Reflections

I will be departing for Africa in two hours; overnight to Entebbe, and from there to Bujumbara via Nairobi. So far, a long trip, but I am feeling refreshed after a day of total relaxation in the British Airways Business lounge: food (a surfeit of food, in fact, drink, a shower, a shave, and, surprisingly, a massage. But these respite-filled hours will probably be my last for many weeks.

I have no clue what I face tomorrow, what I will see. Will it be a land and a people and living conditions that are so unfamiliar to me that it will also feel surreal? I assume so. I know that tomorrow, I will totally abandon all that has been familiar to me. I ask myself, even as I am on the cusp of beginning that adventure, am I capable of doing that? Yes, I believe I am. Not only can I, but, for my own personal being, my own personal worth, I have to do it. I need this trip. Forget whatever help I provide to those in need, for I need this trip just as much for me. I do not need the trip to reinvent myself. I need it to challenge myself. I could not and cannot, at this point in my life, accept the normal and customary in my life. Look, I am, in no way, expressing dissatisfaction with my present life in Los Angeles. I love what I do: my practice, and my work at Childrens. But I wanted more, or maybe I just wanted different. Burundi is definitely in the category of different.

My trepidation at this point is on a more professional level. Is it hubris on my part to think that I can do what I do in a completely different environment, facing completely different diseases than I have ever faced before? Facing children so sick that I may not know what to do?I know that I have raised these issues previously in my blog. But, as I get precariously close to my day of reckoning, my fears and anxiety grow exponentially. But, yet, I go forward, and I will encounter what is to be encountered. Peter