can’t speak about Amahoro

Do you remember those youth camps from high school where you’d drive back in the bus, and suddenly realize that for you the whole world has changed in a weeks time, but for everybody else, this was just another week? While sharing comunion last night, I realized that this has  been one of those weeks. For some of us who attended Amahoro, the whole world has changed this week.

I guess that’s why I struggle to speak about it at this stage. My one colleague asked a few hours ago whether I’m back all inspired and with lots of ideas and made a lot of new friends? The answer is “no” to the first two. I made many dear friends, but I’m not back inspired, siked up, with many ideas of how I’m going to change the world. The change that happened this week was on a much deeper level.

I’m back, and I’m a different Afrikaner than I was a week ago. I’m back, and I’ll be going in a slightly different direction theologically than I did a week ago. The change was in identity, in the direction that I take in my personal story. It’s the kind of change where I know that most probably nothing will change today, or tomorrow, or in the next week even. But in weeks to come, I will have to process the experiences, the challenging conversations, the meaning of the new relationships, the emotions, the thoughts on my people, my history, my culture, and in a years time, maybe something of what happened this week would become part of who I am on the deepest level.

So, 2010 in Nairobi. I hope to connect with the Amahoro family and my new friends from Kenya, Nairobi.

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