Week 1: Adjusting

By the time this is up, I will have spent a little over 2 weeks living in Sekenani, Kenya. I'm trying to catch up so I can be as accurate as I can, so I'll start with week 1. Like many other student missionaries, I know I'm not the first to say that I never thought I'd ever be a student missionary, but the way God cleared the way for me to be able to come to Kenya and to this exact location is incredible. And it's one big way that I've seen recently that God really has a vision for your life with your best interest in mind! Even though it's been weird adjusting, now I can really say that this was the ideal place for me to be this year.

Okay, another thing about this blog. I will probably be very vulnerable in my entries just because I think I owe it to myself and to the people back home to document my actual feelings what the experience is really like. That being said, I never thought it was possible to feel so many emotions in just one short week. Or to even feel emotions that I'd barely felt before!

Chicago airport :)

I think it's fair to start at the beginning. My flight journey began on September 3, 2024, when my parents dropped me off at the airport in Chicago. At this point it still didn't feel real. I think the entire time I was traveling I was more focused on making it there and being safe as a solo traveler. That's why it was more of a shock once I got there. After a shorter 3 hour flight, I made it to New York, and met up with Jeffrey, my boyfriend, who's also serving in a different part of Kenya, Kendu Bay, for the year! Not long after that I met Shudear, one of the other SM girls at my location, who was on our same flight. To be honest the three of us were joking that weren't sure if the flight was even real, since we didn't know the gate number for a good 5 hours and the flight kept getting delayed. After a 6 hour delay we finally took off, and 14 hours (and a time change jump of 7 hours) later, we landed in Nairobi.

New York! This was about 1 hour before boarding

Still in the zone and trying to make it safely, we said bye to Jeffrey as he had a connecting flight and Shudear and I got our bags to meet Kamunge, the co-founder of the Trust, who was picking us up! Kim had suggested that we stay awake as long as possible to try and beat jet lag, and I had tried to stay awake for most of the 14 hour flight. But we had a 5 hour drive ahead of us, and around 2 hours in I completely knocked out. I woke up once we got there, and barely stayed awake long enough to find our room, unpack, and fall asleep again.

Here's where things got rough. To be honest, I'm not a person who gets homesick easily. The idea of being away from home usually isn't scary because there's many ways to stay connected. But this week I was feeling so homesick. We used the first few days to get sort of familiarized with the Trust and the girls first, get oriented and settled with our groceries, phones, and knowledge of the area. Kim, the director of the Trust, has been truly incredible in how she cares for us and how she made sure we were settled and always feeling valued. Even with how great she is, after the first day started and the realization hit that I was here for a year, I got into a really unstable state where it was so easy to spiral into the most negative thoughts. Thoughts of wanting to go home, thinking that I shouldn't be here, that I didn't want to be here, that someone else was more fit, that some other missionary was having the time of their lives and I chose the wrong place. Most of all I wanted to hide. Seeing on social media how the other SMs in other places would post highlights of their time, it made me deeply insecure in having even decided to go anywhere in the first place, because I felt ungrateful.

Cows on the way to the market

I'd heard from other people that your spiritual life gets a lot stronger when you go serve for a year, and I would always take it lightly. But this first week there was truly nothing but journaling, prayer, and devotion, and complete reliance on God that could've helped me through it.

We got there Wednesday night, and went to Narok on Thursday. Actually, here would be a good time to give some context to my location. I'm in the Olmalaika Trust for girls, and if you haven't read from my main page, it is a home for babies who have been abandoned and for girls who have gone through sexual abuse, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. It's located in Sekenani, which is a small small town right next to the Maasai Mara Reserve. When I say next to, I mean neighbors. We're 5 minutes away from the reserve, and there are no fences or gates so animals roam free. The Trust is protected by walls and wire, but we are quite literally living in the bush. Animals can be seen frequently and heard especially at night. We have a market that comes once a week to bring fresh things and some dry goods, but all other necessities have to be postponed until someone has to go to Narok, which is a town about an hour and a half away. So the Thursday town trip was a day thing, and we got our SIM cards set up and did groceries for the week. Oh also, the SMs cook their own meals! Surprise, we did not know what to plan for, so we just got a lot of food that we thought we would need that was long lasting, and headed back. This day we got introduced to the girls at worship, and two weeks later as I'm writing I can say I had no idea how quickly I'd fall in love with all of them.

Drive to Narok with Angel, Kim's daughter!

View from our kitchen!

Friday was pretty slow and we got a tour of the Trust and I helped make chapati for the first time! We had some games at vespers and it was one of the first times I felt genuine smiles on my face since I'd been there. (I'm realizing that I'm writing so much and trying to get all the details and I'll forget a lot but I'll keep it brief, I'm relying on my journal for recollection).

Sabbath was probably the lowest I've been since I've been here. We went to church with the girls and the whole service was in Swahili, and since I couldn't understand it I felt my brain slipping away quickly into another spiral of negative and insecure thoughts. The only thing that kept me holding on was the Bible I'd brought, and I just read stories in the gospels the rest of the time to keep me from crying. I was missing home and friends and Jeffrey, and I was missing the feeling of knowing what I'm doing. Our phones still weren't fully working (our Kenyan phones and paying apps fully worked about 5 days after we got there, on Sunday). In the afternoon I was hiding in my room, and Kim came and talked to Shudear and I for a while for a little orientation, and when I told her I was already feeling a bit homesick she came over and gave me a hug, which made my day. After that my day started to look up, and spending time with the girls filled me with life again. At night, the girls got the drums out and did a Maasai dance for us, which was so amazing to see! I can't believe the same girls that Kim has told us about the things they've faced are the same ones that laugh with me every day and smile constantly. They love to braid our hair and give us so much affection.

Kenya sunsets are unmatched :)

Shudear and I after a braiding session :)

The week started and we got set up to teach at the school, I was to teach English for Grade 6 and PE for Grade 5. On Monday we figured out the schedules and toured the school, and each classroom I passed by and introduced myself was full of at least 40-50 students staring and smiling at me. When we'd leave a classroom, I'd hear murmers and giggles and repeating of our names. One thing that was definitely a culture shock was that there is little to no hands-on learning in classrooms. They learn strictly from words written on a blackboard. That being said, students here are SO well behaved in class, so it makes classroom work easy. Tuesday I observed the class I would be teaching to get an idea of how to structure a lesson plan (by the way I didn't even dream that I'd end up teaching this year). And that's the end of the first week!

This was the first Sabbath here!

It was a little long, and by the end of the week Shudear and I had broken the ice and connected more, so I was feeling a lot better. Days go by very slow here, and I think a slow pace life is what everyone needs to experience at least once in their life. Thanks for making it this far if you did, and in my next entries I'll be more concise! This was just to set the stage lol. I hope you have fun reading :)