“We Can All Dance”

 

Allow me to clarify.  This was a statement made by a kenyan friend of mine, brian. And when he says “we” he of course means all Kenyans, not all people.  This was in response to peter telling me he wasn’t a good dancer. Yeah right.  I went with my host brothers peter and daniel to SPA fest (Stomping Performing Arts festival) last night.

 

It.

Was.

AWESOME.

 

I have never been more jealous of every single person in the room in my life. dancing is just a piece of them, a part of who they are; dancing, and being good at it is like blinking – they always have done it, they always will do it, and it takes no effort to do it.  We left for the festival at 2:45 pm on Sunday, and we got back to the house at 7:30 am Monday. 

The festival is a competition for dance groups from churches in the surrounding area.  I went with our home church presbyterian church of east africa – kahawa farmers district.  The dance group was “the ignitaz”, the returning champs.  In fact, they have won the last two years in a row. Needless to say, they won again. They were awesome.  I’ll post a video of it.  I’ll I’m saying is… amras here I come!! I can’t wait to get back and show off my new snazzy dance moves.

The dancing was great, but that wasn’t even the best part.  That night changed my heart.  I met some of the most amazing people.  In a crowd of over 2,000 people I saw another muzungu (white person) so I decided to talk to her.  Turns out she is from Michigan and is in Kenya for the summer doing research for her nonprofit organization – Redeeming Africa’s Hope.  She introduced me to her sister who is moving to charlotte in the fall to go to nursing school!! Of course we immediately hit it off and exchanged numbers.  It was great to meet another foreigner, someone who is going through the same things I am, but the best part was how she changed my heart about Kenya.  As stated in the previous post, I have been a little bit homesick and still feeling out of place; I just haven’t quite settled in yet.  These girls, who have been here for a month already, totally comforted me, explaining that they felt the same way at first, and that it takes time but before I know it I’ll be running the joint and won’t want to leave.  Sound familiar kendall?

I was having a good night, enjoying the people I was with, loving the dancing, but after talking to those girls, I was having a great night!  My heart was open, and instead of enjoying myself but still missing everyone in a sad way, I was enjoying myself and being in the moment.  it was like a switch was flipped,  I could see all the greatness all around me.  I was seeing everyone with different eyes.  This new way of being in the moment and loving every part of it, gave me the opportunity to have one of the most amazing spiritual conversations.  Richard, who lives down the street from my host family, is in school at the University of Nairobi playing on the soccer team and studying psychology, shared with me his experience with Christianity.  Uh-may-zing. 

 

My journey has just begun.