Stranded in Kenya and abandoned by my country. Again.

Soldiers stood at the entrance to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi brandishing automatic weapons and bottles of hand sanitizer. My boyfriend and I were on our way home to the United States — or so we thought.

We had been on a safari I booked almost a year ago, enticed by an ad for a cheap flight. My family never had money for vacations when I was growing up, but as an animal-obsessed kid, I fantasized about seeing the most beautiful ones in the world. Elephants! Hippos! Zebras! Lions! This was my dream trip. And Kenya seemed like the perfect destination for commemorating the 10th anniversary of my husband’s death. Years before we married, when we were friends in junior high, I told Cleve about my dream, and we both laughed — Africa might as well have been another planet to two teenagers from rural Alabama.