This is a piece my mom recently shared with me. lt never fails to amaze me how similar we are sometimes, and how our views coincide, even when l was a little girl. My mom kicks much ass.
In the Beginning
Soft lowing bleeds through the final frame of a forgotten dream. My body aches from the hard straw mattress. Nestled in the half moon of my body, my daughter stretches and turns. “Mom,” she whispers, “what’s that?” “Cows,” I whisper back. “Let’s go see them,” she says. And we creep into the still-gray morning.
As we stand silently, bare arms pimply from a cold breeze, the pink ruffle of dawn slips over the horizon. It is our first day in Kamweleni, a village tucked into the dry hills of Kenya. “I love this place,” Alison says with quiet awe. “So do I,” I answer.
This is the beginning. I’ve almost forgotten yesterday, the hot, cramped trip from Nairobi to Machakos, the battered minivan that crashed into giant potholes and slid around muddy corners toward deep ravines. I’m glad I didn’t get the quick and painless death I prayed for.
I’m aware of a strange collision of fear and wonder, terror and peace. I don’t yet know that I will encounter these polarities a thousand times over the next six years. I don’t realize that we will be different people when we leave, that my little girl will grow into a young woman who is racially color-blind, and an outsider in her own culture, that I will be humbled by people who manage poverty, death and strangers with dignity and generosity of spirit, that I will forget old fears and discover new ones, that I will feel unaccountably “at home” and unequivocally alien. On this first day, I am only just discovering the magic, sadness and glory of Africa, its deep contradictions, and unlimited potential. Thank god for the unknown – and for the journeys that take us there.
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