Surprise surprise! I was called beautiful several times this month. Granted, one was from a 6 year old and one of them from a very old man (yes, even older than me). And yet, it has been so long since anyone called me beautiful, I just smiled all day. I do not get very many personal compliments here. People are always impressed with what the team has accomplished at the factory, but personal comments are few and far between. Gratitude is one feeling I have received from many. Brenda, the tailor, and I are now looking at her selling some pre-made gauchos made from lesos and some wrap around pants made from beautiful silk scarves from India. She is always making me feel good because she gets so excited about the small successes. That’s beautiful!
Not so beautiful in my world is my little laptop. Some of my keys are sticking a lot and I fear the keyboard has finally been overtaken by the blowing sand or ants or I have just plain worn it out. I am betting it is more about the sand and ants. I am considering taking the keys off one by one and seeing if I can clean under them. Does anyone know if that is okay to do? Would it turn an almost beautiful little machine into an ugly little machine?
The town had a clean up day. That was a beautiful sight. Employees from Mabati Rolling Mills, the Town Council, the Village Chief’s office, school children and even some of the LifeWorks team showed up and spent half a day sweeping streets of trash, cutting back overgrowth and burning, burning, burning anything they could find. The town did not smell so beautiful that day, but it looked pretty clean that afternoon.
I have beautiful friends and family in the United States. They are constantly sending me all kinds of treasures. Several people have sent flower and vegetable seeds. Unfortunately, I have no place to plant a garden, but the Village Chief does. She has been the recipient of the vegetable seeds and some of the flower seeds. It is beautiful to watch the faces of the many people I have blessed through each of you with flower seeds. They love them. The Chief is quite the gardener. They have never seen lettuce in the town. So, she planted some it and when it matured she was cooking it like spinach or kale. She let me harvest some of the veggies, so I made her a stack of BLTs (without the bacon – none here in a heavily Muslim area) for her and the several orphans she feeds and cares for at her homestead. There was so much lettuce; I ended up making sandwiches for several others as well. I used avocado spread I made instead of mayo. Beautifully yummy!
We are in the middle of Ramadan here. Muslims can only eat or drink right before evening prayers or before morning prayers. It means they fast from about 6 AM until 6 PM each day. They break their fast with special treats. So, I have gotten to share sandwiches, homemade veggie chili, popcorn and a few other things as special treats for my Muslim friends in the village. They in turn have been bringing me bajias (a Swahili version of a Southern hush puppie), samosas (deep fried meat or vegetable pastries – like fried ravioli) and several other special things. Sharing is a beautiful thing.
Two of our group left this month. One, Gibson, left to go back and finish his secondary education. He entered what is the equivalent of a freshman high school class a few weeks ago. We are all proud of him. Another young woman has been struggling getting to work on time and has been missing some days. When we spoke to her about it, she said she was sick. We knew she was not. She had been lapsing back into her old lifestyle. It was affecting her work and one day she just did not show up. The second day we had one of the students from the Technical School who lived by her go to see what was wrong. She told her she was not coming back. Several days later she called and wanted to know if she could have her job back. When she came in to talk to us, she still pretended like she had been sick and her old lifestyle was not the problem. I asked her to talk to the counselor at the school and be honest with him. I needed a good reason to bend the rule and bring her back. Well, he was able to get her to talk and sure enough, she had picked up 3 or 4 of her old customers and that was interfering with her coming to work. They developed a plan to get her moved to a new location and make some needed changes and we brought her back to work. That is so beautiful; it makes me want to cry.
I have had some not so beautiful scary things happen as well. A friend of mine, a young mother of two got cerebral malaria and almost died. She pulled out of it with extended medical treatment in the community hospital, but had several weeks of recovery. The tsunami scare was not really a big scare for me since I am so far inland, but it does give you pause to think about how vulnerable each of is to the fury of nature. It drives you a little deeper on your knees.
Less than beautiful was our last merry go round meeting. For the first time since the ladies have been together, one of them defaulted on a loan the group made. She had gotten very ill and was in the hospital for two weeks and spent all available cash on her medical bills. They have a strange rule here; no one is released from the hospital until you pay up…… anyway, the ten sisters had some very un-sisterly like behavior. I think it would have been better if she had told people in advance she could not pay, but instead she just skipped the meeting. That gave each of them time to worry and fret over whether or not she would ever pay it back. When she showed up at the next meeting, still without the money, the sisters got rowdy. It was ugly. They did not have any rules around what to do if there was a default so they did not even have a procedure to follow. In the end, a settlement was negotiated. She will have another 3 months to repay the loan and will pay double the interest to the group. That catastrophe taken care of, we are back to being beautiful sisters without malice.
Carl Jung said, “What you resist persists.” Well, once I gave into not having water – letting it go and getting on, guess what? The water came come September 1. It does not work everyday, but it is working more times than not. BEAUTIFUL!
I have attached a photo of two beautiful women cooking in their outdoor kitchen in Central Province. They are blessed. Most women in Mariakani just cook outdoors.
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