Final Retreat

That would be an epic name for a song. Maybe. I may or may not be listening to Muse right now.

But the blog will be not so epic. I will try to convey my excitement at what I saw and heard this past week on what was our final big fellowship and reflection time as a body of Young Adult Volunteers in Kenya.
Last week Monday we left on a trip from Nairobi. Taking the route through the path in the rift valley we traveled so long ago in September when we went to Nakuru to about human origins in Kenya. Our last road trip together stopped mirroring our first as we cruised through Nakuru, headed for the Masai Mara. Also joining us were Josh's parents and cousin and Phyllis, her daughter and two of her friends. We arrived in time for a nice lunch buffet, the first of a few consecutive eating sprees for me.
Then was the game drive. We drove around in these white vans with fun little expandoroofs that pop right up so you can stand inside with a roof still over your head. As we drove out over the Savannah, standing in our iron cage, we greeted gazelle and taupi grazing opposite zebras. A few giraffes were around the next bend, and colorful birds occasionally nearly missed crashing into our vans. As we drove more, we saw a few vans clustered around a tree. Approaching the tree, we saw some action under it--some lions were eating a wildebeest. The carcass was mangled and barely recognizable, but one mother and many cubs were still munching. As we looked around, we saw three females and at least 14 cubs in the area, mostly sleeping or eating. Another rock a short drive away had two male lions pretty near a whole herd of buffalo, trying hard to nap with 30 tourists in 8 vans taking snaps of their yawns. One van got stuck going down through a creek--the opposite slope was too sandy, and their tires sank in and spun. The occupants got a great view of the lions. They were less than thirty feet from the lions as they sat stuck in the sand. One of the other vans came by to help tow them out, but first a few vans made a wall between the front of the stuck van and the one towing. The drivers got out and hooked up the tow rope. It broke, but the second rope succeeded, and the passage across the creek was open again and more foreigners could gaze at the resting cats.
We continued like this for a while until it was time to come back to the hotel for supper. The lodge had times for feeding various creatures--bush baby food attracted a black fuzzball every evening and a bag of scraps brought powerful jaws and reflective eyes as creepy as in lion king, if not as red or polygonal. Hyenas are terrifying creatures--just the wrong shape to be a dog, just the right stocky shape to crush bones instead of work around them. And creepy enough to love themselves for it. Some jackals and mongoose came in to clear their leavings.
The next morning was an elephant morning! We saw many of the giant grazers gathering leaves, washing, and covering themselves with dust. We also found a cheetah in the tall grass. Another proud animal (but less scary than brother hyena), its long, lean figure twitched majestically as it pranced away from the annoying vans. Our afternoon game drive only lasted long enough to go jaguar-searching. We had already seen three (lion, elephant, buffalo) of the big five (missing jaguar and black rhino). As we drove out to a good place to usually find them, we saw a van going the other way. Our driver asked theirs if there was a jaguar behind them. They said "Yes, but it's asleep." Curse my Vulcan hearing, the others in our van did not catch this exchange because of volume or because it was in Swahili. But I got really excited. And sure enough, when we parked next to a bush, we were told there's a jaguar in there. But it was hard to spot. It took a wind rattling the bush--the branches moved in a way the brown spotted coat behind them did not. There it was, peeking at us on a lazy afternoon before the rain. We headed back to the hotel again when it rained, not disappointed at the day's finds.
The next day we left for the village. We traveled to visit Professor Ogutu, a prominent man in his community who had spoken to us about ethnicity during orientation. We stayed at his home and ate delicious food, Kenyan and non-Kenyan. It was better than the delicious buffets we'd been having at the Mara Sopa Lodge. He put us in touch with the nearby school, where we met people and painted a classroom. We met with his family, with people from the community, people from church, and students and parents at the school. It was a beautiful time. We even painted a whole classroom, together with people there. We would not have finished without the help of a few dedicated staff people at the school. Some people had big brushes, some had small, but we all worked together to make a white classroom with a mural on one wall. Our mistake was possibly not doing a skirt. It's fashion here to have a brown or black strip at the bottom of a wall. It imitates baseboard a bit, I think, and collects dirt a lot less obviously than the white does. But we did not have any paint for that. It was also obvious that there were people there at the school who could paint as well as and better than any of us. So we were glad to work together with them. But after an evening and the following day, it was time to leave Friday morning. Back to Nairobi we went.
It was a good time of fellowship with ample opportunity to ask questions of ourselves, like "What does it mean to have lived and served for a year here?" "What does it mean to be almost done?" It seems real now that we're leaving soon. And I'm over the guilt of being excited to come home. That is silliness--my excitement to go home does not insult the wonderful Kenyan welcome and culture. So I am in limbo for a few more weeks. Still stuck between the already and the not yet, waiting but present, here but leaving, happy in two places.