yala, kenya

After arriving in Nairobi late Tuesday evening (following a harrowing departure in Germany including, but not limited to, canceled train connections and tornado-like damage littering the streets, etc) I got on another plane Wednesday afternoon and headed to Kisumu. I was picked up at the airport by a taxi driver sporting a sign with my name on it and spent the next forty-five minutes clutching my seat belt as we weaved through traffic on extraordinarily bumpy roads. In Yala, a rural town in western Kenya, I joined an American medical missions team that was running a clinic in a nearby school. I am grasping for words to describe the experience without sounding...cliche. I don't know if the words will ever be available. There, before my eyes, were the things I'd heard about and seen pictured for so long, yet I can't tell you what it does to you to actually be there in the thick of it. My heart ached and was overwhelmed and more homesick that I thought I'd be and I didn't know how I felt. I still don't, actually. All I know that, no matter how hard it was (and still continues to be), I am supposed to be here.