you are here
My journey from North Carolina to Kenya, small town to big city, ordinary to missionary.
"Wherever you are, you are here" - John Lennon
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I can’t think of a better way of starting my work day than to get a piece of mail like this! FPC-Lincolnton has been an amazing support system and it always makes me smile to get a little piece of home in the mail box. And Zoe, if you’re reading this, I promise to bring back other treats besides people from Kenya!
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Maybe we need to want to fix this. Maybe stop talking, maybe start listening. Maybe we need to look at this world, less like a square and more like a circle. Maybe just maybe, God’s not unfair. Maybe we’re all his kids and he’s up there.
So everything changes, nothing stays the same. And everything changes, and if you feel ashamed maybe you should change this, before it gets too late. Maybe you should change this, we’re standing at the gate.
This song has been extremely helpful on the days when it’s hard to get out of bed and face my new reality. It’s always a nice reminder of why God has called me to be in Kenya - because things can change and if I work hard enough, I can be a part of that change.
(Source: Spotify)
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Chapatis - the most delicious (and one of the most popular) foods in Kenya. You can eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, or just to cheer up if you’ve had a rough day. The only bad experience chapati and I have ever had together is when I accidentally got a little too excited and finished one off that had a slight taste of cow manure.
I’m not completely sure how I even know what cow manure tastes like, but I know in my heart that I consumed a little bit of cow pie that day.
Regardless of whether chapati might have been the culprit of my typhoid, I will continue to consume these flat, crispy, warm, and delish treats until my time comes to an end here. If it means consuming a slight amount of animal p00p in the process, BRING IT ON.
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Since my return to Nairobi a few days ago, I have managed to have the most American dinners I could think of. Spam one night and grits the next. I guess it’s true when they say…
You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl.
Now all I have to do is get my hands on some chapatis (unleavened flat bread made with lots of cooking grease…SO HEALTHY! lulz) and mandazis (East African doughnuts) and I’ll be sure to post about all of the wonderful Kenyan food I’ve been eating!
But I just couldn’t resist posting about Spam. Haters gonna hate.
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One of my new year’s resolutions was to blog and journal every single day…even if I just jotted down a sentence or two. Looking back on that goal, I have to laugh at how ambitious La Trish was when making her resolutions (especially considering I’ve never really fulfilled a resolution, diet, or Lent without cheating or forgetting). Instead of beating myself up about it, I have determined it simply has to do with my short-and-long-term memory loss I diagnosed myself with.
So let’s start over.
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have led me to neglect this blog once again - pole sana! But my life has been a bit hectic lately. In college, my friend Katherine (KATH) used to say that she sometimes thought I was just an imagined person because the things that happened to me didn’t seem real. And it seems that this blessing/curse has followed me to Kenya.
Long story short, in the past week my computer has flurped out on me and started smoking upon powering up, our electricity has been out off and on for what seems like forever, I saw more piles of cow p00p than I ever thought imaginable, and I have somehow picked up typhoid AND typhus (while both are equally foul illnesses to get, they actually aren’t related…who knew?!). So blogging has taken a back seat to my crazay dayz.
But despite all of this, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
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Stop being so greedy and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and your fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion magazines for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowning in poverty, but your people don’t even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals or Communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude.from John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Even though I’ve never really attempted to understand global economics, I am currently obsessed with this book and with learning about how the poorest countries in the world are cheated out of billions of dollars and immeasurable amounts of resources to keep the big dogs in America rollin’ in the dough. I am able to see poverty first hand every single day I am in Nairobi and reading books like this help me to understand what has caused such disparity and inequality in countries around the world.
