I'm not going back.
There's no plane ticket, nor is there any money for one. The man I love is still over there; slicing mangoes, shooing children off his porch, succumbing and playing with them, hosting garden presentations for his village. He's still waving hello and offering a "Mulishani" or "Chungulo mukwai bamayo/batata" at every happy Zambian villager passing by with yellow plastic buckets of water balancing perfectly on their heads or on bikes with "ulukasus" (garden hoes) precariously extending off the backs. And I won't see it again.
How can you let these memories just fade away?
All I can do is bring that life home with me, as much as I can afford to.
"The greatest downfall of humanity I see is not that people don't know how to love properly and purely, but that they don't know how to suffer properly and purely." I saw that lying on Stefan's shelf-a little note I wrote on the back of a restaurant menu and subsequently sent him in the mail. He must have felt a bit of satisfaction, or even elation, once he realized what he was about to show me.
I saw parents who could barely afford to feed their children, who had to sit down one day and decide which of their seven kids was worth sending through secondary school; which one had a shot. And though these were the daily challenges, I saw them smile warmly at me, shake my hand, and take our brazier to light it for us with the remaining coals from their own dinner. I saw true compassion. And resilience. I saw that people knew how to suffer properly.
Maybe no generation ever becomes more enlightened than the one preceding it. Maybe our bodies and minds are just one huge distraction from finding Truth. Maybe we're not meant to.
But it never hurts to try...
I walked away wondering,
The answers are there. What's it going to take the human race to act on them?
Nasembilila panono.
There's no plane ticket, nor is there any money for one. The man I love is still over there; slicing mangoes, shooing children off his porch, succumbing and playing with them, hosting garden presentations for his village. He's still waving hello and offering a "Mulishani" or "Chungulo mukwai bamayo/batata" at every happy Zambian villager passing by with yellow plastic buckets of water balancing perfectly on their heads or on bikes with "ulukasus" (garden hoes) precariously extending off the backs. And I won't see it again.
I'll never again be the spectacle at the water well. Trying my hardest while the Zambian women point and laugh and cheer once I'm able. Who stop and smile and say hello once it looks natural.
How can you let these memories just fade away?
All I can do is bring that life home with me, as much as I can afford to.
"The greatest downfall of humanity I see is not that people don't know how to love properly and purely, but that they don't know how to suffer properly and purely." I saw that lying on Stefan's shelf-a little note I wrote on the back of a restaurant menu and subsequently sent him in the mail. He must have felt a bit of satisfaction, or even elation, once he realized what he was about to show me.
I saw parents who could barely afford to feed their children, who had to sit down one day and decide which of their seven kids was worth sending through secondary school; which one had a shot. And though these were the daily challenges, I saw them smile warmly at me, shake my hand, and take our brazier to light it for us with the remaining coals from their own dinner. I saw true compassion. And resilience. I saw that people knew how to suffer properly.
I saw kids happily holding beetles that would be cooked into a relish for dinner and eating termite dust off stakes holding a thatch roof over tomato beds, while my partner and I struggled to figure out why.
Life isn't about comparing. Life isn't some sort of framework that we can tap into simply with our minds. It's much deeper than that. Shoot, you think it'd be so magical if we could just use an organ (that more often than not deceives us), and maybe a good education and some technology to figure it out? Life has to be felt, deeply and purely.
But it never hurts to try...
I walked away wondering,
The answers are there. What's it going to take the human race to act on them?
Nasembilila panono.
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