How to respond?

So since another post from France is long overdue but I have yet to write one, I thought I’d give you something to think about until the next histoire française:

This is something I feel I have to share. While I am now on a different continent and eating wonderful food and experiencing yet another unique culture, part of both my mind and heart are still in Kenya. I thought I had seen real drought when I was there. I thought I had seen the worst of it.

This evening I had a short Skype chat with a friend from Kenya. He and his wife just had a new baby a month ago. I congratulated him, to which he responded:

…He is doing well, although things are very tough her in Kenya now due to [scorching] sun.

When I asked about the drought, he told me this:

Things are very [bad] here now. Drought has intensified. Most families are starving but thank God we are surviving

How can I respond to that? To hear that things have gotten much worse is unimaginable to me. And then for him to be most concerned about me and my family and that I am studying hard – how does one react?

One part of me wants to pack up all of my belongings and head back to Africa, but another part of me forces me to ask myself what I could even do to change the situation. I try to avoid the overwhelming feeling that despite all of my concern and work, I am just one individual who cannot end poverty and hunger; I try to avoid that feeling of helplessness. Generally I think I have done well with that, knowing that there is still much to be done but that I am helping in what ways I can at this point in my life.

But when I realized that things were still getting worse in Kenya, I think it forced me to recognize the fact that since I left the country, I’ve let some of the realities there slip into the background of my memory. Perhaps even while I was there – I always had clean(ish) clothes, three full meals a day, water, whether purchased or purified, a bed at night, anti-malarials, even a computer and sometimes internet. Sometimes I think I used those somewhat normal things to escape the images I saw each day.

To escape the hand dangling over the bed at the dispensary, IV still attached, but body void of spirit. To know that she could have lived longer than 56 years had her family had enough money to take her to Naitiri to be tested and treated for HIV. Maybe I used the laughter and shrieks of children when they first glanced the “mzungus” to mask the fact that their bellies were distended from malnutrition and visible though the gap between their torn and dirty shorts and too small shirts.
Now that I’m in France, traveling and exploring and studying, things that seem frivolous in contrast to the problems the people I met face, it’s hard not to think, “So what am I doing for them now?”

Of course being in France is an experience I am enjoying and I appreciate having, and I am certain it will be just as valuable, although in perhaps different ways, as my time in Kenya.

So, how did I respond? I replied by saying:

I'm thinking of you and all Kenyans. I can't imagine what it is like now, since it seemed so bad when I was there. And to think that was months ago.

To this, of course, my friend said thanks and then promptly asked about my family and all that I am up to. How very Kenyan of him! When I told him I was in France studying he said:

Good. Work very hard my friend. [T]hat is great. God bless you

Suddenly, “I’m thinking of you” just didn’t cut it anymore. There was no promise I could make. I saw how immense the problems are in small areas of Kenya. I saw how difficult it is to help even just a few communities make progress. There is no one solution. And Kenya is one of the more developed countries in Africa. So what could I say? Honestly, I am not one to say God bless you. I admit that, in fact, I generally try to avoid saying it, even when someone says it to me. Of course, this is an entirely different conversation, but suffice it to say that this time I didn’t have any other words.

And to realize that my friend is living in a third-world country ravaged by drought with people starving around him and yet he seems more concerned about me in a first-world country, how could I react but to say “God bless you too?”