Undergraduate / To be a voice for those who have lost their loved ones [3]

I was seven years old when my best friend and older sister died. She was nineteen. A senior in high school, an accomplished artist, a strict "mother" and the kindest person in the entire world. Her name was Tam and she was legally blind, the proud owner of two glass eyes that she popped out nightly into little cups like little waxing and waning slivers of moon. She called me her Kiwi and I called her Tammy (a nickname I had sole access to) and together we were unstoppable.

She taught me how to set a table, how to draw a picture of a rose, how to hold my breath underwater for a minute, how to boil an egg, how to knit, how to tell the difference between a male and a female bullfrog, when to keep a fish and when to cast it back, how to grow a garden, how to tie my shoes, the fine art of musicless dancing, how to be polite even when you don't feel like it. But above all else, Tam taught me how to listen.

She taught me how to listen to the world around me. In fact, she listened so well I sometimes wondered if she could actually see. She could hear you tell a lie before it even escaped your lips and could tell you were coming before you arrived. It seemed she could identify colors and shapes through sound and mash them all together to form her world.

From the time I was able to talk, I've had a severe stutter. I went to speech therapy twice a week making slow progress. She always told me the problem was not in my talking but in my listening. It's not until years after her death that I am able to realize the gravity of that statement. She was SO right. Listening makes all the difference. So, I turned up the volume of my ears and sat and listened for a while.

Years later, I found myself in the middle of Sub Saharan Africa, specifically a place called Dadaab refugee camp. Designed to fit 90,000 refugees, Dadaab now houses over 400,000 refugees with 1,300 new inhabitants streaming in everyday. As far as the eye could see, the ground was covered in thick red sand. The air was thick with dust and as the wind died down and the dust began to settle miles miles of tattered white tents were revealed to me. Inside each tent, a family, a story and an opportunity to help someone less fortunate than myself. I spent a few days at the camp flying to and from the slightly less dangerous airport in the metropolis of Nairobi. I saw women, children, men and infants die, I saw an African generation starving to death for no reason and I saw what happens when people don't take the time to listen to each other.

On my last day in the camp we visited an elementary school. Despite the deplorable conditions that the people were living in, they had this insatiable appetite for knowledge. The children sat heads bowed, staring intently at dusty, dirty books, practicing their english. I sat down and talked to some of them, they were thrilled at a chance to speak english with a native speaker. I wrote some sentences that they could practice in their tiny notebooks and it was as if they had just won the lottery. They were so excited to drink it all in, all they wanted to do was learn.

A thought that I heard repeated over and over again was education. They begged me that to tell my President about the mass atrocities happening to them on a daily basis, they thought he must simply not be aware of their plight, they couldn't fathom the fact that many people are apathetic unless the situation directly impacts their lives. They begged me to hear their pleas and to help them.

Since that experience I have returned to Kenya twice, leading volunteer groups and building schools, health centers, clean water sources, community gardens and sanitation stations. I am going on my third trip to the region the summer of 2013. I believe I've been hearing for years but I am just beginning to listen and comprehend. in hearing these different, heart wrenching stories I found my purpose in life. To be a voice for those who have lost theirs.