Evaluation

The beautiful thing about Fairhaven courses are the written evaluations that come at the end of the quarter.  While all my fellow Westerners are taking finals, I wrote my eval for the first quarter of this Adventure Learning Grant, and pasted it below, because I feel like it sums up my 5 months here incredibly well. Enjoy!

I have spent the first quarter of my senior year of college in Kenya, learning more in these five months than any other time in my life. I left with the intention of gathering stories of people living with HIV, but found that the basket I brought for collection is heavy and overflowing with so much more.

The majority of my time has been spent in a small village of West Kochia, Kenya. People ask me where I am from, and my mouth is full with my tongue under my top teeth pronouncing the th and rolling the r in Tethra.  It is named for the smallest market I am near, where mamas sit on spread out blankets behind the piles of oranges, guavas, tomatoes they sell.

I have been living with two of the most incredible people I have ever met. They started a small Self Help group to uplift people in their community with a primary school, small clinic, and support program for orphans and the elderly. They have adopted me and tell people I am their first born child. We discuss Kenya, people, life across a low table heavy with tea and mandasi.

I have spent these past five months witnessing life and the sameness of people living across the World. I have conducted interviews of people living with HIV, rode in every type of transportation available, harvested maize, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Time has slowed as much as a graph illustrating exponential decay, with days feeling as wide and spread out as the Horizon. The distractions or commitments that usually clutter my life are no longer present, allowing me to see an entirely new landscape, which I cling to and memorize like the lyrics to favorite songs. I memorize the faces, voices, and posture of people when we meet – really listening to people for the first time in my life. I memorize the laughter of children when they wave hello to me, and where the homemade speed bumps are on my ride home so I can grip the back of the motorcycle tightly to keep me from falling off. I memorize greetings in Luo, to make old ladies’ faces crease with smiles as I touch my cheek to both of theirs. I memorize the feeling of home I have when rounding the last corner and smelling lemongrass after being away.

The most important thing I have learned in these five months is that people are the same everywhere you go. That as Elie Wiesel says, there are treasures in all of us, we just need to take the time and space to look. I find myself becoming the richest person in the world, heavy with the most fantastic gems and nuggets of gold anyone has ever possessed. I am weighed down with stories, quotes, faces, details of people I meet every day, and get to re-visit and examine them again and again through writing - magnifying rarities with words.

I cannot even begin to express the depth of my gratitude for this phenomenal grant, opportunity. I have been given the chance to witness and explore the World fully – using all five senses in their completeness to celebrate and understand how incredible we as people are. I cannot even begin to express how much I want to spread this awe and appreciation to other people. I cannot even begin to express how much this has changed my life.