Yesterday it dawned on me that i have been home for a month, and that seems like a lifetime ago. i deeply struggle within myself processing out my trip. Maybe because although i am changed, it was easy to slip back into life at home.
For me it was amazing, and has deeply impacted my life. i cannot ever be the same, but at times i find it so difficult to verbalize my feelings.
i miss it there. . . It now becomes an ache in my soul that my not be fulfilled until i return again and again. It's funny because Portland so much is my home, and for the most part there is nowhere else i would rather be. However, as i look through my pictures i think of how much i miss the faces staring back at me.
It was hard putting my photos in an album. Honestly this is something that i am still struggling with. . . The faces, each with a story to tell and the responsibility i feel to tell their stories of joy, hope, stigma, and struggle. i realized as i was looking through my pictures that i did take some interesting shots that were artsy- but they were of stuff, and not of people. It hit me like a freight train when i was placing the photos on the pages that i couldn't, and didn't want to take 'artsy' pictures of people because then it becomes about the photo and not the person. i struggled with why i was taking their picture, which is probably why it was so easy to take like fifty pictures of the kids playing.
Now i feel like there will always be this awkwardness of the realization of what i have. i have the luxury of placing these photos in a scrap book with pretty paper, and the ability to make it look cool- but that doesn't feel right. Because if all i care about is what is cool then i do a disservice to myself (because that is not who i am), and to allow the Creator to create beauty in the mundane.


This is my friend, Erin, taking video footage of a girl we met while we were at the Ntyuka Health Center in Dodoma. This girl is my favorite memory. In my brief time with her, although we did not speak the same language i felt our souls touch, and realized that after meeting her i would never be the same.