Home Sweet Home?

Sipping my freshly French pressed cup of coffee, watching the school herd of cattle make its way around my front porch, and admiring my new sitting room curtains this morning, I was struck with the thought that I have started thinking of my two bedroom apartment out here at Kibarani as home.

My place is starting to feel like my own with the adding of some of my personal touches, somewhere that I can escape to and chill, the food I am cooking is more like what I would normally cook and eat, and I have settled, more or less, in a daily routine. I think the strike threw off many of us from our day-to-day routines, really, before we were able to get into a day-to-day groove.

The adjusting process is long from over (as is all too clear with my struggle with the Kenyan sense of non-privacy and my American sense of privacy), but I think I am starting to feel comfortable and as each day goes by, the more I talk with the teachers and the students, the more I understand and see what the school needs, I feel more comfortable, and understand better what my role is. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a couple of teachers to discuss the HIV / AIDS club, and to share some resources I got from Peace Corps (including a few short films in KSL), and see what kind of involvement they want on my end.

As I finished up my coffee, greeted the groundkeeper who was herding the cows and a couple of bulls around the porch, and started walking to the office for the morning assembly, I thought, wow, I am starting to feel like this could really be a place I can call home for the next two years.