Greetings from Akron PA

Hello friends,

It seems hard to believe, but a week ago I was boarding a plane, and now after a week of orientation, I am preparing to board the final leg of my journey to Kenya tomorrow. Orientation has been truly wonderful though. A good time of preparing, learning, fellowship and cultural exchange. I feel much better equipped to work with and represent MCC now, and am honored to be working with such a grounded organization, and with such an amazing group of people.

Orientation has conisted of a series of sessions teaching us what MCC is about, from history, to mission and values, to the scope of their work. If you want to learn more about MCC, I would really encourage visiting their website. For me, not coming from a Mennonite or MCC background, I found everything quite compelling. It is a very grounded peace, development and relief organization though, respected in the countries it works in, with a philosophy of partnership and exchange. The rest of the sessions talked more about cross-cultural exchange.

That exchange has been my favorite part of orientation, for in addition to the 50 some people doing my program and going to many countries around the world, the orientation is also for the 50 or so some IVEP and YEMAN participants. IVEP, or International Volunteer Exchange Program, is an older program than SALT and it takes young people from countries around the world, and places them with organizations and in host families here in the US and Canada for a year. YEMAN, or Young Anabaptist, Mennonite Exchange Network, meanwhile takes young adults from countries other than the US and Canada and places them with partners in other countries than the US and Canada. For example, Zimbabwe to Mexcio. For this week though, we are all one, placed into community together, sharing life and fellowship and all preparing for our years ahead. Getting to know the other SALT participants from around the US and Canada has been a lot of fun, but getting to make friends from Zimbabwe or Zambia, Indonesia or Nepal, has been equally and especially fun. At the same time, it makes leaving tomorrow, while exciting, also a little bittersweet as we must all say goodbye to our new friends. Living in a cross cultural community for a week has been a great way to learn and share about the regions we are going to and coming from. It is one thing to learn about Kenya or Africa from a book or presenter, and quite another to learn from a peer and friend who is from there. At the same time, it is good to be able to share about the culture you come from.  Living in a cross cultural community also makes any conversation about oppression and hope, or peace, better. It keeps us from speaking only from one cultural lense.

One of my favorite sessions was on stereotypes, on the danger of telling a single story. In one of our sessions yesterday we watched a video of a speach by Chimanda Adichie called 'The danger of a single story'. Here is the link, and if you have time, watch it. 

http://www.ted.com/talk/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html.

She is an amazing Nigerian novelist(I would also recommend her books), but in her speech she is talking about the dangers of single stories, having only one story for a place. For instance, here in the west, we often have only a single story of Africa and that is one of disaster and catastrophe, but to tell a single story is a lie. It is to take away others ability to contribute, to be fully human. Truly, I can only sum it up, but do watch the link, and maybe I will blog more about that alone someday. However, it is my warning, when I get to Kenya, I am not an authority on Kenya. I can only speak from my experience, tell my story, and it is a single story, and I hope it will stand in contrast to the single story told by the media. In truth, I hope it will help dismantle that story, but do know, that is only what I see or know, and will all come from my cultural lens.

Let me end with something lighter, what I like to call, our comedy of errors. For while this week has been incredible, it had also had some unusual moments. On Friday, our second day here, we were instructed not to drink the water, because ecoli bacteria had been found in a local well! While at least the SALT participants came equipped with a healthy share of anti-diarrheals, we did not anticipate having to use them before we even arrived in our host countries. Thankfully, preventions were in time, and nobody became ill, but still... not what anybody had expected. Then, Monday evening during dinner all 100+ of us were stuffed into a basement they did not know existed, because there had been a tornado warning(meaning a tornado had been spotted nearby). It was my first tornado warning, but all the IVEP participants who will be living in Pennsylvania were assured that neither the water situation nor tornados are common. THe last comedy of errors was completely my own, in that in the busyness of getting ready to week, I had managed to swap one of my sandles with a friends(they were the same make, different sizes) and, my head being full, not noticed, at least until somebody pointed out that one of my shoes was bigger than the other. Thankfully, thanks to the US postal service and my brother, everything was able to be sorted out, and I will be going to Kenya with a good pair of walking sandles that actually match and fit!

And with that image, I am signing out. I will write another update once I am settled into language courses in Nairobi, but this afternoon we have a commissioning service, and I have some things I need to do before.