inadequacy

I sat with two Americans who are working for the Umoja Project and living in the village for some weeks this summer and reflected on life and living in Kenya, future goals, and current struggles. One said she’s always had a passion for living and working abroad, but then she goes somewhere, like being in Kenya, and feels entirely inadequate most of the time.

Most of the time here, I feel entirely inadequate.

I feel inadequate sitting in homes, facing children who have lost everything and everyone, and saying: “I know there are so many challenges, but I see you are working so hard and I encourage you to keep working.”

I feel inadequate walking around the wards of the hospital, seeing two and three children to a bed, hearing screams from the procedure room, watching mothers cradle their limp babies who are using all of their energy just to take in breath and being unable to take it away from them all.

I feel inadequate when I sit with a child who was found locked in his home for a week and who is now extremely dehydrated, malnourished, and afraid and all of the little Swahili I once knew flits from my mind such that I am unable to ask what hurts, unable to provide comfort, unable to assure him when he is picked up and begins to cry that he isn’t going back to his house, isn’t going back to his father, unable to show I care.

I feel inadequate when I am speaking with a secondary student who, quietly and with exceptional composure, tells me his mother died and his father left and sometimes he is challenged because he’s now the oldest of the family and it’s difficult to find food and I am lost for words with which to respond.

I feel inadequate when I hold an eighteen-month old who is the size of a four-month old, who has scars of abuse all over his body and covering his little neck, and who was found in a trash can downtown and try desperately to make him smile.

I feel inadequate just walking in to visit the hospice where I will work for a month in July and August and try to conceive of being a presence of good there.

Most of the time here, I feel entirely inadequate.

But I’m starting to believe that maybe these feelings of inadequacy are necessary. But only so long as one does something with them.

It is in moments when I feel entirely inadequate that I am challenged to be, to live, to love further, more deeply, with greater heart. When I challenge myself to stay with the secondary student, the child, the family, the baby, the work being done, the care being given, challenge myself to take deep breaths, challenge myself to continue holding, challenge myself to create and then to live out my Kenya mantra: walk not with fear but with compassion.

And so I replied to her: “well, I tend to think that when I stop feeling inadequate when I’m living and working in Kenya, then maybe it’s time for me to leave.”