::click ::

That's the sound of everything falling into place.

That's the sound I heard when we pulled into Watakatifu Wote Center ("place of the sacred"), where Orientation Week takes place for a week and a half. We arrived early in the morning, the sky that heralded my return was slate grey. Everything was recognizable--the airport, and being greeted by the Kenyan students on our team; the half-constructed and abandoned buildings littering random plots of land along the drive to Watakatifu; the Ngong hills, shrouded in the morning mist. Everything was recognizable, but not entirely familiar, in that deep sense, not until we pulled up to the gates of Watakatifu.

My exhaustion seemed have seeped deep into my tissue and bones by that time. Exhaustion from strange hours of restlessness and sleeplessness. Exhaustion from a year of seeing multiple friendships tear at the seams. Exhaustion from a year of struggling to understand how to live a transformed life after my first summer in Kenya. Exhaustion from a semester of fearing the inevitable future.

But.

As we turned off the dirt road into the driveway of Watakatifu and I saw the familiar gate, there was--this beautiful relief of homecoming. Suddenly all things seemed to fit together--when, even though the world doesn't revolve around me, somehow the whole of the universe had contrived to push me along and bring me that little moment when my spirit unclenched itself, when my soul sighed, grateful. It didn't matter that I was tired, because there was rest, laid out before me. I felt assured, satisfied--and all I thought was, "Of course." Nothing more needed to be said. There was simply no doubt, in any form, because I was home.