4 Weeks in Kenya

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Being accepted to join a Habitat for Humanity project in Kenya was both an exciting and anxiety-inducing experience. On one hand there's the anticipation that typically comes with the opportunity for a new experience, on the other there is the apprehension of knowing that you're going to be in a location and culture that is absolutely foreign. Most of the time the excitement was overwhelming, though there were definitely moments where I would ask myself "Do we know what we're doing?" and not being certain of the answer.

Thankfully we knew we weren't going to be alone, we were going to be there with a team of fellow travellers, although we hadn't actually met any of them just knowing that there were going to be people around that were in the same situation as us was comforting.

There were definitely some times where we had to convince our families that everything was going to be ok. We dealt with that by making sure we were extra-confident in discussing our preparations. It also didn't hurt to keep reminding them that the team leaders (and a few of the team members) had done this sort of thing before and that we were going to be in good hands. I'm pretty sure that if we had said we were going to do all of this on our own that our families would have been less eager to support us.

Trips of this size and scale take a lot of planning. There's always more to do than anticipated. Adding to this, since we were going on a charitable mission, there was a fundraising component involved as well. I've never been good at these sorts of things, even as a kid I never really participated in many of the fundraising drives for schools, hockey teams or other clubs. Something about asking for money always turned me off. This time though it wasn't an option, there was no way we could have afforded to do the trip without some financial support.