I'm sitting at home, AC on full blast, pretty tired after a fun but exhausting weekend, mostly spent drinking beers, catching up with friends from Peace Corps and making new friends and acquaintances. It's been about two weeks since we moved into our apartment in New York City and I'm about to leave again, this time for a two week trip to Kenya. Like most of previous travel experiences, it never really hits me that I'm going somewhere until I'm on the way there. Right now, I'm sitting here thinking 'I'm going to Kenya tomorrow. Cool." but tomorrow when I'm on the plane it's going to be more like "Holy crap! I'm going to Africa! To Kenya! Awwwweeeesssoome!".
I've lived in Asia for over two years, been to the Middle East briefly and I've traveled extensively around the continental United States. I've never been to Africa but so many countries on the continent have interested me, have made we want to go. I think that as I've spent the last few years working in development and education, and as I've decided to make the transition into human rights, humanitarian assistance and conflict resolution, I've always known that I'd end up in the Middle East or Africa at some point. This is only a two week trip, mostly for pleasure, to visit a friend who's there with Peace Corps, to experience something new and different for a short time before graduate school starts but in a lot of ways I feel like it's just going to be a preview, a small view into a country that I could end up working in sometime in the not too distant future. I'm reading a book right now, called "Our Turn to Eat", about Kenya, which came highly recommended by Chris, my friend who is there now. It's pretty interesting so far and it's helping to educate me on some of the current woes Kenya is facing, perhaps to understand the root causes of many of the country's struggles with corruption, before I arrive there.
I've been back in the U.S. since September and I've been itching to do some international travel for the past few months. My bags are packed, I've finally got a a nice camera with which to document my trip and my friend slash traveling companion Jordan is here. Jordan has never been to Africa either but has traveled in Europe. We're both nervous and excited and we're both happy to know that we have a good friend and a great host/travel guide to show us around the country he's been living and working in for almost two years. I have about 40 gb worth of memory cards in my camera bag so you can believe I'll be taking and posting up a lot of pictures of this adventure.
24 hours from now we'll be on the first of three plane rides that will take us to Kenya. I can't wait. :)
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