I am going to be in Kenya in a little less than two weeks. This is all a little hard to comprehend. Although I have moderate travel experience, this trip is so unlike anything I have previously done, so now I cannot even imagine what this will be like. My nerves are a mess right now.I will be spending the next three months living in Kakamega, Kenya, a town in Western Kenya near the Ugandan border and Lake Victoria. I will be working through an organization called the Foundation for Sustainable Development. My three month internship will be with an organization in Kakamega, called Rush, in which I will do community outreach with women and children who have HIV/AIDS. I will be living with a family in Kenya, and will be working to help create and implement a project that is sustainable and will help the community I am living with. This is such an exciting opportunity, as my university career has centered around studying these types of projects and the work I will be doing. It is so hard to imagine everything I have learned about in my classes, actually being my real life.
The pre-trip preparations have been difficult, with anxiety taking over more and more frequently. I cannot remember feeling this way before I went on Semester at Sea. It puzzles me as to how calm I could have been before my first big trip away from home, being gone for 4 months and visiting 10 countries. With that and many other trips on my travel resume, it would make sense for me to be calm and prepared for what lies ahead. Well maybe ignorance was bliss.
