When people are gone for a long period of time here, Kenyan friends and family generally greet you with, “Where have you been? You’ve been lost for long…” I haven’t looked it up, but I’m thinking maybe it’s a Kiswahili translation that comes out a little differently in English. I knew right where I was the whole time. I could point it out to you on a map, but this isn’t exactly what they’re talking about here. I wasn’t lost, myself, I was lost to them…the community notices the absence, and the question posed is one of concern and care.
It has made me question the literalness of their question, though. I think I have been feeling a little “lost” as of late in the sense that they mean. I’ve been lost in my own thoughts, mostly about my future. I’ve been lost from home (home) and family (family) for a long time now. But even as a grade school kid, I realized that the best part of getting lost was finding a new way back… In this case, I’m being found…
I was in Kisumu, the western part of the country, for the National Drama Festivals when a kind stranger provided my first example. I was looking around in the evening our second night, hoping to find a cheap place in town to stay when I bumped into someone who immediately said, “you look lost…” I laughed inwardly, and said that I wasn’t lost, I was just looking for a place to stay, and did she know any? She mentioned her hotel and the price, which was too much for me, so I thanked her and thought I was moving on when she promptly told me I wouldn’t find a place at that hour and to please follow her… She whisked me away in her vehicle, found an empty room where she was staying, and decided to sponsor me for the night. I later learned that she worked for the ministry of education and also that she decided to sponsor me for the rest of the week- meals included, no charge. I didn’t really know how to take all the kindness in. My first reaction was to question it, “are you sure this is ok?” “I can really find a cheaper place to stay…” “Is it too much trouble…?” etc. She was a little taken aback by my questions and used the opportunity to tell me, “You see, though Africa is changing a lot, we still operate with a village mentality… when someone is lost and not from here, we have to take them into our village, to provide for them…It is our way.” I reluctantly accepted this new-found way.
Another example was when I “lost” my phone. I’d like to point out that clearly and unmistakably, my phone was stolen, but people over and over kept apologizing for my “phone getting lost…” As soon as it happened though, a search team quickly banded on a red hot hunt. My phone was never recovered, but someone let me borrow theirs until I replaced mine, and I made some friends along the way… The community was again taking on my loss as their own.
Things that I’m now losing as a result of my experience here is my tendency to bare loss on my own, or to not admit when I’m lost and need some guidance. Things are rarely done alone here, and their unwillingness to let me “suffer in silence,” reaffirms what I actually believe: that we are only truly found in community, in relationships with others. It was around Easter time when all of this took place. The holiday that evokes new life, of joy…of accepting a gift of life undeserved and then letting this gift be transformative in your own life. I know these beautiful gifts of hospitality I’ve received all throughout this year are working their transformations in me…
"What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?... I find myself modestly encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail." -Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father
