I still wonder what to do. Over half a year later, and I still don't have it figured out. I think of children - their smiles lighting up my heart, chasing away the sadness and the selfishness. I think of woman laughing and at time crying out with anguish to their God. I think of a hopeless woman telling us her story and telling us she would have committed suicide by now if it was not for her young son. I think of woman dying of AIDS. I think of children dying of AIDS. I think of many widows who have watched their husbands die of AIDS now watching their children die of AIDS. Maybe for you, this makes you sad, but you don't know these people. You will go on with your day and perhaps even forget you read this. This isn't an abstract situation for me. These people have faces, they have voices, they have names. It is my adopted family who are struggling to recover from a terrible drought. It is my church family and my group of orphans who lost some of their number because of lack of food. Lack of food! They have things like AIDS and malaria to deal with, but that's not what killed them - lack of food. Something so preventable. Something we could have changed.

What is my responsibility? That is where my wondering what to do comes in. Someone told me yesterday that I can't fix Africa. I want to! I don't want another child to go hungry. I don't want another person infected with AIDS. I don't want another refugee to be stuck inside a refugee camp with no hope of a future in the next ten years. I want to make a difference. At the very least I want to bring hope. I want to send money, but that doesn't feel like I'm doing enough. I want to go over there, but who knows when that will work out with needing time off of my newly acquired job (not to mention saving up the required money). What will I do once I get there? How can I make a difference? What is my responsibility?

This never-ending question, this never-ending ache for the people of Kenya makes every situation that comes along in my life that much harder. As if I needed any situation in my life to be any harder. I feel overwhelmed by fear. Not a single thing in my future looks bright and beautiful - only scary and impossible. I feel like my life is lacking purpose. I float from one thing to next looking for meaning and when my search ends up fruitless, I feel despair. No one really understands. No one ever really has. I think I'm destined to go through life never truly understood. Sometimes it really bothers me. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm not sure where I fall along the spectrum right now.