My Western Fix

Despite, the political unrest, you could tell that Nairobi is a great city. It actually helped to give me my “Western Fix.” The coffee shop “craze” has not reached Kampala, but it is prospering in Nairobi. I got an iced vanilla latte every day. They even had it with nonfat milk! What luxury! The presence of fast food, coffee shops, pancakes, and strawberries, made me almost jealous of the missionaries that get to live there! Furthermore, it was a treat to go into a bookstore, almost the size of Borders; we spent two hours just browsing and reading. We have nothing like that in Kampala. And we even went bowling, but that was only because everything else in the entire city was closed and we were so very bored, waiting out the result of the Presidential elections. It all made me realize that I am actually living the true “missionary” experience. On the other hand, it has been a great experience to live with less. What would it feel like to just possess the bare minimum of living, and not to be surrounded by stuff/clutter, or in other words excess? Well, come to Africa with only two packed bags and then you realize how much you can live without. I can tell you that it is “freeing.” Sure there are some things that you really miss. I do miss big bookstores, drive-thru banks, and the coffee pastime. But, ultimately, what you realize is all the things that you don’t miss. I miss experiences and good times with friends, but I really don’t miss any particular object. I think about all the things resting in my storage unit back home for the last two years. In other words, I am paying money to store items that I am not using! This should be the very definition of excess. And while, I doubt that I will return to the States in a rampage of minimalism, I think this experience will, at the bare minimum, change my priorities, but it also, more than likely it will change any life endeavor to collect objects.