Back to the US

I found it ironic as I walked through the corridors of Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi, that the music accompanying me was Kenny Rogers' The Gambler. Nonetheless, country music was the background to my last hour or so before boarding my flight to Amsterdam.
Something that I noticed when I returned to Nairobi, in addition to just being happy about being there, was that the hostel that I had found dirty during my first stay, before going to Mombasa, had become much cleaner. At least that is how is appeared to me. After two weeks with no electricity, it was amazing to be able to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (armed with a bucket of water), and to be able to flip a switch to get light.
I left the hostel shortly before 7am on my last day and headed to the bus stop to catch a City Hoppa to the airport. My backpack was a pain in the ass for all the commuters crowded on the bus, but no one made nasty comments, even when I had to take it off as I stood in the aisle and it kept bumping the woman sitting near me.
Amsterdam revealed itself again as a lovely city, and I got a place in a hostel dorm for my overnight stay there. I love the smell of salt water.
At the airport the next morning, I sat meditating, waiting for my flight after downing a second cup of coffee. I was sitting in the smoking section of the airport cafe' because it was more comfortable and there were little tables where I could perch my cup.
As I sat there, a group of people came out of a nearby jet way. They were mostly working class men from the US. They looked like the kind of guys who I grew up around in McFarland. They're the kind of guys who would be sitting at the Green Lantern knocking back a few beers on a Wednesday night. One of them mentioned "hitting Dubai", so I thought that they may be military, although there were no fatigues anywhere in sight.
I asked an African-American woman who was with the group where they were going, and it turns out that I was right: they were headed to Iraq and Afghanistan and they were working for Halliburton. It made me sad. She was from Texas, and I imagined that the job prospects for her in Texas were probably not very good. These were all working-class people and I suspect that none of them had much to look forward to in terms of employment in their home areas. The hope that I chose to settle on as I observed this group was that maybe some of them would have a transformational experience overseas. Maybe some of them would see the Afghanis and the Iraqis as human beings, just like them. That is what I hope because I believe that that realization is the key to changing the attitudes that are being used to justify kiling Muslims (and others) around the Middle East and elsewhere.