Africa!

My flight for Nairobi, Kenya leaves tomorrow night. And I am completely psyched about it. Tonight, a friend who is doing a journalism project on Sudanese refugees in Israel, invited me to a dinner at the home of an individual named Gabriel, who happened to be the nephew of the infamous leader, Dr. John Gurang, of the Southern People's Liberation Army. After decades of civil war in Sudan, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 stalled the fighting of the second Civil War between the Muslim/Arab north and the Christian/Animistic south (throw in oil revenues to complicate it all), giving the south autonomy for six years, and a role in the northern government. In 2011 there will be a referendum that will decide the future of the south. Gabriel, and his friends I met, are in Israel after fleeing political persecution in Sudan and Egypt. Type 'Comprehensive Peace Agreement' into the search engine and you'll get more information than you'll ever need.

This dinner was awesome for a few reasons: (1) They were SO excited about the fact I was going to Kenya, and convinced me of how much I am going to love Africa, the people, and the freedom. (2) Gabriel is connecting me with his rebel commander cousin to meet up with, (3) He's the nephew of Dr. Gurang- and when and if S. Sudan gets a government of its own, he's going to be one important dude. He already is- Oprah is meeting him in October. All I could really do was sit and think, what is my life? Two people who have met Oprah in one summer? (4) They were genuinely just crazy awesome people! So nice and friendly, intelligent, eloquent. Granted, they are the cream of the S. Sudanese elite crop, but still. (5) Their perspective of Israel- one shared with me how he sympathizes with Israel's situation, seeing many parallels with the development of the state of Israel and the Southern Sudanese struggle. He told me how he sees lessons that SS can learn from how Israel was able develop and secure its position as a state. (hmmm.....) I don't know a lot about this, but I'm so lucky that there are so many other cool Carolina kids in Israel I can piggyback off of for epic experiences :)

Anyway, all this got me insanely excited for Kenya. Carolina for Kibera, the organization that I will be working with, has done some truly amazing things. Established by a former Carolina student, CFK is now composed of health clinic, women's rights center, community waste-management program, and sport's association. CFK has highlighted many of the problems facing Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. It hosted President Obama during the election, and inspired a Representative David Price and Brad Miller to introduce the SLUM Assistance Act to Reduce Global Poverty. CFK is run on the ground completely by Kenyans, and received Time Magazine's 'Hero of Global Health' in 2005. Honestly, I have no idea why they picked me for this, and I feel so humbled to be a part of such an amazing program.

I'll be working with the sports program (we'll see how quickly those 8 years of soccer come back), since its focus is on building leaderships skills and easing ethnic tensions through team building. I don't know exactly what I will be doing yet, although at one point it was described to me as 'capacity building-' no one quite knew what that meant, or how I would be remotely qualified to do anything that it might suggest. Oh, and I'm banking on Swahili being as easy as everyone says it is- because I don't know a lick of it right now.

One month to the birthday. I'm not sure what can top camping in the Sinai Desert (although Dahab left much to be desired), but I have a feeling that Kenya won't fail me.