Season’s greetings from Kenya! It is hot hot hot out here, so while you’re enjoying your cups of tea, frolicking in the snow, snuggling up by the fireplace, I am sweating, swimming in the Indian Ocean, and experimenting with how much sunblock is too much sunblock (hint from me to you: there is no such thing as too much sunblock).
It is coming into the dry season; the baobab trees have lost all of their leaves, the bare branches defiantly jutting into the sharp blue sky. Though much of the land between Mombasa and Nairobi has been cultivated for growing sisal, tea, and other cash crops, the baobabs reach out of the monotonous rows, odd and yet somehow fitting in this landscape. Baobabs are my favorite trees, their grotesque and dividing beauty echoing something that I feel in myself, but have never been able to put into words. You can always tell a tree is a baobab from the time it is a little sapling until it has fulfilled its time here on Earth, with its thick and bumpy trunk and branches that seem to disregard sideways and instead grab at the heavens. It proclaims to everyone who will look at it, “I am a baobab.” This is the biggest gift mission has given to me, this knowledge of who I am, who I am becoming, and trust in the mystery of it all.
It has been almost a year since I first stepped foot on Kenyan soil, felt the sticky Mombasa air on my skin, saw monkeys climbing along walls lined with glass bottles. The past year has been both accelerated and in slow motion; I feel as though lifetimes have passed all in a few seconds. Along the way, I have learned some things. For example, you never ever throw out cookies, even if they are infested with ants. You put them in the freezer and the ants will pass away and then you can dust them off and eat the cookies. And if you can’t dust all of them off, there is no harm in getting a little extra protein. I have learned that children are the same everywhere and barriers in language are not even enough to keep us from connecting. It is now my belief that paying more than 100 Ksh (one dollar) for any piece of clothing is just too much money. Experience has taught me that it is always better to travel in long skirts (in case the bus gets stuck in a jam and you need to “help yourself” on the side of the road). I have learned to breathe through uncertainty and to grasp hands through pain, to rejoice when life delights us and to cry when the burden becomes too great.
Several people have told me that the gift of mission is that it saves us. Not in the way that good deeds will get you to heaven or anything like that, but rather in being pulled out of life as we know it (or perhaps climbing out of life as we know it), exposing us to ourselves in a whole new way. I have had the opportunity to see myself in the glaring equatorial sunlight and let me tell you, it is both grotesque and beautiful. However, now, in all of my complexity, I am able to proclaim, “I am me,” and what a gift that is.
On our Thanksgiving Day, Pope Francis said mass at the informal settlement of Kangemi in Nairobi. His coming was even bigger than President Obama visiting Kenya (who as you all know and everyone here will remind you, is a Kenyan). The one comment that stuck with me from people interviewed about his visits was that he was expected to be this ball of energy and good vibes, but when people finally met him and had the opportunity to bask in his presence, they said that Pope Francis just seemed very tired. At first, I felt a little annoyed, “My Pope Francis, anything but saintly? How can it be?!” But then I felt relieved. Tired. Yes, I feel that. We all feel that. Especially after all of the heartache and craziness of 2015, we deserve, we NEED to feel tired. When I think about all of the tragedy that we have endured in the past year, it makes perfect sense to me. And we need to honor those feelings, to allow them to connect us to our other brothers and sisters who are just as tired and lifting their hands, calling for justice, asking to be seen. Let us rest and gear up for the mystery and adventures, the inevitable challenges of 2016.
This holiday season, we will see people that we only meet perhaps a few times a year. I know that this is the first time I am seeing my family since January. Let us be bold and proclaim who we are, like the baobab. May we sink our roots into Mother Earth, knowing that what makes us human is simply the breath that we share, stretch our limbs to the heavens, and shed our leaves knowing that there will be seasons of dryness and prosperity, suffering and joy. May we feel the dignity of our lives. Like Pope Francis, may we honor our feelings and use them as an invitation for connection to our shared existence and shared life. And this holiday season, I pray that we feel the oneness that connects us, Christian and Muslim, plant and air, sun and sea, gay and straight, black and white. Tuko pamoja, marafiki wangu (We are together, my friends).