What A Few People Can Do

I am at a complete loss for words and hence my silence.. that and I keep waiting for good news (or just plain news for that matter) to share with you all. So the news to report on the adoption front is only that supposedly the Ministry has "approved" our case, but now the Minister needs to sign the letter and she has been out of the office. The lawyer is going back tomorrow to check, but with the way things work there, it very well may require her to go back again and again. Nothing can happen until that letter is signed. Sigh. For a week we have been in limbo over whether or not to celebrate the "approval" but I think we will hold out until it has been signed and is official.

I think I will tell you all of the family we are trying to help...

So on one of my last days in Rwanda, I asked my dear friend Happy to show me the slums. He asked, "Are you sure?... You will cry." "I'm sure. I have been living in a very ritzy American household, I want to see another reality." So Happy took me to his neighbor's house. This is a family of six, he told me, a widow and her children that he has been trying to help for months now. Their church group has gone to clean the house and Happy has donated food and clothes. We bounce up and down through the ruts along the red mud road, Happy stopping along the way to ask through his window to the kids below where the mum of this family is. We come to a stop in front of a dirty house front and out come the kids, followed by their mum holding the five month old girl. "Muzungu" is all I can make out, the rest is Kinyarwanda that I can't understand. We go in to look around at the living conditions.


The roof has blown off, the mud walls crumbling beneath it, and the dirt floor has turned to mud with the April rains. The house is made of two rooms, one for sleeping and one for cooking. In the sleeping room is one mat where the six of them sleep together and the children are covered in bites from the bugs that sleep with them also. Above their mattress is a leaning mud wall, cracked vertically in two places. Happy and I inspect it for a while determining that it is only a matter of time before the family is buried alive while they are sleeping. The other room houses a cooking pot and branches used for fuel. The kids themselves (ages 5 months, 4, 6, 8 and 13) are gorgeous, but filthy. When we ask, we find that the woman feels it is impossible to clean since the mud comes in constantly with the rain and dust from the road. Their source of water is very far away and they can scarcely afford to buy it.


Cleaning this mess up seems impossible, futile. Looking at the wall, Happy and I are thinking the same thing at the same moment. We need to move this family. And so we do...

In a day's time we have met with the mum, received assurance that she will keep a new place clean and safe, heard her ideas for sustaining her own life, found a new house with power and cement floors, paid five months rent, purchased 3 brand new mattresses, collected new sheets and clean clothes, sent the family for haircuts, cleaned them up and moved them in!

Moving them was amazing, the mum was so excited.. can you imagine? In the morning you wake up not sure how you will survive and by nightfall you have a new home, clean clothes and beds, and hope for tomorrow! A crowd grew that day, watching us work and word spread around the neighborhood that a Muzungu and her friend Happy had helped this family. The next day Happy had five more families banging on his gate for help... you can't help everyone, but you can help where you feel called to do so.


Now here in Vermont, some homeschoolers are learning about this family and working hard to sponsor them. One family has sold brownies on a college campus, earning 27 dollars so far- enough to nearly pay for one months rent! On Memorial day Ariah will be selling her famous chocolate chip cookies to raise money for the family. In addition to helping the mum to keep her home and buy food and water, we are also researching sending her to tailoring school so she can learn a skill that will allow her to make money in the future, supporting her own family herself. Next year the kids will need $210 dollars total for all their school fees.

I will forever remember looking into the woman's eyes as we stood in her new house deciding to buy it. I couldn't speak to her with words, but I stood in front of her facing her for a moment, then we hugged and began the move.

Ha! And I had the nerve to ask you to still read the blog! I haven't been too on the ball lately...

I'm on the ground in Vermont, or so they tell me, but I think I left parts of me in Rwanda... or maybe I took so much home with me, I really can't tell the difference. How amazing to see my family walk into the airport to fetch me! I swooped down and grabbed up Ariah smothering her with enormous hugs. How wonderful to lay eyes on my husband too! But other than my family, arriving home feels utterly anti-climactic. Vermont is, truth be told, more drab and dull than I have ever known it to be. I don't think it has changed, but I have.

I wish I had words to explain what it feels like to be walking in a sea of Rwandan people, smelling their body odor, hearing their numerous voices singing out sentences in Kinyarwanda. I wish I could explain the thing that comes alive inside when a procession develops around you when walking down the road. "Muzungu! Muzungu!" you hear from the houses and suddenly there are kids surrounding you holding your hand, or at least scrambling to find themselves at the least a digit to grab hold of. I miss that, I miss the music, the motorbus fumes, the polite honking , the kid's big white grins, the warm air, the lush landscape, the busy streets, the night fires.

The jet lag has been impossible returning... I had a few nights of complete delerium. Ri's only upset has been when I can't stay up at night with her, which has been true every night since my return. Truly I expected some behavioral fallout from her, but so far the only thing she has exhibited is trust, love, and joy!

Still nothing from the Ministry. Maybe tomorrow... I figure there will be three choices for tomorrow: either I will know nothing, we will hear that we were approved, or we will hear that they are denying us. I am a bit nervy to say the least.

It is hard to be home without a baby in some ways. I do feel let down to a degree, but I also feel happy with my decision to return during the waiting. It has been a glorious week, and the garden has received attention, our family has holed up and enjoyed each other. Yesterday we celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday, which I never wanted to miss... so considering the situation, we all feel like things are as good as they could be.

Thank you all for keeping the circle of support and love... what a journey this has become!

Words No One Wants to Read

I'm coming home. Without a baby.

I finally had a discussion with my lawyer that helped me to precisely understand the possible time frame for all the steps involved. Communication here is difficult and for many reasons, we had not been given an accurate description of everything involved. Part of this was on the agency's end, partly from the lawyer, and also due to the fact that this is a pilot program. We are the pioneers.

Pretending that we had the authorization in hand from the ministry, the steps that need to be taken to match the child, go to the doctor, test everything, file the paperwork with the courts, have the hearing should take 3 to 5 weeks if everything is smooth. Then it is required to go back to the Ministry to finalize and then begin the Visa process with the embassy. Those two steps average another 2 weeks. AND I DON'T HAVE THE LETTER YET which adds more time. I decided it was impossible for me to stay here that long, to be away from my beloveds in Vermont for potentially another 8 weeks on top of the 3 I have already spent.

So, back I come. To be honest, it is a little hard returning to an expectant community without a baby once again. I guess the feeling would be one of embarrassment. It also is tough looking at all those tiny clothes and leaving them behind in Rwanda, when I really want to use them once and for all. But on the whole, my spirits have been lifted with the clarity of what I need to do.

I am not giving up hope. I do not regret traveling. The adoption IS moving. The Ministry has given urgent (for them) attention to this case. Apparently everyone (now 4 people) have read the file and are meeting on Monday to decide our fate (which is enormously disconcerting truth be told, but that is another post.) So it has moved fast for Rwanda. I hear that some Dossiers have taken a year to get through the Ministry, but the average fast one takes 8 weeks. We are at 3 next week. Me being here on the ground has moved the process along, so I don't think it was a mistake in that regard.

What it looks like now is that the lawyer will continue to press on while our family s together in VT. She will call when everything is thru the court and it is time for me to come back. I have to be here to go back to the Ministry and do the Visa. Another 2 weeks away from my family.

I cannot wait to be reunited with Ri and Scott. I am a weary traveler, for sure, and I already have it planned how tightly I am going to embrace them and sit in the back seat with Ri and maybe even put all the mattresses on the floor for one big sleepover the first night... it feels good to be coming back for a spell and with hope in our hearts.

Please don't stop reading, there is more to come. Many things which I have not yet written about a family that needs immediate help, about my visit to the orphanage. And we still need every ounce of energy and support and prayers possible.

Many Blessings, I will see many of you soon!

Better than Oprah, this web log of mine!

I am in utter awe of the community that has been created on a simple blog page. This web log has become an altar of sorts... a place where prayers are connected, and goodness and love have woven together a tapestry that spreads it fibers over each one of us.

It is a monsoon here in Kigali, this old red earth reddened more with the blood of millions of hopeful and joyous people. The rain came down so hard last night it woke the whole house. I wonder from my bed of 700 thread count sheets how dry the village slums are right now... what about all those babies crying, hanging on their mothers legs, hungry and fending off the mosquitos? For here a mosquito can be as deadly as a lion. I toss and turn, feeling the bones beneath me, they must be here where I sleep, for they were everywhere in Rwanda. If you came you would feel it too... the history is in everything. It breathes just like us, constantly keeping itself alive without effort.

Somehow people from all corners of the world have gathered here on the internet to witness and be part of this mysterious journey of ours... and what I know is this: this is not just our journey. This journey, the one since Trace really, has reached and touched many more lives than I can even count. For sure, this blogspot and the hopes and fears and prayers shared here are growing daily. People seemed moved to take time from their own challenging and hectic lives to be part of the love and sometimes pain that is offered up. Not to say that the journey is becoming anyone else's story, it doesn't feel like dramatic like a reality series...just to say that we are making ripples and affecting people, using love to raise consciousness and awareness. This comment board has been a classroom of sorts... for me to be sure, but also I suppose for all of us here. What is written for me is applicable to anyone of us and blesses all. Go back and read the comments... we have wise people here speaking up even when I have never seen their own faces. And maybe, just maybe, this love that is being witnessed here can extend to the dear people and soil of Rwanda. God knows they still need boistering up. Or maybe just to your own very precious beings within.

I talked to the agency today in the states. "Go to the orphanages," they directed me. "I was going to go today," I say, "but it is raining." When I return I will be a shadow of myself. I will have this place in my own bones... for I have taken in everything that is Rwanda. Perhaps not really a shadow, but perhaps only that I will have stripped more of my ego self away and remembered a little bit of who I really am. I am now slowed by the rain. A time to stop and just be.

The family I stay with has a dinner ritual called "What was the best part of today?" The kids seem to like this at ages 4 and 7. Last night I was asked. After thinking I said, "Well... the best part of my day. You know the roundabout? The big traffic circle? Well... in the middle of the roundabout were a group of about twelve Rwandese. They sat on the ground in the hot sun among two heaps of what looked like grass, giant piles of long, lined up grass. They were sorting thru it or something. I wanted a photo, but it is a very busy traffic circle with no place to pull off. So, Happy and I drove around and around the traffic circle fr a good twenty minutes until I had successfully captured the photo of the group sitting sorting grasses. It was a very hard task in a moving car with windshields and traffic in the way. But it was so fun and silly to be spending our time driving round and round!"

I showed the girls my picture and then the parents explained what was happening with those workers and that grass. The roundabout is a very high visibility place and it happens to be where government officials like Bush come when they visit here... (unless you are have the sad fortune of being Kofi Anan who was driven away by hissing and rock throwing when he came.) So what does that have to do with grass? Well apparently while the grass (mostly crab grass here) looked fine to the average passer-by, it was not good enough for someone. Those people have dug up the old grass and now have the very tedious task of taking the ordered-from-somewhere-else grass-complete-with-root systems one plant at a time and nestling it in the soil. A grass transplant if you will. This takes months as you can imagine, but the end product is as neat as a head of glamorous African braids.

I look out the window through the monsoon to the slums on the hillside and wonder what any one of us can ever do to touch others who need it most. I guess the answer is, we do what we can, exactly what is being done here on this web log. I am in awe. Bless you all.

Down and out

well, they still don't have it. the woman who needed to read it hasn't yet and she also happened to be gone for the day. i am told she will be in in the am, but honestly i am breaking down. completely. the only thing i want right now is my family, ariah and scott, and i want to bail on this endeavor. i could be close, or i could be far away. i can't tell from this perspective. but i want out. now.

You Raise Me Up

Just want to tell you all that you rock. The only thing helping me to keep moving besides Ariah wishing for me to come back with a baby (which I have to admit is a pretty strong motivator especially given last time) are your comments, your insights, your words of support, but truly the net you have woven of love and wishes and compassion. Thank you all and please, please, keep it up. Naiomi, the Merrells! Wow. It is so good to hear your voices. I need it.

I am too tired to explain with any redemptive quality how tough this is. See, even that is the understatement of the year. It is just hard... every moment of every day it is hard. A fight of sorts in my psyche, even I dare say in my Spirit. I want to fold and hop on a plane with everything that I have and yet I want this child with the same everything that I have. And I wish I could say that I was god with positive visualization, with the ways of Jerry and Esther Hicks or the Secret. But if what I feel is going to be what I get then I am doomed because my mind has not been producing much good lately. I am riddled with fear and terror, worst case scenarios and sometimes still despair.

But then, I stay anyway due to hope. So many people rooting for us, for me here in Kigali and across the world. I will let everyone down if I fold now. Myself included.

Tomorrow I go back to the Ministry to see if progress has been made. And I am terrified.

Kmom, you talk about labor, going thru your past issues, births...I can tell you that "last time" is up for me big time. I am terrified mostly now cause last time I was safe up until last minute. Everything was fine but plummeted the closer I got. Same thing now... I fear that the closer I get the more doomed I become. What a lovely thing the psyche is. What I need is a good thorough watching of Borat. Yes, indeed it is true. I love the film Borat. Makes me laugh so much that I have no room for any emotion other than complete joy. Kinda like Charlie the Unicorn did for Amy.

Anyway. I have to go to sleep. I had a big day which involved quite the traumatizing walk with the dog where I am staying. Apparently people are scared of dogs here, particularly after the history (which everyone very sensitive to right now since today is the anniversary of the beginning of the killings) and when I left the gate for the street, kids started throwing things at us and hollering, screaming and running away but also running toward us egging on the poor girl till finally she chased a child and bit him.

Please pray that this is it and our family can move ahead after tomorrow.

Hope and hope again

Here I am still in Rwanda, which can either be indescribably beautiful or burdensome depending on the frame of mind. The last two days I struggled with burden, and hence my absence from the computer. I went to check my Dossier at the Ministry and who I needed was out in the field again. Till today it turned out, but all the while I knew it could be till Tuesday next week. And man did I get slammed with grief and fear and "what the fuck am I doing here"'s. Suddenly the idea of being in the foreign land seemed like the most random and asinine (no idea how to spell that word and I refuse to look in the English-French dictionary on the shelf behind me) idea. No not idea. Reality. What was I thinking to come here to this place. I could come home and call it a luxary vacation. A failed mission, but a trip of a lifetime.

So, I despaired. I read before I left that to despair is to turn your back on God. I even wrote it in my journal so as to remember it. But that didn't keep me from doing it. Each time I called Scott in hysterical tears he told me to pray. But how do you pray while your back is turned?

In my mind this was taking too long. I have become homesick and the idea of being away from my beautiful beaming daughter is eating the flesh from my bones. Literally. I stopped eating for two days and I am back down to my waif-like self in stature. All that weight I packed on for months prior to travel has melted away. So, the urge pulsated through me, even moving my feet to walk to the airport and book the next flight home. I yelled at them and they stopped. I am stuck in some thick used motor oil between my baby at home and the promise of a baby here. I can barely move and if I do, I don't know which way to go.

On the day that I am told I cannot volunteer in the orphanage until the Minister has signed my documents, I go walk the street. My eyes are puffy and red where they are not dark with circles and my contacts have turned to foggy lenses like the ones you wore as goggles when you swam as a child. I have been crying all night long. And the day before.

A little boy follows me. "Bonjour" he says. I get ready to say no to him, as is my policy here. I know when a child politely says Bonjour, he is poising himself to follow while keeping his eye on the zipper of my new Vera Bradley handbag. His way of begging. I could ignore him, but my other policy is that when I refuse, I always look into the being of the child and see him first. I always lock eyes so that I can feel what it is I am refusing him and who it is that I refuse. He is small. Dirty. A network of stitches adorn his left brow and I contemplate where he has obtained medical care. "No" I say in French.

But he follows me still. He does not lay eyes on my purse. Instead, he keeps my gaze despite my effort to keep looking ahead to the sidewalk as I walk. "Je fait". He's hungry. "Je mange". If I had food, I would surely give it to him but I have nothing other than a thick stack of rwandenese francs and tears gallore. I ask "you want to eat? Come with me." I have a plan. A plan that will at least help him with his hunger and me with my stuckness.

He follows me to my hotel. I motion to him to stay at the door, and I go inside to the bar turned breakfast buffet. "Can I buy breakfast for my friend, please?" motioning to the door where he is obediently standing. Of course I can. So I sit him down and proceed to get him food which proves to be difficult since I can't communicate with him. A beautiful young woman named Hope of all things comes over, her heart three steps ahead of her body. She flows like cinderella's fairy godmother around this child, sweeping him up to wash his hands, patting him on the head and unfurling a napkin in his lap. She brings plate after plate of food to him, opening up fruit and peeling eggs, clearing away the wrapping as he eats, keeping the tea flowing. She looks natural. Beautiful . Angelic.

She can see my awe of her and in her minimal english she tells me she loves orphans. "Mmmm," I sound. That is the correct rwandan response. "Me, I was orphan." Hope says, and I see the tears in her eyes.

This is a perfect moment, one I have managed to snap a photo of. Three of us, all wanderers of some sort, coming to the table with our burdens and feeling the goodness of life still.

Still Waiting

What is it about my pregnancies that I am required to go beyond what seems reasonable to wait? 44 weeks with both of my babies. And that amount of waiting, when you know that all that has to happen is the switch to be thrown suddenly, is painstaking. Believe me, it just is. And now here I am doing much the same thing. Waiting. For some supernatural force to come in and throw the switch so it can commence.

Veronique was there (which was unusual since it was raining. Raining? You say? What in God's name dies that have to do with staffing an office? well, in Rwanda, it is common for nothing to happen, people to not even come into work if it is raining. And boy was it ever. Monsoon. Paved roads turned to huge rapid red rivers.) It is hard to tell the reaction of Rwandenese. They are stoic, poker faced always until suddenly they laugh or give eachother five. So Veronique to me seemed unmoved, but according to the lawyer it was just the opposite and she said she needed to first scrutinize my document. She will do this "As soon as possible" which really means she has given me her word, but as to the when, which is what Americans want to know, that is left a mystery. Soon means maybe this week, maybe next. Maybe today. Who knows.

So, I wait.

And wait. Gods help me.

What is it that every Rwandenese looks at when I walk by them? Always they look at my feet. IS it that they are noticing my stylish Teva Mush flipflops that Nola has perforated as a puppy? Or are they taken with the sheer brightness of my pasty white skin? I think the later. I cannot make it down the street without gangs of kids saying, "Bonjour Donnez=Mois Cent Francs muzungu?" Or simply saying "Muzungu, Muzungu." The adults know better. They do comment though on how rich Muzungu are. The average income here is $250 a year. Namaharo at the front desk lives in a house with no running water and no power. He takes care of his small sister and small brother and has to pay for their food, clothes, schooling housing and his own all by himself. Namaharo would like to go to school so that he can get a good job (he would like to be a lawyer) but he cannot afford to since his little siblings depend on him. What namaharo needs to go to school himself is 2,000 dollars a year, US. I wonder if our community could sponsor him. We would be sponsoring three people in Rwanda for less than $200 a month. Is that doable?

I gave money to a woman yesterday. I vowed not to, because once I do, then they follow me around asking for it. But this woman had a brand new baby. And she showed her to me and asked for money. How could I not? So I did. The trouble I got into then was that everyone in my proximity had something to say along the lines of what a good person I was to help, asking for my phone number "Because I love you so much." said in a thick African accent. It took me 40 minutes to traverse a 15 minute distance. Everyone talking to me and asking for my contact info and tellig me I am a child of God.

There are lizards on the roof where I stay, and the same creatures run under the concrete that serves as a bridge everytime I step on it on my way across the ditch to the sidewalk. I live in a hotel in th ebusiness district, which affords a nicely paved road and a fancy hotel with wonderful African tea I have discovered, a patissarie and a swimming pool. So, I live in luxary compared to my friend Namaharo. His name means peace.

Namaharo was only ten when the genocide occurred. He has lived in Rwanda his whole life and will likely never have anything other than a meanial job if that. He is thin. Very thin for lack of food, and yet he makes a very good salary of $150 a month US. For three people.

Today I will go with a gentle Rwandenese Happy to the Genocide Memorial. I am a ee bit uncomfortable going with him, only because he says he reacts strongly since he was here at the end of the war and saw and smelled it all. I don't want to make it hard for him, but he seems to want to go.

So I wait. In the waiting is space, Scott wisely telle me. Space to become scared. Space to rethink things. Doubt.

Space to fight the doubt.

Blessings,
Jaya