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The power was out today and I as going to be unable to check my email. Then it came back on and I rushed to the post office.
I paid my 50 shillings and sat down to take care of a few things.
They are done now. And as my final 15 minutes rolls out...I find that I am...empty. It seems.
There are tons of things that I could talk about, but nothing that impels me to speak about it.
Its the same experience that I had on the phone with my mom over the weekend.
Lots of long silences where I couldn't think of anything to say.
Ask me a direct question and get a dragged out vague answer.
Then more silence.
Then I go into a tangential (but really unrelated) story and talk rapid fire for several minutes about no one particular thing.
Then more silence.
There is tons to pour out, but it doesn't really lend itself to easy to digest narratives.
It just sort of comes out when it comes out.
Yesterday, I had a good cry. I came back home and was changing, so my shades were drawn. And as it happened there was a radio playing near my window and for the first time since I have arrived here, I felt like I regained my private space. No one could see me and (with the newly present radio) no one could hear me. And I just kind of released.
I had come back from a basin bath and was getting dressed and I sat down on my bed and just sort of cried myself out for 5-10 minutes.
It wasn't depression or a tragic and dramatic day. It wasn't cruelty or even lonliness really. I just sort of felt private again for a second and it was so relieving, I just welled up.
I suppose we had just had a fairly emotional day as well. My language cluster has reached the open conflict stage.
Or at least, I seem to have forced the issue. So we had a few problems and had to hash them out.
I think things are okay now, but we are still in the process of rebuilding and re-evaluating.
I would be lost without them and I am doing everything I can to get things back on track, but it takes time.
And I won't discount that the madonna album playing in the background is affecting me.
I will be in Nairobi the weekend after this one and hope to upload photos.
You can text my phone at +254 0723-718-1

I believe, that in a certain sense, travel makes us all narcissists. Placed somewhere that is so unfamiliar, everything becomes personal. The social competency that makes a trip into downtown Chicago pleasant and relaxing is a combination of things, but of considerable importance (and vital in a way I would not have grasped before) is a sense of yourself as belonging. A feeling that whereever you are, it is, to some extent, your place. A place you belong and have every right to be.
Being here, a place where I am so apparently different, it becomes much harder to mark the line between myself and the world. Narcissistic because you can't help but read yourself into every situation. Every thing that happens (and particularly the bad or uncomfortable things) has to do with you. You become the locus for all meaning (in your own mind). It is no longer possible to simply dissmiss an interaction as a misunderstanding or suggest that someone was having a bad day.
Combine this with a location where I am visibly different and infrequent enough to be a novelty, and you get what can be a fishbowl of a life. Its not quite possible to describe.
Coming from the US, I am exposed enought to media that I have seen a significant number of ways that people dress and look. Most important is that I have seen enough to feel that I know how people will/can look. The various differences in their appearance or manner are not something that appears as truly novel or unique. In other words, it is not something that I feel I have never seen before.
So it has been difficult to grasp for me what there is to gain from staring at me as I eat. Or touching my arm. Or trying on my shoes.
But many of the kids in Kitui have never left it. And their world is largley mono-chromatic.
The closest analogy I can think of to put myself in their shoes is my reaction to an actual alien from outer space. If I met an alien, I would certainly want to watch them eat. I would want to touch their arm, and I would want to try on any part of their clothing that fit me. And I would certainly want to watch them shave. (Which is a weekly event that I feel fairly certain I could charge admission for)
All that said, things are great here.
A lack of electricity or running water is the least of my concerns. They are difficulties that still retain the pleasure of novelty and simplicity.
My host family is extraordinarily good to me and I am very happy and comfortable with them. Mostly. I am getting used to and more comfortable with the reduced level of conversation and affection that occurs in Kenyan households (or at least in mine).
...
It is hard to summarize. Life here is day to day; that is to say that the tasks that make up a day are so enveloping, so filled with anxiety and unfamiliarity that a way to step back and really make some broader judgments seems absent.
Life is...ongoing, I suppose. And thats good.
I miss my home and my family. I miss cold drinks and swimming pools.
But being here is engaging. It is challenging and it happens everyday.
I am sending letters, singing songs and writing short stories (or at least one so far).
Look to hear more from me soon.

I have left my parents and the city of my birth. I won't see them again for a long while.
I have packaged my life into bags and boxes and stored them or put them on my back.
I have jettisoned the parts of my life that seemed unnecessary.
I won't see my dog again for years.
Even if my family comes to visit, they won't bring him.

But so far, nothing. No real tears or disconnects. No overwhelming emotions.
The closest thing is the stomach twirling anticipation and excitement I feel to be engaged in another big adventure. A truly unknown journey.
Which may also be why I don't have much of a sense of loss yet.
The past few weeks, I have made real efforts to apply significance to what I saw or ate, to who I was with or where we were. All such efforts have failed.
It does not seem possible for me to simply decide to make a moment meaningful or memorable. I cannot summon up the emotions that would seem to be appropriate for the last time I see the puppy or my mother or father.
I am not particularly worried about it. It seems more like a strange but not unpleasant smell. I noticed it periodically, but don't really dwell on it or feel there is much to be done about it.
As I approach the cliff edge, I continue to inventory my bag, making sure I have enough magazines for the free fall.
So denial might be a good description of this emotional void.
It will hit me when it needs to. I will be fine.

Observe the power of the intranet.

I am struck by how available technology proposes to make the people I miss.
I can re-experience my times with them, their expressions and excitement. The things that I have loved; the time I treasure most for their presence. I have greater access to exact reproduction of the past than ever before.
And yet, it’s striking how unfulfilling, overall, the experience of going thru such exact recollection is.
I don’t miss these people or my life any less thru this voyeuristic reliving of my past.
I can’t talk with them or see their faces in motion.
What is striking is not so much that this is the case… (I don’t believe technology ever promised as good or better experience of others) but rather how in certain situations (in my own situation) this artifice seems to make being with out them worse; seems to make it more painful.

I recall being in Arizona during Americorps. Sitting out in the Pika bread hut, writing letters; I missed those I reached out to, but I was not overwhelmed by it.
The strength of my inner recollection was all I had to rely on and since my day to day experience always maintained a more powerful set of contexts than my distant memories, it was easier to miss people. It was fun even to take the time to dig thru old memories; To follow one person from experience to event, from event to moment, from moment to idea and back again.
Those memories were never as real as the ache in my arms from the day’s work; never as real as the tiredness that crept into my bones as I prepared for bed. Sleep was peaceful because that day’s reality overwhelmed any that came before.

But being able to dig thru my old recollections in the kind of minute detail afforded by digital photo sharing…it allows a visceral experience that is fully engrossing. That can overwhelm my current context. That can overwhelm the memories of the current day. And so I don’t just miss them. I re-experience being with them and wake to find myself without…

Perhaps worse is the capability of seeing their present without me.

All this up to date, day by day, minute by minute information about what all these people are doing…where they are and who they are with – and LOOK! More photos! Photos of them without you! Photos of them different than they were!

I find myself as a missing spectator in the back of all these pictures.

I more than recollect myself with them before, I imagine myself where they are now. I imagine if I could have been there when THAT occurred. When that picture was taken…when those people were there. And my present seems emptier for the absence of these imagined events and people.

Masterbation is the closest analogy I can think of. I go thru my photos and other’s photos because I yearn for the real thing. Because I want more than anything else to enjoy their real presence. But the inherent falsity of the experience…the fact that it cannot equal the full reality of being there only ends by making the pretending cheaper and the reality more idyllic.

I suppose also that my life now is rather empty. That these memories are all the more striking because of how far away a life so full and vibrant seems to me here.

Tonight was a night home. I work now 7 days a week. Doubles 4 days out of 7. And I don’t mind. Indeed, if I couldn’t come home and have a drink or two and turn on some movie I’ve already seen, being here would have the same sort of sensation as waiting in line at the post office.
Potentially endless and quietly infuriating.
And its not this place. Its my own placement in it. It’s the world I have created and how I am being in it.
Yet I can’t escape that this is how I feel.

It’s striking too how difficult reflection is. I need it. I feel better with it. It makes a tremendous difference to me to sit down and write things out, but I seldom make time to do so.

Life is easy here. I am competent at the tasks that face me on a day to day basis. There is no demand too great for my capabilities. And so there is no pressing need for a time to step back and figure out how to solve anything.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

I leave May 22nd.
…

I suppose I should post also my potential schedule for the trip prior to Peace Corps Training:

May 13th: Drive from Chicago
14th: Arrive at Wesleyan in PM
15th: Wes
16th: Wes
17th: Wes/ PM to NYC
18th: NYC
19th: NYC
20th: NYC/ PM to DC
21st: DC

Following confirmation that I was in fact going to Kenya, I drove home hysterical.
Laughing until I cried and back again. A loud and resounding laugh. A release of almost a year of crawling anticipation. A spontaneous and unrestrainable sound.
That was the final interview.
And now I have my full invitation.
My project description and invitation and a brand new set of forms to meticulously fill out.
But I can't read them just yet. When the time comes (probably tomorrow) I will go thru them as carefully as I can. Make new to do lists. But for now...for now this bundle of papers feels more like something I want to hold. Something I want to just sit with and drift off.
This whole process has been so bizarre and so long coming. From May when I graduated till mid February to really get all this confirmed. And its still not done. There are still more forms and more hoops. But they will get done.
This whole damn year has been bizarre. Nights, tonight, where I am filled with this explosive energy. This feeling of something to share! Something to let out...and no place to do it. No one to do it in front of and with...which is more revealing than anything else.
I know its partially my own doing. The circumstances I find myself in no doubt provide a challenge to a normal social life, but its still me. At the most basic level, I have separated myself out. I have refused to make the extra effort to go an hour out of my way for the people who I have met this year who do value me.
For coworkers and friends who would be happy to share time with me, if I would make the effort to get there, I have kept myself apart.
Kept myself separate for what? To make this leaving easier?
I know the thought of this departure is the context for everything else this entire year.
Every relationship or job or class, every dinner or drink, every purchase ...
Going...Going...Going...Gone.
Gone soon. Sooner than I expect, I think.
What seems counterintuitive, and perhaps perverse, is that the specifics of this project are insubstantial. It is the existence of the departure...the fact of my leaving that is most affecting. Most consuming.
What I am expecting next is a reversal.
This whole year has been one without consequence. Its the reason my finances are so fucked up. Its the reason I have dreams most nights of life filled with people I love whom I am far from.
Each thing has lacked any particular sense of urgency, any particular sense of deep and purposeful meaning. Because I was leaving, it didn't matter if it was this job or the other. It didn't matter if I made the effort to go out or to call this person back or to build a life here that I really loved.
I expect that this approaching departure - its concrete nature and specific description - will reverse this whole chain of reasoning.
I will bet that I will find that I do, in fact, love this life. I will probably start to think I always did. I will put a level of significance into each day and action - and interaction - that is far above what I allowed for these first...9 months?
Leaving is like that. I guess.
It's a change that is in process even now. The title of this blog is: "At a Loss."
Which, now, sounds depressing. Sounds empty and sad. But I don't feel that way.
Not now.
And so the title will change in the same way that my perspective has begun to.
"Life is Full"
Cause thats what it is. It always is...if you will work to see it.
I leave for Kenya May 22, 2007.