Times they are a-changin'

This New Year has brought with it noticeable changes. Some New Years come and go without notice, but not this time. You can smell it in the air, you can see it in the new faces at work, you can feel it in the cracks beneath your feet as you walk, and I can sense it in my attitude. We have officially moved from the rainy season (one for the record books) to the hot, dry season in Lusi. And though the mold which took up residence on my cement floor and walls during the rainy season persists, I think I can see it growing weaker by the day. Warm gusts of wind blowing off the sun-baked and cracked dirt paths bring the summery smell of drying grasses and the temperature soars in the middle of the day (though, thankfully, not as high as in Garissa). The dirt paths I walk on my way to work have gone from mud-filled to desiccated in a few weeks. Where puddles once were, there are now holes in the ground that look like they might have any manner of living thing inside them or like they may open up and swallow you if you step in the wrong place. In the evenings the air turns cool and the stars sparkle as bright as I have ever seen in my life. Unfortunately, warm days and cool nights means that the mosquitoes are back as well. Even though it’s only been a few weeks since the rainy season ended, water is already scarce. In a few more days (or maybe a few weeks if we are lucky) we’ll be paying for water to be trucked in for storage in the tanks at work. It’s incredibly hard to imagine that just over a month ago we were all praying for an end to the torrential rains and all 10 10,000Ltr tanks at work were filled to overflowing.

But the lack of rain also has its up-sides. There is constant activity at Rafiki now as construction projects, delayed by the prolonged rainy season, have begun in full force driven by the threat of the next rainy season in March or April. In addition to construction activities, our program staff have hit the ground running this year in an effort to catch up on lost time (mainly due to the exams in schools making activities impossible for the better part of October and November). I am also supervising a new program which started this month so the staff have been getting oriented with the program, planning and strategizing for the past couple weeks. A new staff for the M&E department, 2 new staff for the new program (focusing on child participation through the child-to-child approach and getting children involved in their own IGAs), and a new staff for our health program bring the number of staff I’m supervising up to 11. This means, my days are split between 3 programs and the M&E department and then I try to find some time to fit in my own work. As we settle in to the programs and the routine of our new activities, things will calm down and give me a chance to get back to focusing on how I can best share my skills and ideas before I have to leave.

Thankfully, since the holiday break I am feeling a new sense of calm and am able to take things as they come much better than I have before. Perhaps I’m finally learning the lesson Kenya has been trying to teach me all along. Do what you can with what you have and the time you are given (even if all of those things change constantly). Of course there are still times when I lose my patience, but I feel like I have learned so much about myself in the past 3 months, and it has given me a new sense of strength; strength I am going to need to juggle all of these activities. Things have changed a lot for me since my decision to extend my service in August. It’s been a hard transition not having my closest friends around, but I have learned a lot about myself and I feel stronger for the experience, even if it has probably been the most challenging of my life. I have a great group of new friends and, thanks to a mutual resolution to be fit this year, an active after-work life (I know it’s hard to imagine in the village, but it’s true). So with this New Year, I feel older and wiser, and oddly more “myself” than I have in a really long time. My next task is to adjust to the idea that this is my last year in Kenya and in 7 short months I’ll be saying goodbye to this country that has in so many ways become my home.