Wholeness

I’ve dwelt in the space between brokenness and wholeness for much of my life. Born into broken family, a broken people, and sensitized to a world that has crater cracks of pain running through it. My paternal family came here from displacement camps after the holocaust, incapable of returning to where they are from. We are still unearthing relatives who escaped to Italy, South America, Canada, the USA, and still mourning for whom escape wasn't possible. I spent my early life seeking any small patch for cracks dug by neglect and abuse, before they spread into insidious canyons. So even here, in Kenya, so far from everything I’ve known, it is the familiarity of it, the confusion and wobbly sadness of this space between healing and wholeness that strikes me first. I start here, as in my own life, holding the sadness with compassion before I can look ahead.

In reading about Kenya’s history before I arrived, I was struck by a history of migrations. Unlike Ghana, where I lived during college, Kenya’s history does not begin with ancient kingdoms and long lineages of tribes. Kenya’s story always starts somewhere else, the Bantu migrated down from central Africa, Nilotic and Cushite peoples from Sudan and Ethiopia. Then you hear from the Arabs, the Portuguese, only after them the Maasai from the North, and the Kikuyu from the South, at the same time as the British, who brought the indentured “muhindi” East Indians in the thousands to build British railways.

Kenya’s diversity startled me, coming from the expectation of Ghana’s stunning homogeneity- where most villages deliciously feel like you are in one giant biological family who has been living on the same piece of land since the dawn of time.Here in Kenya, every face on the street has a different structure, a phenomenal range in subtle shades of brown. Men stand as tall as 6 and a half of a foot, though some stare me and my 5’4 right in the eye. But every Kenyan eats the same basic foods. I tease that there must be a drug in ugali, their soft corn meal doughy stable food, because they are so intent on eating it everyday. Only the Maasai are distinguishable by dress, the men wrapped in their long bright fabrics or red, purple, and dark blue. Most Kenyans dress in western style clothes, though women sometimes in African style matching tops and skirts- in more muted colors than you would find in the west of Africa. A country of immigrant peoples (like our own) found unity in simple foods, hybrid languages of Swahili and shang, and standards imposed by colonial impositions.

In the midst of this diverse country I felt a type of contained sadness, my expectations of finding a cultural community here similarly intact and tied to the land in the way I felt in Ghana was quickly washed away. Colonialism got inside Kenya’s in a different way- maybe because when you immigrate you loosen your original ties, you are made more vulnerable to the cultural tide shifting, and even more so to an Empire whose intent is to break you.

Sometimes it is the brightest child, the most sensitive and aware one that is the most vulnerable to trauma. Kenyans are ferociously brilliant and immensely hyper aware. In the smallest villages you will find people who will philosophize with you in the most expansive ways. One of my co-workers in the small town of Kimini deeply analyzes me daily. He pulls apart my slightest comments and gestures, mostly as an intellectual exercise. I enjoy his musings, sometimes I believe he can read my mind, though I have baffled his preconceptions of me, and try to keep him laughing. To look good here is to "look smart", when I dress up, women who have never spoke any other English words to me, surprise me with "you look smart!". I have wondered for a while why American Kenyans in particular have made such an impact of my life, some of my deepest and most layered relationships. I am starting to think it is because they are so comfortable in the element of air, in the intellect, in expansive ideas, in diversity and change. I’ve spent much of my life finding safety in my intellect, living in my mind when the realities of the body are more difficult to face. I felt seen and understood by the Kenyans in my life, loved for the ways I have flourished in my survival.

Ghana in contrast is unfamiliar to me in a hundred scrumptious ways. Ghana is so deeply rooted, so constant and steady, so embodied. One way to say hello in Ghana is Wa Po Me? How are your muscles feeling? It is like saying , “Are you in your body? How does that feel?” In a county where so much has stayed the same in hundreds of years, the question is how are you physically right now, because we can assume not too much else is new. In Kenya the common greeting “Habari Gani?” translates to “What is the news?” in other words, “What do you know? What is your awareness? What is changing?” It is hyper-vigilant and expectant of change. In crisis, in transition, the body is ignored and flowing with the numbing of adrenaline, the mind charges forward. What needs to happen right now? There is an acuity that occurs to the detriment of the physical, to create a level of flexibility that the body would otherwise resist.

When the rush wears off it leaves you exhausted, and repeated indefinitely a pattern of self neglect tears at the body. There is a sadness here is Kenya that is so familiar, palpable, heavy. Life here is painfully difficult in so many ways, and this feels exaggerated in Kitale where I am living, which has been a refuge for displaced people from the surrounding areas, after the recent violence following the last presidential election and other previous conflicts.

I have to admit that I longed to return to Africa to escape my own experience of transience and rootlessness, to relive my time in Ghana where I sank into the intensely deep connections, the warm arms of the constant sun, and the clearing power of intensely spicy food. But there must be a different kind of healing in this place, there is something so honest about it for me that has been so painful so far. I needed someone else to name the sadness to be able to step back far enough to write about it. I love the Kenya people. I love the people I work with like we have always been family. My roommate who is also a co-worker and I call each other mapacha-twins. After 4 days together we could communicate full ideas without speaking a word, anticipate each others actions, and easily shower each other with affection.

I expected to get here and write blogs about cute baby chickens, bicycle taxis, blinding brilliant flowers, friendly people, and the monkeys who cross the road, (and I still might) but I needed to start here. Here with a prayer for wholeness- for myself, and a country which is regaining its balance after decades of colonialism, violence, destabilization and transition. Who is finding their strength in their diversity, a peace with the past, identity in the swelling tides of immigration and modernization. May we find the balance between our minds, our hearts, and our bodies, and soon become reintegrated, centered, and whole. May our spirits seek to forgive and be forgiven, to find a love for self, and the ability to change in ways that create sustainability and peace. May we all find ourselves somewhere in an arc of history that bends towards justice, in a benevolent universe with sense of Divine love that is abundant in healing and renewal. Amen