Dear Soldier,
I am writing from Nairobi. I arrived yesterday — the early morning of April 15, 2025 — having left Virginia the night before. The leaves were coming out when I left. I landed to the smell of Nairobi in the morning: diesel, rain on red soil, the particular clarity of the air at altitude.
I am here because my wife is here. We were married in January. The CR-1 petition is filed. The wait has begun.
If you are reading this, you know something about waiting. You know about the particular discipline of loving a country that is processing you. You know how to hold your posture inside a bureaucratic system that does not care about your timeline.
We trained for situations where we had to function under pressure without knowing the outcome. I keep returning to that training in the context of the visa process.
Stand by. I will write from here as the year unfolds.
Gabriel
Gabriel Mahia writes from the intersection of U.S. institutional infrastructure and East African operational reality. This essay is part of the Year in Kenya series — twelve months, April 2025 to April 2026.