for finding a place that I truly love. I’m thankful for how connected I feel to people who live on the other side of the World from me.

At the end of it all, I was able to have turkey, with mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and apple pie.  I had some fabulous conversations with people I had never met, and thoroughly enjoyed my evening. Will it ever beat having my mama’s cranberry sauce, aunt’s rolls, or having my grandpa tell me stories about stabbing people if they reached across the table? Absolutely not – but it will certainly do for spending Thanksgiving in a foreign country. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Rocks

We drove from Nakuru to Kisumu on a large bus.  The seat covers were variegated with white plastic coverings over the top.  I talked to my brother as I peered out the dingy windows at the passing small markets and green trees.  People washed bright orange carrots in dirty water, and lounged in the shade behind their pile of potatoes.  I wondered how long they had been there, and who had stopped to buy what they were selling.

We passed the tea plantations of Kericho, and they reminded me of well-groomed English gardens. They are planted in rows upon endless rows of bushy, circular hedges. It is the deepest and freshest green I have ever seen.  Ladies picked the tea leaves and placed them in wicker baskets that hung around their necks and rested on their backs.  We spoke of change, materialism, life, as we bounced in our seats from the pot hole filled road.

I thought about where I had been for the past four months, as sun streamed through the upper window and I crunched on macademia nuts. I chased the reason I came here like you chase the tail end of dreams when you wake from a mid-afternoon nap, never fully able to remember the dialogue you had spoken, but remembering the feelings that linger like the after taste of chocolate on your tongue.

I feel like I am in the process of shedding multiple layers of clothing; disguises.  When I first arrived here, I allowed myself to fill other peoples’ expectations – that I had come to volunteer, start projects, help. I have recently realized and more fully understood and articulated that those are actually the last reasons I have come. I leave these articles of clothing in the dust that is stirred up behind a piki piki, for some other lost and naked girl to pick up and wear. 

It has taken me four months and a sprinkling of days to understand I have come here for people. I used to collect rocks when I was little from any place that I could.  My parents would take me to beaches, playgrounds, lakes, and I would leave with rocks and shells falling from every pocket I had, overflowing into the larger pockets of my parents.  I would come home, place them in various containers around my room and wait for the next collection point.  I have come here to collect peoples’ experiences like I used to collect rocks. I jam them in my pocket after every conversation, arriving home heavy with details and phrases falling from my clothing. I was never sure what I would do with all those rocks, or why it was so important for me to take them from their homes, but I find myself having replaced my obsession of rocks with peoples’ stories, although they sit and collect in me as opposed to the various containers around my room.