Love & Hate & Africa

Today Africa and I have been having a kind of tug of war. This love hate relationship, power struggle if you will. There are things here that I hate. The discomfort of traveling down the rough roads filled with potholes. Being called at, looked at, occasionally even pulled at by the hordes around me. Looking at my arm and being constantly reminded, my skin screaming at me, You are different! I hate the poverty here. I hate the insecurity, the not knowing from day to day if your family will be safe when you get home, will they be alive? And I don’t even house those worries in my mind everyday, but I still feel them and I hate it. Nothing is easy here.
Someone asked me today if given the chance would I come back to Kenya to live. I couldn’t even answer because I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell them, I hate this place and never want to come back! But that would be a lie, I don’t hate it here. Africa and I we’re just in a growing stage of our relationship. Where she is beginning to show me the real sides of her, the hard sides, the dark sides.
But she’s beautiful also, it’s hard not to be entranced by her. She has beautiful people. Her sun keeps my face warm and the sky holds more stars than I’ve ever seen before at night. The solidarity and community among her people is enough to keep even the coldest winter at bay. And in a matter of weeks I have found myself among family already.
So why this onslaught of emotions? I think it was seeing today a pastor in a slum and hearing his story. Before he came to Nairobi he lived in the Rift Valley with his family. After the election violence they were forced to evacuate with nothing. For the past 2 years they have been living in a single room with tin walls and enough room for only one large single bed that barely houses their family of five at night. Their world was rocked and shattered. They could do nothing. They were powerless. Their lives destroyed because of corruption. I hear that word a lot and it’s beginning to take a different shape for me. It’s beginning to become the face of poverty here. I hate poverty here.