Look Closely

There has been a constant theme throughout my time in Kenya; "Look Closely". So much is missed in simply passing by. Yesterday the 5 of us (Katie, Tommy, Anna, Kevin and myself) were taken on a hike of the surrounding area by the novices' here at the Dominican compound. The novices' are in their second stage of becoming Dominican priests. Most of them are from Kenya and those that are not have been here for almost a year now and so they know their surroundings very well. On our hike we walked through a corn field. I pass this corn field every day on my way to school. In my rush, it has always appeared to be as a blur of greens and browns, never anything more significant than maize. Yesterday when we walked through the field, not past it, I noticed the most beautiful shades of deep purple in the leaves of the stalks. There were delicate orange and purple flowers mixed in among the maize, each one more beautiful than the next.  The field was like a painting I had never taken the time to look at. 

Reflecting upon my time here, a similar thing happened while I was hiking Mt. Kenya. As we would hike and look up ahead at the stretch of land that we had yet to cover everything just appeared green. Slowly as we approached different landscapes they became much more vivid. Beautiful exotic plants each with a special purpose. Some plants looks like flowers and were used to collect rain water, what an ingenious natural invention. Other plants bore fruit and had unique striations in their color, mixtures of golden yellows and chartreuse greens. Just like the maize field, I would have missed out on this beauty if I had not taken the time to notice and "look closely".

In all honesty, I was very nervous about being able to learn all the kids names and even more nervous that I would not be able to tell them apart. They all have deep, rich, beautifully dark skin and each of them, boys and girls, have short buzzed haircuts. On my first day, I thought for sure that I would need them to wear name tags for the next 4 weeks so that I could distinguish between them. STUPID ME! The children of OLG, like the stalks of maize and the plants of Mt. Kenya, do appear very similar when you quickly pass them by. Fortunately for me, I have been able to “look closely” at each one of them. They are each so unique with their own stories, their own aspirations, their own quirks! They are such individuals all bound together as brothers and sisters in this school. My ignorant worries of not being able to tell the people of Kenya apart have surely vanished. It may not be their skin color or haircuts that distinguish them from one another but it is their eyes. Their smiles. Their souls.