paradise

amazed
by what hands can build
but what would they be
were in not for
the minds that created them

My cousin, approximately 10 years my senior, took approximately 8 years to complete her 4 year degree programme. When I got to high school, I made a silent vow to myself never to go to university in my beloved Kenya, let alone a public institution. Who wanted to be stuck in school for a decade and still have no guarantee of work afterwards? All the TV I watched and the music I listened to did not help much. It opened up the western world to me and painted a picture of perfection to me. So my dream grew until it acquired a life of its own. I wanted to get as far away from dirty, filthy, unreliable, unstable Kenya and never turn back. Go far away to this perfect, clean, shiny western world where everything not only worked, you didn't have to work for it.
So with zeal and zest I searched for a school and got not 1 but 4 schools! The joy i felt was palpable, like another person walking around with me. I was finally leaving to go to where I was really meant to be. surely I was not meant to be born in poor old Kenya were I would not amount to anything. Then reality came like she always did-right on time. There was no money! NO!! A dream shuttered in a split second! NO, I cant be stuck here, I thought, I am not meant to be here... Dispair turned to acceptance. Decided to play the hand that I was handed. For six years the dream was buried, remained dormant just below the surface.
Again reality came, this time to twist the knife it had stuck in my back. Turns out my worst fears were being realised-my degree did not really inspire confidence in my potential employers. I mean, its from Kenya after all, corrupt Kenya. After all I went through to bury the dream, it got dredged to the surface. So I started to chase the dream again. This time by a twist of fate, the dream became a reality. Everything fell in place like it was fate. I was finally leaving Kenya!! Going to far away lands to explore and be all I can be and more. Difference is this time the dream had been adjusted. But the pre-conceived notions planted in my sub-conscious still persisted. This was the prefect world, the world so unlike Kenya so much better.
Then I got off the plane expecting to be awed. Even closed my eyes to prolong the suspense. I opened then and nothing... No big bang, no overwheming feeling of awe. Nothing. I looked around to make sure the 16 hours were not a round trip back home. I thought this was the perfect world, with no problems, no issues, just sand, sun and sea. But now I realise that its perfection was all make belief, fed to me by their publisists and magnified by my mind. It is no different than back home, services may be better but not by a mile. Infrastructure is better, but we can get where they are a surpase them. They are just people like use, nothing more nothing less. this is not heaven, this is just an extension of Kenya. Its no more different than the posh areas in Nairobi. Infact it is so similar to home, I cant feel home sick because it is like I never left.
Bottom line is many things are built by man, his sweat and his blood.That is the person who gets all the credit for the final product. But no one gives time to the person who came up with the idea, the person you do not ever see. The brilliant mind that came up with the concept. The mind can conceive and create things greater than anyone came ever built. Just look at how I built up this eutopic place called the 'western world' that was so perfect until when I got here, everything about it is now so mundane, so normal.