Group Visualization

Okay, I have sooo much to write about, but first I have a tremendous request. You know the spoon benders? The idea that if enough people sit around and focus all their energy on something happening, anything can? Even bending a spoon? Well. Right now I need ya'll to focus on tomorrow. I am going to the Ministry to find Veronique. (See I want to say hopefully find Veronique, cause what if she still isn't in?) I need Veronique to review the Dossier and write the letter immediately, tomorrow. Then I need the Minister to be available to sign it so that I can go to the orphanage and be assigned a child. So, can everyone send some very very focused energy seeing this happen like clockwork tomorrow, that Veronique is in and that the Dossier is there and complete and that the letter is written immediately for the Minister to sign. Perhaps I have to wait in the office while they complete this, but it is done tomorrow easily and smoothly.

Now. The rest of the update.

Matthew, it is good to hear your voice. (Everyone elses too. I am literally in tears reading all your words, feeling all your hearts.) But Matthew, I have been feeling Amy all around me. Constantly. She is so happy about what I am doing, you know how happy she would have been for us if she were still alive and now well, she is just that happy. I can feel it. And she roots me on, she is completely sure that I can see this process thru. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if she already knows which child will be ours and has been watching him/her the entire time. Trace and her have been quite the team and I talk to and listen to them at every step.

How surreal it is to awake to sunlight and music that sounds like an entire congregation of Rwandenese singing like Ladysmith Black Mambazo streaming thru the window panes, the windo ajar and onto my bed. I immediately arose and went outside onto the patio to listen, to try to read my Brain Child magazine. But I couldn't read. All I could do was lift my face to the intense equatorial sun and let the voices and tones fill by core. Ahhhh.. Africa. I spent hours upon hours loading my iPod so as not to become bored during my waiting. But I literally cannot do anything. 5 days I have had of waiting for this Veronique and it is impossible to fill the space. Here the space wants to stand alone and asks only that I stand in it, open. I really can't explain it. But I have tried to keep occupied in many varied situations and it is simply futile. I just keep coming back to the breath of my body and the meditation that is Africa.

Now here this: request number two for one day. Please. Please. Please read or watch something about the genocide in Rwanda. Start with Imaculee's book "Left to Tell" and her story of finding God while hiding in a 3 by 5 bathroom with 7 other women for something like 90 days. She was hunted, but they never discovered her. Or watch Hotel Rwanda even if the idea makes you cringe and you think to yourself "I don't need to see that. Why ruin a perfectly good mood with watching such horrible atrocity?" Or get "Ghosts of Rwanda" from netflix (actually we have a copy you can borrow) which is a Frontline documentary on the genocide and explains the UN's position (standing by unarmed and watching one million Tutsi's be hacked to death in the streets and churches) and gives the story of General Dellaire, an honorable man who's life has become a struggle to survive since his hands were tied in Rwanda.

Last night I had the priviledge (there are very very few cultural events here in Rwanda) of attending a film festival at a fancy restaurant. (See, Diane, I am eating!). We watched "Shake Hands With The Devil" a movie based on the book by the same title written by General Dellaire. Now. Unless you have really studied the genocide and the history leading up to it, you may have a hard time comprehending how moving it is to sit in an open air restaurant overlooking the Kigali city lights with Rwandenese sitting at your sides watching an intense film about evil that destroyed an entire country, one million mothers, babies, fetuses, men, children, grandmothers in one hundred days. The people sitting around me are survivors. They either have to carry guilt or they carry grief. Or both. This land survives too. A land that was quite literally in apocolyptic state in July of 1994, bodies everywhere, buildings bombed and hacked and looted and burned. And now it thrives. Looks just like Vermont but with different trees. Beauty grows from absolute impossible despair. New life blossoms from the cracks where hope still somehow survived.

I think I can relate.

Oh, this baby. I feel it is really close now. Perhaps this week I will meet him. Or her. I am dreaming of it, suckling it. I am feeling my mama instincts kick in. Someday soon I will kick into gear from prodromal to contractions that come closer and closer culminating in birth. At least I won't have to get cut apart this time. One definite benefit of adoption. C-section rate is a lot lower.

I have been very blessed here to have been taken in by a family who lives here working for USAID. They live just around the corner from the hotel and have played hosts to me daily, setting me up with clean water, computer use, skype, food, directions, contacts and family time (they have two adorable girls age 4 and 6). They have invited me to stay starting Friday at the end of this week, and will be good company for me when I have the baby. Their home is luxurious, secure and equipped with groundsmen, cooks and nanny's. That is normal here as the dollar goes very far for and American in Rwanda. And it provides work for some locals who may make 150 a month when the average annual income is 250. For sure it is a different experience of Africa than if I were living in a hut, but considering the circumstances, I think it is keeping me sane.

The orpahange... well, the lawyer (called an associate here) advised me to go through all the necessary steps prior to volunteering at the orphanage. So, I iwll look forward to going and helping after the baby has been assigned.

Okay, over and out. I need to walk home before the monsoon hits. Boy can it rain here.

Love to you all, and thanks for your visualizations!
jaya