True Healing Starts from the Soul

Whilest in Addo Bayan was reading Paris Talks which is a beautfiul compilation of talks given by Abdu'l-Baha while He was in Paris. She came across one of His talks that she felt related to me as I had been sick and feeling down.

"GOD IS THE GREAT COMPASSIONATE PHYSICIAN WHO ALONE GIVES TRUE HEALING

October 19th

All true healing comes from God! There are two causes for sickness, one is material, the other spiritual. If the sickness is of the body, a material remedy is needed, if of the soul, a spiritual remedy.

If the heavenly benediction be upon us while we are being healed then only can we be made whole, for medicine is but the outward and visible means through which we obtain the heavenly healing. Unless the spirit be healed, the cure of the body is worth nothing. All is in the hands of God, and without Him there can be no health in us!

There have been many men who have died at last of the very disease of which they have made a special study. Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastronomic malady. Aviseu was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease. God is the great compassionate Physician who alone has the power to give true healing.

All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power and independence.

Behold the mighty kings upon earth, for they have all the power in the world that man can give them, and yet when death calls they must obey, even as the peasants at their gates.

Look also at the animals, how helpless they are in their apparent strength! For the elephant, the largest of all animals, is troubled by the fly, and the lion cannot escape the irritation of the worm. Even man, the highest form of created beings, needs many things for his very life; first of all he needs air, and if he is deprived of it for a few minutes, he dies. He is also dependent on water, food, clothing, warmth, and many other things. On all sides he is surrounded by dangers and difficulties, against which his physical body alone cannot cope. If a man looks at the world around him, he will see how all created things are dependent and are captive to the laws of Nature.

Man alone, by his spiritual power, has been able to free himself, to soar above the world of matter and to make it his servant.

Without the help of God man is even as the beasts that perish, but God has bestowed such wonderful power upon him that he might ever look upward, and receive, among other gifts, healing from His divine Bounty.

But alas! man is not grateful for this supreme good, but sleeps the sleep of negligence, being careless of the great mercy which God has shown towards him, turning his face away from the light and going on his way in darkness.

It is my earnest prayer, that ye be not like unto this, but rather that ye keep your faces steadfastly turned to the light, so that ye may be as lighted torches in the dark places of life."

(Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 19)

I really feel what Abdu'l-Baha is saying in this talk, I feel it so much since the rememdy that I needed to bring me out of my state of depression and back into life was service. On Tuesday whilest in Addo my doctor called me to give me the results of my blood test and he said that everything was fine, there was nothing physically wrong with me that was causing me to be so sick. All of my ailments were as a result of what was going on in my mind and the suffering that this had brought to my soul. To think that our general state of well being can be so powerfully linked to our physical state of health is amazing. Really it took my soul finding its source of happiness for me to recover. In Addo, although it took some time to occur, I got my appetite back, I started laughing and smiling again, I was re energised and motivated again and all because I was doing a few hours of service a day. The doctor had wanted to put me on medication for stress and to help me sleep but as always I prefer natural remedies over medicating myself and at the end of the day I didn't need medication to heal me. If only a few hours of service a day can bring the healing and happiness that I needed imagine what a lifetime of service can do for you. Imagine what applying the words of Baha'u'llah "work done in the spirit of service is the highest form of worship" would do to preventing sickness and illness.

I really do appreciate what Adbu'l-Baha says in the above talk, without our spiritual nature we would be nothing but another animal on this planet. We have been given something so great and so powerful that it elevates us so far beyond the realm of the animal which sits below us and that gift is our souls. When we don't care for our souls then what is there that differentiates us from animals? There is a reason why people say laughter is the best medicine, there is a reason why the will to get better has a greater effect on our health than any medication, there is a reason why prayer and meditation work so wonderfully in bringing us healing and that reason is that all these things are connected to a higher realm which is the realm of our souls and the only way to receive true healing is through that realm.

When Bayan read the talk to me and especially the paragraphs that relate to material and spiritual remedies I knew instantly that my sickness was not a material sickness but a spiritual one and thanks to my being surrounded by beautiful people like Bayan and Asanda and meeting inspiring individuals like the women at the creche and the kids who came to our junior youth group I was able to heal and be happy again.

Addo's shining light

I have previously written about an inspirational young Baha'i girl named Asanda who's efforts as the only Baha'i in Addo blew me away. In my post Inspiration I mentioned the children's classes that she was running and the amazing influence that she has in that area. Bayan and I took a trip down to Addo to stay with Asanda and help her out with some of the work that she is doing and again I was so inspired by both this inspirational girl and with Addo itself.

Bayan left for Addo on Thursday and I was supposed to go with her but I was waiting to hear from a landlord about whether he would rent his place to me and so I stuck around incase I was lucky enough to get it. By the end of the weekend I had given up on finding somewhere to live and so on Monday morning I took the trip down to Addo to join Bayan. I was physically and spiritually exhausted. It had been days since I had been able to finish a whole meal, the night before I left I had some corn for dinner and even then my body was rejecting food. I was drained, unmotivated, confused, upset and any other adjectives you can think of that describe a general state of depression. I barely had the energy to pack for this little trip and I was anxious as I was awaiting test results from the doctor aswell. To get to Addo without your own car you have to take a taxi from Motherwell so Olinga who had recently rescued me from homelessness, dropped me off at Greenacres before he went to work, then I got a taxi to town, a taxi from town to Motherwell and then got into the Addo taxi there. After sitting in the taxi for 20minutes waiting for it to fill up we finally were off and on our way. I arrived and got out to meet Asanda and Bayan and together we walked to a place that I will never forget.

Langbos is an informal settlement of about 500 people. The houses are all mud houses or shacks, there is no electricity or clean water and the settlement is plagued with the very common issue of excessive alcohol consumption. This community has been overlooked by the council, propper housing has been promised but again and again the commencement of its construction has been delayed, the excuse as always is lack of funds. We can only assume that the money has been drained into the pockets of those overlooking the projects. The families living in this area do seasonal work, picking oranges and working in farms and some of them receive monetary support from the government but many of the families are unable to receive money as they do not have an I.D or birth certificates and to attain these documents they have to travel to Port Elizabeth and many do not have the money to make that trip. The reason I will never forget Langbos is not because of the deteriorated state of the shacks that people call their homes, or because of the knowledge that during a heavy storm 2 people were killed when their mud house collapsed on them, or the sight of kids either almost naked or in torn clothes calling out to us and begging for food. The reason I won't forget Langbos is because of Inkwenkwezi Creche and what this pre-school teaches us about the power of the individual.

When a resident of Addo, Muffy Miller, saw children playing in an illegal rubbish dump in Langbos she decided to work towards establishing a safe haven for these neglected kids. After 5 years of fundraising she was finally able to fullfil that dream when in January 2006 the Intsikelelo Creche/Playschool opened offering supervision, food, clothing and most of all love to approximately 50 children a day. This facility is beautiful, everything from the paintings on the walls to the playground radiates with the love that it was established with. In the middle of this squatter camp where donkeys, goats and dogs wander freely and the community and the animals share the same dirty water stands this sanctuary. The community call it a safe haven for kids because that is exactly what it is. In communities like this unfortunately abuse and neglect are very common and the playschool offers a nuturing environment for these beautiful children.

The reason we were visiting Langbos and the Creche was because our own model for the power of the individual, Asanda, had approached the staff at the Creche who are also local residents and asked if they would be interested in being trained as Baha'i Children's Classes teachers and the staff had accepted so Bayan and I were there to complete their training. The Creche is managed and supported by three local churches and yet the current manager was so grateful that we had come to offer this service to the staff. To me that shows a genuine desire to work for the betterment of the community because she was willing to accept help regardless of where it came from, even another religion. So Bayan and I ran the sessions with two wonderful women Princess and Nomthandazo who will now incorporate the Baha'i lessons into the children's daily routine. Each lesson teaches a different theme and then uses prayers, songs, stories, art and games to emphasize and demonstrate each theme. The theme of the first lesson is unity and Nomthandazo loved the song that comes with this lesson so much she made us sing it at the start of every session we had together. The most wonderful thing about the Baha'i understanding of children's education is that it is the role of the teacher to help each child find their own talents and capacities and to bring those talents out. There is a bond that each teacher should create with each child, that no child ever be labelled as bad or misbehaved, no child should ever feel humiliated or under valued, children are not considered as empty books which we have to fill with our own knowledge. Instead we are asked to

"Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom."

(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 259)

Doing this course with these two wonderful women was so uplifting for me. Although getting to and from our accomodation at Asanda's house to the Langbos settlement was a mission as there are no taxis in Addo and we did not have a car and as hot as it was I still looked forward to our little trip to the Creche everyday where I could marvel at what a wonderful gift this Creche was to the community. I loved seeing the kids everyday and lighting up with each of their gorgeous smiles. This was definitely the medicine I needed to recover from the awful state I had been in a few days earlier.

To add to how wonderful this trip to Addo was I had the pleasure of facilitating a junior youth group established by Xola (a Baha'i from Johannesburg) when he had been visiting Asanda the week before I arrived. Asanda lives and works at the Elephant park with an entire community of other staff members and their families. There are so many children and junior youth living in this community who are yearning for junior youth groups and children's classes. Asanda would readily jump to offer these classes but as she already has 2 classes of her own and works full time it is too much to ask of her (although she has already offered). The kids that were attending the class were just so wonderful that being with them completely healed me from all my previous anxiety. Together we taught them prayers and shared stories with them which all had a moral that they had to figure out as well as playing games together and organising a service project. There was one young girl, only 7 years old, who astonished me more than any of the others. Her name is Camaron and she has a maturity and understanding that is far greater than her age. If you didn't look at her or hear the tone of her voice and only listened to the words she spoke you would think you were talking to a 14 year old. She just showed so much wisdom for someone who has only been around for 7 years. At one point she spoke about her school and how one of the teachers was still using Apartheid mentality and separated children in her class by race having one table for black kids and one for coloured...etc. She told us how she didn't think this was right and that everyone should be together and that she plays with everyone regardless of their colour. At another point she told us that people shouldn't fight, they should instead talk about their problems with each other. My goodness I just wanted to squish her, and I did. All the kids that attended the junior youth group were lovely and showed so much potential and their parents were so happy with what we were doing that on our last night before heading back to P.E the parents threw us a little goodbye party where we danced and ate chicken. There were these 3 gorgeous boys who had smiles that made your heart light up. Morgan is only 3 but the boy can dance and he does this cute little pouting face when he dances as well and his older brother Kevin had these eyes and smile that reminded me why I want to deticate my life to children's education.

You know that a place has touched your soul when regardless of the fact that you have no clean clothes left, your body is aching from all the walking you've had to do and the fact that there was a scorpain in the house amongst a variety of other insects that don't knock before entering you don't want to leave. I have decided that I will try to spend one or two days a week in Addo helping out with all the wonderful things that Asanda is doing there as well as seeing to the needs of these communities who have so much to offer and so much potential.

I left Addo feeling reinvigorated and with my strength and motivation back. I can also say that being with Bayan added to my regained state of well being. Being with her always makes me happy and I love how she will go along with all of my retarded suggestions like pretending to be blind while walking along the road and then crying from laughter when Bayan walked into a bush and when I would go along with her crazy ideas like running down hills with our hands in the air and screaming all the way. Also every morning we would check the map of the nature reserve to see what animals people had seen and everyone had seen the lions. Being vehicleless we weren't able to do a game drive but we would take walks around where we could and sit and watch one of the water holes. Every day we would pray to see a lion, instead we got one of those dear things, a buffalo, some birds and a few tortoises. We saw the funniest tortoise fall into the water hole and then struggle to get out because it kept falling in again. Eventually it got out and waddled away to everyone's relief. Oh and the scorpian which should have one an Oscar because it played dead so convincingly that I really thought it was dead. Asanda being the bravest of us all got some tissue and picked up the scorpian to take it outside and when she put it on the ground it just got up and started running again, amazing actors they are really.

On Friday morning we packed our bags, had our lsat session in Langbos and then walked along the road towards the location (township) where we would need to get our taxi to P.E. We walked along sticking our hands out and hoping a car would give us a lift and every time they drove past I would make a comment about the car and how we didn't actually want them to stop anyway. At one point I started singing Michael Jackson's "They don't really care about us" and me and Bayan changed the lyrics to suit our situation. We walked for about 20 minutes, I was walking infront of Bayan, when she yelled out to me put my hands up. I assumed she meant in the same way we would put our hands in the air to run down the hills so I put my hands up and waved them around, when she burst out laughing I realised she meant to put my hand out to signal to an oncoming car to stop. Thankfully the car did stop and a nice man gave us a lift to the taxi rank. This nice man turned out to be the councillor of Addo Mr. Vuyo Thambo and immediately I started drilling him about the state of Langbos and asking why they still hadn't received propper housing. I realised however, that he had just stopped to give us a lift and saved us walking for another hour and a half so I backed off a little and I ended my questioning by asking him if he thought he had improved people's lives in the 10 years that he has been serving as councillor and when he proudly and assuredly said yes and explained that the area we were driving through used to all be mud houses until he came along I left it at that. As he drove off in his fancy car through a township where most people's only form of transport is their legs it confirmed to me exactly where alot of the money designated for improving people's lives ends up going. He also managed to avoid being fined by the police when we were stopped for random checking, he wasn't wearing his seatbelt and his side view mirror was mirrorless.

I have decided that part of my plan for the next few months will also include Addo and so I will try to get to Addo maybe once a week to find people who would like to become teachers and junior youth facilitators to run classes and take some of the strain off of Asanda.

The Langbos Creche also has a Facebook Page if you would like more information

Bayan and I (The Wanderers) walking through Langbos

Langbos Squatter Camp

Kids in Langbos who I bribed with food to get a photo
Langbos
Langbos

The safe haven- Intsikelelo Care Centre

some of the kids at the Creche
Bayan sitting outside a classroom- the playground behind her

Me, Nomthandazo, Princess and Bayan in one of our sessions
our junior youth group


more of our junior youth group

Perfection Here I Come

In a previous post The Anxiety of Happiness I talked about how sometimes it can be difficult to not feel guilty for complaining because I came on service completely out of my own volition and knowing full well that service comes with tests and hard times. I don't plan on revisiting the topic in this post but rather I would like to share this with you. It comes from the writings of Abdu'l-Baha and was sent to me by a friend who had found it when he was facing tests and difficulties while he was on service.

Reading it gave me such happiness and an utter sense of relief (as most the Baha'i Writings do) and so as always when I find something that brings me happiness I like to share it.

"The more difficulties one sees in the world the more perfect one becomes. The more you plough and dig the ground the more fertile it becomes. The more you cut the branches of a tree the higher and stronger it grows. The more you put the gold in the fire, the purer it becomes. The more you sharpen the steel by grinding the better it cuts. Therefore, the more sorrows one sees the more perfect one becomes. That is why, in all times, the Prophets of God have had tribulations and difficulties to withstand. The more often the captain of a ship is in the tempest and difficult sailing the more greater his knowledge becomes. Therefore I am happy that you have had great tribulations and difficulties . . . Strange it is that I love you and still I am happy that you have sorrows."

('Abdu'l-Bahá, Star of the West, vol. XIV, no. 2, p. 41)

What this passage has taught me is that South Africa has brought me so much closer to perfection I can taste it. No but in all seriousness the last 2 weeks have been the most difficult of the trip so far. It was like I fell right back to square one. Again I was questioning whether or not it was right for me to be here because everything just felt so wrong. I was stressed to the point where I became physically sick. I stopped eating for a week, I couldn't sleep, I had a constant headache and my anxiety levels were so high all because I felt lost again, the same feeling of confusion that I felt in the weeks before I went to Uganda. For those who don't remember it took me 8 attempts to get my visa renewed before it finally expired and I had to leave the country. When you try that many times to get your visa sorted out and everytime something goes wrong you start to wonder if maybe it's a sign you shouldn't be there and that is exactly what was going through my head. This time it wasn't about whether I could stay in the country or not but whether or not I would have a place to live in this country. My host family had agreed to have me till December/January and now that it's January I had to look for somewhere to live and once again just like the visa thing nothing worked out. Everyday I was searching for a place to rent and either no one wanted to rent to me for only 4 months or they were asking for ridiculous amounts for a house the size of a shoe box. Finally it reached the point where I actually did not have a place to live and thankfully one of the other Baha'i families in Port Elizabeth agreed to take me in while I continued to look. The stress was unbearable, I really started to question again whether this was a sign that I shouldn't be here. As always, however, things sorted themselves out and I have arranged a home for myself. Also a wonderful week in Addo helped to calm my nerves and get me eating again but that will be another blog post.

The strangest thing that happened during this whole ordeal was actually that I was grateful that things were going wrong. I mean if things went smoothley and I found a place to live just like that and everything was dandy then that means that I'm not getting tested anymore and if I'm not getting tested I don't get to reach perfection. It's kind of a strange place to be in, enjoying hardships and sufferings so you can add them to your list of life struggles that made you a better person. Me and Bayan (who has kindly offered to take me in and give me a home) now always joke about how we are going to make life difficult for ourselves just so that we can claim that we are becoming more perfect.

I guess I hope this maybe assists in offereing you another perspective on the hardships of life. It is strange how we complain about the difficult times when it's those difficult times that make our lives mean something. No one's ever written a book on how they had a perfect life and everything was butterflies and roses and if someone has written a book like that I doubt anyone is reading it. Although the ultimate goal is to create a world where people don't have to suffer for the time being we should take advantage of all the horrible things that come our way in this life because it is exactly those things that will help us attain perfection and just between you and me if you want to fast track your journey to perfection just come to South Africa, there's plenty of opportunity to suffer here. Like the title of the post says perfection here I come.

more of Malawi

Now for a continuation of my experiences in Malawi and to set the tone for this segment I’ll start off by telling you about the 6month old baby that peed on me. Great experience that was, I flat our refused to hold another baby in the villages again. One vital aspect of village life that I have only barely touched on is food, or the extreme lack thereof. Understandably when you live in a village and you rely on the land and nature to eat food is seen more of a necessity than a luxury. People only eat as much as they need to survive and there is no such thing as waste. Our meals consisted mostly of moosh in all varieties. Green moosh, brown moosh, black moosh. The green moosh was casavar leaves, the brown moosh was casavar samp (pap) and the black moosh was mooshed up flies. Moosh was usually served with fish as these were lakeside villages or if you were special enough with chicken. To serve chicken would be a big sacrifice because the family would kill one of their chickens for you. We were bestowed this honour twice on our trip. So as you can imagine I lost a fair amount of weight in the villages. If there were no mangoes I think I would have starved, not to say that there is anything wrong with the food just that I’m not big on pap or eating leaves.

So we spent the first 2 days in Mdyaka village before it was time to move on. We all packed our bags and loaded ourselves up for the journey to the next villages. We were also going to be stopping to visit people on the way. We lost two of our posse, Vafa and Aunty Phebe had to head back to Lilongwe to attend to their own business and so our slightly reduced crew continued on to new adventures. Our first location was to a lady named Agnes’s house as she was holding a training session for new junior youth animators. It was a long walk, sweat would just drip from you and the sun was beaming down on us the whole way. When we arrived we plonked ourselves down and enjoyed the opportunity to rest but it wasn’t long before we were up, the herd of mules loaded up with baggage. I got clever this time though and draped a sarong over my head to protect me from the sun. Now we had no idea where we were going, we were just told that we would be visiting different villages to meet with other Baha’is and see how they were doing. We’re hiking through the bush, enjoying the scenery when all of a sudden we reach a road. Confused we ask our leader Mr Kachingwe how much further it is as we’ve already been walking for almost an hour... “It should take about 2 hours”.... 2 HOURS!!!! Every step we took our backpacks felt heavier, the sun was throwing down everything it had and we were already tired from the previous days travels and the lack of sleep. It was a very painful journey. As we walked along the road we thought our salvation had come. A ute heading towards us slows down, the driver sticks his head out the window, oh the relief I felt, the comfort of sitting down, of removing this backpack, of air conditioning. “Are you going for a nice stroll, where are you going?” our leader responds and then, to our absolute horror he just drives off. Confused we all just watch the ute drive away and with nothing else to do we keep on walking. After a little while we cut back through the bush and pass through a bunch of villages. Walking along these tracks the trees tease us by giving just patches of shade to remind us of the coolness of being sheltered from the sun. Finally dripping with sweat, with aching limbs and cramped up backs we reach or destination and heap ourselves on to the floor. We meet with a few Baha’is and Mr Kachingwe takes some statistics before it’s back on our feet and on the road again.

We walk out and end up back on the road, there’s a small shop there and finding that they have cold soft drinks we race to buy some much needed relief. If only a Coca Cola camera crew were there because we would have made the best advertisement. All of us a bottle of coke in hand standing around and gulping the sweet sugary goodness down. Wow it was the best coke I’ve ever had in my life. At last relief, we didn’t have to walk anymore or at least for the next leg. We waited for a bus and then headed off to the next village. This village was called Ndawabiya and the chief of the village is a Baha’i and he graciously opened his home to our travelling party. There was a huge crowd of kids who would follow us everywhere and so I took them all and taught them different songs like “head, shoulders, knees and toes” so cute they would say tons instead of toes. I also took the Wiggles to the village and sang as many of their songs as I could remember as well as doing the Hokey Pokey and a range of other songs. My name in this village is Malita so I would hear that being called out from every side, I guess it was better than Azungu. We went for our traditional swim in the lake and ate a bucket load of mangoes. The chief had a chicken killed for us which covered dinner and then came the part of village life I love the most, sleep. No I didn’t get any. 4 girls on the floor, no mattress, no pillow, stuffy heat and snorelax just a few metres away and to make it even better Sandra decided to respond to snorelax’s calls and started snoring too.

The next day consisted of visiting the Baha’is of this village and taking statistics which took most of the day. It was nice to visit people and hear their stories. Then we loaded up again and started the trek to Bandawe which is Mr Kachingwe’s village. We put our bags down and then headed off for the lake. We walked through the bush for about 30minutes and then down the oldest tar road which we made sufficient fun of before getting to Chintheche Inn. This was a resort which meant chips and soft drink and normal toilets. I had 3 mosquito bites under my foot and so where there were lots of small rocks in the lake I would rub my foot against them, OMG it felt so good.

Back at Mr Kachingwe’s village we saw fireflies, anything I want to write about seeing them is going to sound so lame but here goes.. they were magical. The best part of this place was that I had a real bed to sleep on, with a mattress and a mosquito net. Unfortunately my body went into crazy mode and I just had all this energy so at like 11pm when everyone else was asleep I went and sat outside and I’m actually grateful for it. Although there were no lights on anywhere it was so bright outside. The moonlight was so strong that I could sit and write in my journal. This is what I wrote in that solitary moment.

The moonlight is so strong, although there are no other lights you can see all around you. The only sounds around me are the ones you would typically assume of any rural environment; crickets chirping and distant footsteps. Off in the distance I hear the sound of drums and women singing. It’s peaceful, the kind of peace that touches your soul, the kind of peace that lifts you and fulfils you and reminds you to love and teaches you that your own happiness is here.

I like it here, I like the peace. It makes my soul happy. It makes me question all the things that I make important in my life, what do they really mean? What are they really worth? Am I the person my soul wants me to be or am I a construction of false understandings? Have I become what I am not? My true self buried under comfort and want.

While I was sitting outside enjoying the nothingness of that moment a young boy came and sat next to me. We tried to talk but his English was minimal. What we managed to get through to each other were the basics like name, age, what grade he’s in at school and at one point he said the stars were covered by the clouds. The rest was silence. It was one of the best conversations I had there.

And with that evening ended our time in the villages. The next morning we carried all our stuff to the road and waited for a bus to take us back to Lilongwe. The rains came that day and they didn’t stop for days.

Me and Dolika, the Chief's daughter
Lake Malawi, the white stuff is casavar root being dried
Lake Malawi
Some of the herd of mules
Lunathi and my shadows on the oldest tar road
Monirih and I trying to protect ourselves from the sun
The Baha'i Centre at Ndwabiya
village kids

Women doing a traditional dance

Bush Toilet

My whole life I was proud to say that I had avoided ever having to use a drop toilet or a squatty toilet. Not in India, in Vanuatu, in Uganda have I ever succumb to the need to use a squatty toilet. My first exposure to one of these toilets goes to show the lengths to which I have gone to avoid using one. When we arrived in India in December 2001 my sister and I went to the toilets at the airport. Within 10seconds I came out again. My mum “That was fast, did you go?” my response “No all the toilets are under construction, they were just a hole in the ground” and then the daunting truth, mum “That is the toilet”. My sister and I corrupted our regular excretion patterns by only going to the toilet when we saw a McDonalds or were at our accommodation.

I have gone so far as to have never ‘released my load’ in any other way than using a traditional toilet, one with a seat and a flush. Mind you there have been countless occasions where such toilets have been filthy, the smell abhorrent, no toilet paper, the flush not functioning but regardless of that I have never had to squat... until...

This is the toilet that would change my life forever and as absurd as it seems that I would write about this I am going to share my first experience with you.

It’s day one of our time in the village and Mdyaka village is the chosen spot for where my number one adventure would occur. It’s approximately 6pm and I have already come to the realisation that I will not be able to survive or function for 5 days without using the toilet. It has already been cemented in my mind that my 21 year track record of never having used a drop toilet is going to come to an end and that this place would be the one to rob me of my drop toilet virginity. I decide that there is no going around it, the deed has to be done and I would prefer to do the deed while there is still some light so just as the sun is going down I make the announcement “I need to use the toilet”. So I got my toilet paper and was led to the little shack and there it was, the hole in the ground. The hole is shaped like a key hole where the top circle is bigger than the bottom one. On later analysis I decide that the larger circle is where you should squat over and the smaller circle is just in case you miss. There are even two foot shaped moulds on either side indicating where you should place your feet. My guide has left me with the torch and so it is time to begin. My guide also left the torch on disco mode so as I prepare myself blue, red and white light is flashing off the walls. Hoping not to fall in and concerned about whether I’m doing it right I began with the task and... I DID IT!!!! I used a squatty toilet. It was such a disgusting experience especially the part where you don’t flush or get to wash your hands. The most frightening part was where as I was in ‘the position’ I heard a swarm of flies buzz around me and I feared for where they might go to explore.

After this initial experience I actually became quite a pro at going to the toilet in ‘the bush’ however my body eased up tremendously when we finally were offered the opportunity to use a normal toilet again.

So there you have another glimpse into life in the villages in Malawi.. I hope this insight into a moment of my life acts in bringing us closer haha

Malawi Time!!

So much time has passed since my last post.. I feel overwhelmed at where to pick up again. The last 2 months have been filled with eye openers, inspiring moments, interesting stories and exciting adventures and I have so much I want to share so I am still deciding on what to make this post about.

I think I will go from the start of the beginning ( a saying which I heard today) and dedicate this post to sharing my experiences from the place that took me offline in the first place, Malawi.

What an unexpected and surprising 3 weeks that turned out to be. So as I explained in my last post Lunathi and I decided to come to Malawi for service. We started off with daily Junior youth groups and Children’s classes which were a test to our communication skills as many of the kids did not speak English. The classes were nice but most definitely the highlight of the entire trip was Chintheche. Chintheche is an area just a 7 hour bus trip north of the capital Lilongwe. Lunathi and I accompanied by a posse of other local Baha’is headed off to the lakeside villages to do some teaching and visit other Baha’is in those areas. The lake that I’ve mentioned is Lake Malawi. Never before have I heard the word ‘lake’ used to describe a body of water that ginormous. 6 hours of our bus trip was alongside the lake and we didn’t even go to the top. This lake borders 3 countries, it looks like an ocean and it’s surrounded by sand. It was like going to the beach but without waves and the water temperature like that of a warm bath. We were also warned that there are crocodiles and hippos in the lake not that that information hindered us at all in diving right in. After having to hike from where the bus dropped us off to the village itself in extreme heat and the sun blaring down on us and each of us carrying our luggage on our backs (and remember Lunathi and I are very much city girls, we don’t pack light) we were desperate for relief and so regardless of all the dangers we were warned of in regards to swimming in the lake we dived right in.

I can sum up our time in Chitheche with the following image, boiling dry heat, sitting under mango trees, relishing in their fruit, teaching locals about the Baha’i Faith and the classes that the Baha’is have to offer. That is what it means to go teaching in the villages. Now what it means to live in the villages looks something more like this.. sweat, aching limbs from hours of walking between villages, “AZUNGU” being heard on every side, echoed by the voices of local children (Azungu means white person), little girls crying whenever I came near them (most traumatising experience ever) mosquitoes, hole in the ground toilets, sleeping on rock hard floors, heat, no electricity, chickens, goats and swimming in the lake. That pretty much covers what life in the village was like for us. Now as I had served in Vanuatu before and lived in a hut with bugs and rats and all the rest of it I wasn’t too fussed by village life, except the squatty toilet which is another blog post on its own, but for my dear companion Lunathi who has never been too far from her phone, comfy bed and all the other typical city girl things it was rough. I don’t think she has fond memories of the village. I’ll share some exciting new experiences with you now. First off I ate flies. I ate them both alive and cooked and to be honest I liked the live ones better. They are these little lake flies that fly in a cloud of black and are collected by waving a basket through the swarm. They eat them live like chips just walking around with their basket and dipping their hands in every now and then. They didn’t really have a flavour more just a fluffy texture. The cooked flies come in a patty and don’t taste nice at all. They don’t have much in terms of seasoning in the village so everything just tastes salty. NEXT I had barbequed rat, the one I had was a little burnt and it may or may not have resulted in me feeling like I was on speed later on in the evening. The next thing I want to share is more of a funny story..

So Mdyaka was the first village that we stayed in and one of the Baha’is there generously donated his 2 bedroom hut to our travelling party of 8. Now please don’t assume that when I say bedroom I mean a bedroom, these families live only for what they need and a bedroom really just means a space for a bed. One of the rooms had 2 beds and the other had 1. Lunathi and I shared the single room, the 4 other girls who were Sandra, Vafa, Moonirih and Aunty Phebe shared the other with 2 in one bed, 1 with her own bed and one on the floor and the 2 males, Justin and Mr Kachingwe were on the floor in the front room. By bed I mean wooden structure with no mattress. In the heat, no pillow, on a hard wood surface, with mosquitoes buzzing around your ears sleep was not a term that can be attributed to that first night. On top of it all Mr Kachingwe was developing a flu or something and my goodness I have never in my life heard sounds like that. To call it snoring would not do justice to the roars that were emitted by this single individual. From that night on we dubbed him snorelax. As you can imagine on our second night there after the exhausting days and the minimal food and the lack of sleep from before I was willing to do anything to ensure that I would be able to sleep so I volunteered to sleep on the floor. As there were already 3 people on the floor most of the straw mats and things had been taken so with only one blanket underneath me and with some of my clothes rolled up to make a pillow I settled in to sleep. I blasted music from my Ipod into my ears to drown out the sounds of the mosquitoes and snorelax, I was so tired that even watching 3 rats scamper into the house on the roof ledge didn’t bother me I was finally able to sleep until.... THUMP!! Something hits me on the head and falls down next to me. It’s pitch dark around me so I reach out my hand to try and feel what it was, I touch it and squeeze it a few times but I don’t recognise this thing so I shine light from my Ipod onto it and low and behold it’s a roll of bread. How on earth did a roll of bread manage to fall onto me? I look up to see if maybe bread isn’t stored above me somewhere when I hear it, “Squeak, squeak squeak...” it makes sense now. The rats were trying to get their dinner, they took something too big for them to carry and dropped it on the way out. Now I see them, arguing with each other, deciding whether or not to go back for their food. “Squeeeeeeeak, squeak, squeak” “Squeakety, squeak, squeak”. I decide that if they do want to come back for it I don’t want the bread anywhere near me so I flick it over towards Justin instead. Another night of sleep destroyed, I watch the sun rise and the chickens make noise as they wake up, the chickens also sleep in the house, and so begins another day.

There is so much that I can talk about in regards to our village adventure but in order to do justice to all the thoughts in my head I will leave this post here and finish off the rest in blog posts to come.

Children's classes in Lilongwe
doing an art activity on Unity

walking to Mdyaka

Justin, myself and Lunathi at dinner time

Fly patty... mmmmmm

the floor that I slept on
MANGO EATING TIME!!

part of our posse.. Moonirih, Sandra, Justin, me and Lunathi

The Tears We Shed

My eye is red and swollen, I think a reaction to sand or salt water after an afternoon learning to surf. As much as I know that rubbing it will only make it hurt the satisfaction and the relief from that action makes the itchiness almost worth it. Every now and then water swells in my eye and a tear or two drop down my cheek and I wonder why do we cry? Why when we are in pain or hurt does our body create a reaction that causes tears to fall from our eyes? It makes sense that when a finger or other pointed object collides with our eyes that tears would result, or in my case today, when something irritates our eyes but I am actually baffled as to what function this crying has to offer our bodies.

I’m trying now to look back on all the times I’ve cried, what did I cry for and when the tears were shed what was the outcome? When I’ve cried as a result of physical pain did those tears aid in the recovery of that pain? Never. When I’ve been hurt emotionally has crying ever resolved that issue? No. When I’ve felt grief or sadness was shedding tears of any relief to my hurt? Not really. So why then do we have this built in feature?

Maybe it isn’t the tears themselves but the act of release that aids us in these tear shedding times. Seeing someone else cry evokes in us this sense of empathy, this sharing of emotion that we have all experienced some time before. We as humans, as much as we deny our oneness, as much as we claim to be independent of all others, reliant only on ourselves and bereft of the humanity that moves around us, we are drawn to each other. We all want to be near other people, we share the need to be loved, to be wanted, to be touched and needed. Us humans are a remarkable species and we as an international community have more in common than we ever pay attention to. We have a universal language that we do not learn in schools or in books or from one another but we are given as a piece of our own selves. A language that comes so naturally that we speak it from the moment we enter this world and that language is our gestures. These symbolic expressions that are always recognisable, that create in all of us a sense of emotion, a sharing of emotion as we each give away our feelings. They say that a smile is contagious and so is a tear. The rawness of its expression, the vulnerability of the one who shows it, the understanding of the emotion that is shared, this is a testament to the power of its generation.

A tear isn’t just an excretion of liquid from the eyes, it is a statement about ourselves at the time each tear is formed and released and maybe that is its only purpose.