A Punch to the Spiritual Nutsack

And trust me it was an unpleasant experience to say the least. I was walking home when it happened. I realized I had gotten myself lost, and it was a slow an imperceptible drift downstream.
I was leaving a PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) group hangout day and feeling the weight of the large amount of complaining and negativity that was occurring (and I am not guiltless of participating), when I discovered that I had forgotten what I have come here for. Yes, training can be exorbitantly annoying and tedious but I came here to love the people who live here, and I haven’t been doing that. I have been seeing training as the thing I have to get to before I can work at my site and show love there, but there are people that live HERE in Loitokitok, and sometimes I have seen them as a nuisance, and I didn’t even realize it or see that that was what I was doing. I sicken myself.
While I was walking home this women came up to me and being quite very affrontive was yelling things in KiSwahili. I could only make out ‘Habari yako?’ a greeting which essentially means: ‘What is the news with you?’, but she was definitely not using it as a greeting. I went the avoiding route, which honestly was the advisable and probably the safest thing to do, but that was when it struck me. I am avoiding that which makes me uncomfortable. Life is comfortable when you separate yourself from people who are different from you.
Hanging out with the group is fun, but they can be a distraction from what I came for. I desire rather to grab a soda and just sit in the market and be available to approach and not simply be a mzungu (the term used for a white person but it literally translates to “one who walks around”) which we usually tend to be. That will take trust, and trust is not a comfortable place to be. As humans we seek refuge in what we have and what we know rather than trust in what G-d will provide and show us.
The question that hit me was; “What are you doing right now that requires faith?” “But Nathan,” you might say, “You’re in Africa! Isn’t that a big leap of faith?” Yeah, it WAS, but that step has already been taken, I have more to take.
So, it is time to take another step of faith and stand in the brokenness and let G-d do his marvelous work.