Crooked Trails participant Christine Frederickson returns to the Maasai village of Merrueshi to reconnect with her friends
I awaken early in the morning, to a silence and darkness unfamiliar to my western way of living. The electrical power is off. In Washington State, it’s a strange thing to be jarred awake by this blackness. Yet not more than 48 hours prior to this moment, silence and darkness was the peaceful norm in my cozy little hut nestled in the Kenyan Maasailand community of Merrueshi. I wonder what time it is in Kenya, where my Maasai family and friends are.
It would be early evening in Merrueshi and if I were still there, we’d most likely be eating a delicious meal prepared by a wonderful young Kenyan named Edward who traveled from Nairobi to prepare our meals. We might be sitting around with the Maasai Warriors or community members engaged in dialogue about life in Kenya and life in America, family, cattle, and the Kenyan drought season versus the Seattle rainy season. We might be peeking in on the four or five Zebra that meander in nightly along the dry river bed located beside the Maasai Simba Camp after dusk blankets a cloak of safety.
In the next moment, the clock’s digital numbers blink rapidly off and on and I hear the familiar hum of other electronics around the house coming to life again. I finally get up, knowing that my sleep cycle is still in the process of readjustment and that I might as well go with the flow and use this precious nocturnal time wisely.
I restlessly wander around my house of wall to wall carpet, wall to wall bookshelves, two bathrooms with plumbing and “things” that I used to hold of high value for my comfort. Yet I long for the red Kenyan earth that finds its way into everything, the protective mosquito net over the bed that shields me from the nightly invasions of little winged things, the smell of fire wood burning, the choir-like cacophony of Kenyan birds singing all living things awake. I long for the spectacular sunrise of an early dawn, Kenyan style.
I am not sure what’s mine to do next, in this time zone confusion. What I do know, is that I must write about what I am feeling. I first must create as much of a sense of my Kenya home here right now to access the language of my heart.
I boil water and heat goats’ milk that I managed to find at the local Trader Joe’s. I pull out the newly acquired bag of raw sugar and Ketepa Pride Kenya Tea. My goal of the moment is to create the most authentic cup of Maasai tea that I can, for my writing time.
I dig through my almost unpacked luggage and retrieve the candle that I used in my hut at the Simba Camp along with the Nescafe coffee can that provided safety and stability for my candle. I place the lit candle and cup of steeping tea close to me and turn off all the lights to write by candlelight.
One of my most favorite quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien is “Not all those who wander are lost”… in this early morning, I feel extremely lost. I am wandering between feelings of overwhelming homesickness for the company of my Maasai rafiki’s (Swahili for friends). I miss hearing their voices in their native tongue of Swahili and Maa and in working hard to speak English. I miss their authentic smiles especially when I am working hard to speak Swahili or Maa. I really miss the laughter of an inside joke shared between us. It is in this moment that I truly understand at the core of my being that I’ve left behind a significant piece of my heart and soul in Kenya with the Maasai. And although I’ve returned home to wonderful friends and family, I feel very sad and half hearted about being back here.
Perhaps this is just about sitting in my feelings in the moment. Perhaps it’s a call to just pay attention and honor what is. I smile thinking about my Maasai rafiki’s who don’t have any difficulty in “being in the moment and accepting what is” Hakuna Matata”, right?
Perhaps writing is the solution to relieve the pain of my deep homesickness. Writing about leaving my heart and soul in a far off land on the other side of everything. Kenya, Merrueshi, the Maasai have become more of my home now that I’d returned from a second visit.
In 2005 after studying the Crooked Trails website for nearly two years, I made a decision that it was time to commit to one of the trips. I wanted to satisfy my wanderlust but wasn’t interested in lying on a beach somewhere or being confined to a tour bus traveling at a speed of 60 miles an hour as a culture flashed before me on the other side of a window. I’m an Applied Behavioral Scientist by nature and by academic study, so traveling on one of CT’s community-based trips was just the ticket. I wanted total emergence into another culture to experience how they “tick” in community, how I “tick” being out of my own comfort zone and how we tick in heart connecting relationship. It was the great experiment with a personal goal of being transformed; physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Cruising CT’s website I noticed that Kenya was the newest location for CT to offer. However, my immediate reaction to this destination was fear. “No way would I go to Africa – its way to far away, its way to unfamiliar, way too many big, scary animals and it’s dangerous”
And then I happened upon my Astrological Horoscope that shifted my thinking all together. “Americans live inside their own private echo chambers endlessly revisiting things they already know they like and avoiding exposure to anything new and different. Your assignment is to escape your private echo chamber.”
And with that ominous warning of possibly never escaping my own private echo chamber, I made a decision to take the assignment. In doing so I was changed forever by a place half way around the world, by people I’d previously thought I was so different from and by being immersed into an experience beyond my wildest dreams.
So this year when a couple of friends talked about going to Kenya with CT, I knew that it was time to return. By now, through correspondence with her teenage son Ratunka, I had cultivated a friendship with Lea David, a young Maasai wife and mother. Ratunka would practice his English skills in both letters and phone calls (most times at 5am per Pacific Time zone). I began sponsoring both Ratunka and his brother Marona by paying for tuition for school. Over the years, I’ve received beautiful gifts of jewelry hand made by Lea. I’ve come to know this family and others from the community. I felt in my gut “the knowing” that it was time to return to the place that I initially had rejected due to my hundred forms of fear Instead, I had fallen in love with Kenya.
I have many, many rich stories to tell about my latest visit back to my home away from home on the other side of the globe. Way too many stories to cover here. My friends tell me that my eyes light up when I talk about for instance:
- Watching Kwenia one of the Maasai Warriors bob his head to the beat of Jimmy Hendrix’s “All along the Watchtower” on my IPOD as we drive across the Rift Valley coming back from Safari at Maasai Mara.
- Sitting by myself in the middle of a bustling outside market in the small town of Emali while Douglas our driver has run off to do errands. I am definitely the minority and the curiosity of many passing by. Yet with all, I initiate a greeting which is more often than not always returned. “Habari mzuri” (how are you) and “Mzuri Sana” (I am fine). And then in that instance a truck pulls up beside me and Koboli another Warrior greets me with the genuine warmth and familiarity of an old friend. Koboli has been to the United States and he has been to my home in Seattle.
- Participating in Merrueshi’s primary school event in honor of the last day of the school year, which is attended by the entire community. I do not feel nor am I treated as a tourist. For by this time, I’ve officially been given the honorable name of Mama Ratunka.
However, one of my most cherished memories unfolded on the evening prior to my departure. I was escorted across the Savannah to the home of my friend Lea David for tea, by Samuel one of the Community elders and Lorpapitt one of the Warriors. We were greeted by not only the family, but their friends, one of the teachers, and the community minister. At the end of the visit, the minister asked us all to join hands in a circle and he read a passage from the Bible and then offered a prayer for my safe journey home. The presence of something so powerfully spiritual was palatable. My personal sense of this higher Power is that it’s about Love.
What I am feeling is an enormous amount of love and what I’m learning is that with love is the sadness of missing those who are no longer in front of me physically. How do I retain each and every one of their Spirits, inside my heart? How do I cultivate the love and warmth so astonishingly real and raw to the next day and to the next, and to the next. How do I take this experience of reaching out to others, being met in friendship and how do I remember to put this experience into action every single minute of every single day? The world needs this I think. The world that I need to exist in requires that I feel this and fold it ten times over into my Being-ness, so that others are served by experience that I’ve had.
It is now almost 5am. I hear the sound of falling rain hitting the skylight. I wish that I had the power to bring this rain to the drought ravaged land around Merrueshi. But even though it is my wish, the Maasai’s belief in their rain God Enkai holds them in these trying times and their attitude is one that there is a value for their experience as well…drought or no drought. They are my teachers. It is what it is and you transform what is into a meaning of value.
I am suddenly exhausted because my body knows that where I have just come from, it is time for bed. I know that my body clock will adjust sooner or later. I can’t say the same about my heart and soul.
