now's a good a time as ever

I've been meaning for some time to start blogging about my time in Kenya this past summer but gathering my memories from the folds of my mind, and drawing together the bundle of thoughts pertaining to those memories has proven... difficult.

Terribly lame as this sounds, my eyes are fraught with tears (okay, not that many, but a considerable number by my standards) right now as I'm thinking of Kenya. My mind has been consumed with Kenya ever since I've returned to that paragon of Western civilization--first world, superpower United States of America, of which I am a (proud?) citizen. I'll be honest (as I am wont to be, or so I've been chastised): I have been hoarding. I have been hoarding my memories of Kenya because I'm already so fearful of having them slip away that my mind has clenched itself around them, jealously guarding them, lest I do the unforgivable, the inconceivable--forget. Because everything that happened there is too precious to share, too lovely to let go of, too wondrous for understanding--and yet, it is too beyond for me to selfishly cling on to.

So here is the story, or at least the beginning of it, and you may  judge for yourself if it sounds like it has the makings of an epic tale of a hero's journey that follows in the tradition of Homer's Odyssey; or perhaps a narrative of a young woman's displacement from home and wandering out into the world, reminiscent of one of Bronte's heroines; or at the very least--a story that is worth repeating. This is the story of a young woman, not wholly uneducated or without experience (or so she thought), who decided to venture into the country of Kenya, Africa for seven weeks on InterVarsity's Kenya Global Project. Like any other story of a young woman who decides to make her way into the world, she was foolish and full of naivete and romanticized notions.

Now, dear readers, please have the same forbearance that many an audience of countless books have had in putting up with the follies of an errant heroine (if I may so dub myself).

(I shall speedily write another Kenya post, but for now, I think I'll really crumble into myself if I have to write anymore. Please excuse me while I attempt to compose myself).