stories, stories, stories.

I wish I could bring you here. I wish the pictures, stories, words, sounds and smells could reach you in your homes, your comfortable, warm, dry homes and I wish I could begin to make you understand Kenya. What the rain sounds like as it falls on aluminum roofing. What sweat, trash, roasted goat, oil and laundry soap smells like when it mixes together in the air and comes into your kitchen in the evenings, through the open window. I wish I could continue to learn every detail of this country and I wish I could carry it back to the States with me.

Though I always return from Kenya with a few souvenirs and a million pictures, the thing I have begun to collect with enthusiasm is stories. Not to be used to raise funds, not to be placed in the center of a bleeding heart slideshow (though it happens), but to teach, to learn, to remember.

I sat today in a small café with my friend Christine, who makes jewelry and other things for us to sell to raise money. She told me about her niece, who has lost both parents to AIDS. The niece now stays with a relative, or maybe a neighbour- the details are fuzzy. But what Christine knows is that her niece needs an education and a place to stay. She needs, above all, an advocate. As we sipped on our mango juice she told me, ‘these are the kids you will be teaching. You need to hear their stories and understand their lives. I will take you there. You will see.’

These stories are innumerable. The names and details change but the bottom line is always, always HIV. Always, always a child left behind to face this world alone.

It is hard for me to find a balance between telling these stories as a means to an end (the end being a successful non profit which is funded in the US and operating in Kenya) and as a means to…to…a beginning.

I do not want to meet these children, visit their homes, take their pictures and drink their chai in order to bring their stories back to the States for sponsorship. That I will do this eventually is inevitable, but it is not my main motivation. Hearing their stories is what makes me love Kenya. It makes me understand and it makes me want to scream and cry and it makes me want to never leave. It is these children who grab my heart, my hands, my senses- they are captivating.

It is these stories that I must learn to carry home. The eyes and the smiles and the stories. These stories make me anxious, desperate- I will do anything and everything I can to raise the money to build a classroom to provide these children with a future which is better than the ones they have now. (hint.)

I will be spending the next six days traveling the country; from Nairobi to Mbita to Eldoret and back to Nairobi. I will come back here Sunday evening, doubtless with more stories and pictures and words.