01. Introduction - Journies

A journey is always-already a space in-between places: a memory of what was known tethered to what is imagined. I know that I have learned many things in these past nine years steeped in the American way of doing healthcare. I imagine I will experience amazing and terrible things on this trip that will force me to reshape what I thought I knew, and to re-imagine what I believe is possible.

This journey began even before leaving the US. As the last month of my time in Rhode Island  approaches, I feel myself being lifted, almost as a plant by the roots, out of my intentional self-location on the East coast. New England is the place I have called home for the past 9 years - and part of me thought I might never leave. Leaving will indeed be a journey. Transplanting myself to the West coast also means being farther away from my family and the community I have known.  And so the physical act of moving to Kenya for the next month and a half feels almost like a trial-run of that coming transplantation.

Of course, in many ways my trip to Kenya will be vastly different from a move to Seattle. For while the latter will mark a continuation of my journey in (American) medicine; Kenya, I imagine, will be something else - a kind of discontinuity. For while the form of medicine I will experience will be similar - the process of learning, the rounding, the delving into the lives of my patients. The limitations of the infrastructure and the strains on the systems there will likely greatly alter both what is done and what can be done for the who people I provide care. And therefore, the learning will be that much more obviously circumscribed or bound to the context of Kenya: not so easily or readily translated into an American context.

Anticipating this, I imagine I will have to rely even more on my own internal processing of these experiences. I will need to delve even deeper into explorations of myself as I fit (or do not fit) within the medical system - both Kenyan and American. I hope that I might move through my journey in Kenya with an open heart and mind so that I may truly experience and embody it. I hope I may absorb its lessons - both the joyful or tragic - and with them, mold myself anew.