The Loose Ends of Kenya

(Apparently this vacation warrants four separate posts before I can get back to writing about mundane and uninteresting tidbits of our lives.)

Africa has an unexpectedly surprising place in our hearts. I don't generally associate "Africa" with "us," but in spite of all the weird looks we got from people, it was pretty easy for us to decide to take our vacation this year in Kenya. Jason has spent weeks at a time in Kenya, and, as many of you know, he will go back to the Africa Bureau at the State Department in January. We sponsor a child through Compassion who lives in, surprise surprise, Kenya. And, after all, we have so many trinkets from all of Jason's and my mom's trips there that our entire basement is outfitted in African garb.

Overlooking the Rift Valley

It was a little enlightening to me to be in Africa with Jason, meeting his friends and watching him interact with the Kenyan people. One afternoon on safari I came back from the gift shop to find him deep in conversation with a staff member there about the political situation following the 2007 elections. At the market where we bought a few things to add to our collection, I found myself just laughing with enjoyment as I watched him barter with those selling things, claiming that he should get a discount for being disabled or claiming "Yes We Can" in Swahili when someone would tell him they couldn't sell for such a low price or declaring that some trinket he didn't want must have been made in Sudan. And he almost cajoled the Kenya Airways representatives into letting us take our slightly-overweight on as hand luggage.

This year he has come to better understand and appreciate what I do at work every day, and in the week we were there, I felt like I was better able to understand what he does. I learned more about work in the Sudan Programs Group in one week than I did in the six years he worked there, and I listened with interest while he and U.S. Ambassador Ranneberger, who is Jason's former boss, discussed the reforms that must be made in Kenyan government to avoid the kind of disaster that happened in 2007. For these things alone our trip was more than worthwhile.

Also, we got to stay at the Ambassador's Residence, which was unbelievably sweet. Not surprisingly, we fell in love with the Kenyan tradition of afternoon tea. When served with chocolate cake on ambassadorial china, pretty much everything was right with our little world.