Miles to go before I sleep...

I returned yesterday from 3 days of traveling. I don't mind the flights and waits, I just get into African mode and wait knowing at some point it will be over. Once home I became like a whirling dervish and opened mail, unpacked, made calls and watched the news. But most of all I took a long hot shower.

This morning I had to go get food, the cupboard was bare. It was weird driving; I missed Francis. As a matter of fact I guess I thought he would drive me to the store. It's hard to go between such divergent worlds. When I am in Kenya I am totally there and adopt as much of life as I can, and then I come home and have to get back into it. Sometimes I can see the edge of Kenya just in the corner of my eye.

I am going to post my journal over the next few days. It can say so much more than I can now. When I write over there it is urgent and present, now it is just a memory. I hope you like it.

2 October 2008

It has been difficult to get ready for this trip. I have only just realized that it has been more than a year since I have been home to Kenya. I don’t know what I will find and though I preach faith, it is hard to have it as much as I would like.
I shall return to KARI. Evalyn and I did not leave on good terms. She was quite angry with me when I left. It had to do with her project and my speaking the truth to some people. I frequently get in trouble because I am really bad at hiding my feelings or avoiding answering a question, which I probably don’t have to answer. However the elections came soon after my departure and everything changed. Evalyn no longer lives at KARI. They have moved into town because they were so terrified by the killings. She is still Pastor at my home church there, St. John’s. But it will be quite different. I shall not return to her home after church for lunch, and I don’t know how she will greet me.
Beatrice and Boaz and their girls will also be at church. Over the years we have become like sisters, and I have watched her girls grow into women. I am bringing them computers so that they can study the way they should be able to if they were being educated in the U.S. And I know we must help make these girls leaders as well. However there are no plans for after church, though I suspect I shall lunch with them.
That is not the only thing tearing at me, driving me to write at this early hour, still on the plane to Heathrow. It is my own self-doubt as to my ability to get the job done. It is mistrust, that for the first time, I feel for 2 of the schools. Maybe it is just the taste of a failure I fear I shall have. I go with charts and ideas, I know that my amazing board is making the contacts we need to get the pumps in place, and raise the money to keep going. I know that One Village has never been in better shape, but still..
I was listening to Stephen Armstrong on my iPod. He was discussing a particular chapter of Luke and he said folks who wondered what God wanted them to do always puzzled him. His response was a smack in the face. He said, “I tell people to go to a time when they really felt they understood what God wanted them to do and keep doing it until they heard different.” Pow! Yeah I haven’t heard anything different in a long time, so I’m guessing that I should shut up, be still and get on with it.
We land soon. I realize it is already 3 October, early early in the morning. And there are miles to go before I sleep.