Pretentious late-night ramblings

I have fewer than ten precious days left on his most beautiful of hills before I leave for Kenya. Well, technically, that’s not correct – I leave for St. Louis this following Sunday, spend five days in that city of Cardinals and Arches, and fly to Kenya from New York on the first of September, in the year of our Lord 2007. 

 

So I figure I best begin all this now.

 

I am rather conflicted about leaving Chapel Hill. My being in Kenya for the fall semester means that I have only one semester at this beautiful school left. A large part of me has wanted this to happen for literal years, has laid awake at night contemplating all there is to be done and where I could possibly begin. It’s the part that decided when I was in 8^th grade to devote my life to HIV/AIDS, and decided when I was a freshman in college that I was going to study abroad in Africa the fall semester of my senior year. (“Determined” is a word I have often heard used to describe me.) But another part of me, perhaps buried even deeper, is wondering what the hell I’m doing. I have the most amazing life here, inundated with such incredible friends and endless joy. Why on earth would I want to leave this behind for even a moment, let alone five months? Am I throwing away these gifts so readily?

 

I hope I am not. I am fairly convinced that I am not. But it still remains strange fruit.

 

My plane ticket came in the mail two days ago. I want to go, yet I do not want to leave. 

This will be hard. I have no doubt about it – this experience will probably be one of the hardest things I have ever done. I am throwing myself headlong into a place that I truly know very little about, where I do not yet speak the native language and I have nearly nothing to ground me. But never in my prayers have I asked God to give me an easy life. I have asked only for the knowledge of, strength for, and ability to do what I believe I am called to do. No one said it was going to be easy. It doesn’t count if it’s easy.

 

So what do I hope I will gain? With great struggle often comes great reward. In earnest, I hope to begin a process that I will continue throughout the rest of my life. I hope to learn about Africa, about her people and her struggles and her joys, and I hope to learn where in these epic battles I might fit in. I hope, in a way, to fall into a kind of love.

 

I’ve read a great deal of Paul Farmer this summer, and I plan to write my honors thesis using many of his ideas about structural violence, human rights and health care, and a preferential option for the poor. (That last statement he has blatantly stolen from liberation theology, which is entirely appropriate.)

 

Dr. Farmer tells us that we must look at current crises with very long lenses, lenses long enough to recognize that, say, the poor population we seek to serve in Haiti exists there because their ancestors were brought as slaves from African to cultivate sugar to be consumed in British tea cups. Long enough to realize that the indigenous populations of Central and Latin America might not be so destitute if their ancestral kingdoms had not been robbed of all their treasures that were then sent back to Europe, resulting in a massive boost to the Western economy. Long enough to see that if HIV/AIDS is spread through massive migrant labor movements, it is the institutions we support and businesses we patronize that create those migrations.

 

A very large pill to swallow, Dr. Farmer. Yet he believes, as I believe, that this medicine is entirely essential. Medical answers to the problems of malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS are nothing short of requisite, but we must understand and address as well the underlying pathologies of extreme poverty, structural violence, and human rights abuses.  

 

So this is what I hope I will learn, I guess. Jess and Katie have warned me that the experience abroad will be nothing like I expected, but nonetheless wonderful. Therefore, I’m not entirely sure what I should expect. But I hope to begin this journey – to continue this arduous walk down the path of justice – with my heart and my mind open to all that will touch and change them.

 

Much love.

 

---