here we have a focus

I had a long incredibly rich afternoon yesterday with Zahid Rajan and Zarina Patel, publishers of Awaaz, the progressive journal for voices of South Asian Kenyans. The kind of conversation that makes me think, What am I doing in the US, when there's so much I could be doing here?

Zarina captured the difference between her experience of being an activist in the US and an activist in Kenya:

Over there, there are so many causes and issues, you can get lost. But here we have a focus. We have a country that we want to change, we can see how to do it, we can see the direct, daily impact of everything we do.

It's what I've heard from others too, what I saw happen when I performed here in February. Nowhere else in the world can I generate the scale of response, the wave of impact, for the same effort invested. And yet, there's so much I still need to learn, so much work I still want to do in the US. I said to Zarina and Zahid yesterday:

I think I'll just be bouncing back and forth for the next few years. And if the time comes when it's really right for me to come back, I'll know.