An African Vent

Today's post is about Africa. I think most people know that I love it. It is something, one of the few things, that I am really passionate about. The land, the cultures, the environment, the animals, the people.... it just stirs something in me that few things really do. This time just last year I was planning my second trip to Kenya with Cousin Jodie! I can't believe it's been a year ago. Sometimes the spring and especially the fall weather reminds me of Africa. The drier air, the crispness, and the breeze. In Africa, the sky seems lower and the clouds seem so low, like you can reach up and touch them. The sky is one of my favorite things there. (I will post pictures from home.)

I feel like I am writing a book report on Africa, which I really don't want to do, but sometimes I just want to talk and talk and talk about what I've seen and who I've met. I think it hits me when I feel too American-ized or when I like to think there is life and a world outside the lobby of WVLT. I know there is! I just have to remind myself that there is and that I've been there!

(You should click here. One of my cousins' blog friends posted this and I thought I would too. It's a watering hole in Africa where you can watch animals come and, well, get water. And even if animals aren't around, you hear all the birds and frogs. So be sure to have your sound on, but not too loud or the frogs will seriously blow you away. I know.)

So one day I will go back to Africa, Lord willing (as they say in Kenya). I'd like to say I'm determined to, which I am, but I want to go when God wants because that is best. I still have my dream of teaching in a one room school house with kids in uniforms all over the place, reciting the ABC's and poems and Scriptures. I can always close my eyes and smell and taste the ugali and sukumu wiki (food) and the coffee and the beans and the white bread with jam. I'm so thankful that those things will never leave my senses, Lord willing. And I'm so thankful that my trips changed me so much, so that now, 5 years and one year later, I am still longing for a land that desperately needs Jesus, education, and love. And those are all things that I can show them.

This is what I wrote in an email to my mom one time, when I was feeling much like I am feeling today. "...and then we will go to bed and look at the stars and smell the African air and listen to the crickets; and thank God that we are in Africa where people are simple and faith is childlike, and we are grateful for the things that we have because we have everything we need."

Sigh. And I haven't even talked about the kids at the children's homes or the babies or the street kids. Or the teenagers in church who are so desperately starved for love. Or the parents who love their families and are struggling to feed them every day. Sigh.

I promise the next post won't be so somber! But seriously, check that link and if you go to Africa, take me.