Reflections of Kenya

Now that I’ve had the time to unwind from my Kenya experience with CMMB, I am reflecting on what I’ve taken to heart from the trip.

I’ve written about the pathos and the passion of the experience through what I observed in the slums, but underneath the perceived sadness and poverty there is the awareness that there is another side of this visual despair.

It is the side that laughs, smiles, dances, and is joyful for the gifts of help, medicine, equipment and the medical care and compassion from strangers.

In my posts, I did not intend to leave out the positives and the joy of what I experienced in my visit to Kenya and its unsavory places. In all putrid places there is purity. In all slums there is solemnity. In all ignorance there is intelligence.

I don’t know what makes some people give and other’s take. I don’t know what triggers a professional person to give up a lucrative medical practice and volunteer to come to a remote region of the world and be of service to those in need. I don’t know what makes a clergy or a religious choose to minister care without reward to the sick, the poor, and to the infirm. I don’t know how any of them do it; it is not me. I could not do it with the joy that I observed in those that do.

CMMB has attracted a plethora of partners and giving souls to distribute the largess of generous donors in America. There are many in CMMB from the President and CEO to the country directors and the daily caregivers who labor without accolades or ribbons.

The people of the slums work hard too; they must do so to survive. They also smile, laugh and love. It is human nature to find joy in misery, to find humor in despair and to laugh at life. The difference from there to here is that they have to look for it, we don’t.

I bring back a new appreciation of simple things: clean and running water, electricity, grocery stores, sewers, paved streets, and available medical care. I will never again take these gifts for granted.