My heart is full, as I return to my life here in the U.S. There is nothing quite like the experience of emerging yourself in another culture for a time. There are many things about African culture that I love.... But I especially love the way they relate to each others and to us. it was an opportunity for the intensity of rushing through the activities of my day, to be replaced by a choice to copy the African ability to be intense relational time. I will long remember the image of three or four Africans walking hand in hand or arm in arm down the road......
There is one child in particular that is imprinted indelibly in my mind. I would sit with him outside of the preschool classes at the end of the day. He must have been about four years old. He would sit and gaze into my eyes with a piercing look in his eyes, as if he were gazing into my very soul. Then a gentle smile would come across his face, and I would smile back. He spoke no English, and I spoke no Swahili or Luo, but the relationship was unmistakable. Several days in a row, we had our "time", at the end of the day, that suspended both the passage of time, of age differences and of language and culture. I will never forget him!
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