When I am here, half my heart is there. When I am there, half my heart is here. After a four year sojourn away from Kenya, I feel like I am in a dream as I speak face to face with those who haunt my dreams in the US. Sometimes I feel as if the world around me slipped somehow, and this can’t possibly be reality. 

Did I really sing “Yu Mwema Yesu” with the SoH children, sort legumes with the caregivers, laugh with my beloved friends, the Karaus? I have the video and photos to prove it, so it must be true. 

I rediscover the self I left behind here. I remember the shadowy corridors of my soul that absorbed the smells of this place; the eyes that witnessed vivid greens and flowers contrasted with mute earth tones of barren slums just down the road; the heart that moved, raw and alive, in dependence on the One who is the same, whether dancing in a tent church or lifting my hands in my home church. 

I don’t know what it means yet, but I revel in merging back into myself. 

​Sanctuary of Hope children (www.hopespromise.com)