The lovely dusty season is upon us! Which basically means insanity! I can taste, smell and feel dust all around me! These pictures were taken this morning and are completely unedited. The haze in the pictures is dust. Because of the thickness of the dust it blocks sun light... everything is rather miserable!

For those of you new to the seasons of West Africa we get dust blown from the Sahara, it sweeps over Nigeria for a few months. To manage the gritty feeling I wipe down my counters and furniture twice a day, wash my hair and feet daily and I still have grit on everything!

For those of you blanketed by crisp white snow, think of me and COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS!

xoxo

Rosaleen

This is my friend. He, Motherless, Fatherless, without a family. He runs errands, washes clothing, carries loads in exchange for a place to sleep and a bit of food.

He is always the first to greet me. My young shadow. His eyes follow me. I know he is watching, watching and wondering. As we walk he asks me the question, why? Why do I come to visit him? I wait on my words to come, echoing heaven, I turn my eyes to his, and I say the words “because I love you. Because I have a God that loves me so much he led me to you and that same God he loves you more then you will ever know” He waits for more, more balm, more love. I turn him to face the ocean’s roar, I lower my voice near his ears and ask him to feel the wind, the greatness of the ocean, do you feel the power? “Gods love for you is as fierce as the ocean, it is as powerful, and it as grand, I will not always be here, but God will, always, just as this water will always be here.”

He moves on and the moment is lost, and I am lost. Did he get it, did he feel my heartache, my humble love trying to mirror heaven?

Together we hand out food. He helps, tells me his neighbours stories, “she has no husband, three kids,” “she had a stroke,” “these, they have no family” and the stories go on and on and faces and names are placed beside the un-comprehensible statistics. The storyteller has chapter after chapter of horrors, I barely breath when he tells me that after the dark business of night, and the thugs and prostitutes have retired, hundreds of children come and make beds in the sand. I ask another and another for confirmation. The truth rumbles, hurts, I am sick with the thought. And feel powerless. Demobilising powerlessness.

I weep in Roger’s arms. I weep with Heaven.

Is there a way to change all these horrors?

Maybe, but it will take a revolution, a solid resolve, each and every one of us, to fill a place in the barrier against this winning storm.

This Christ Season as you unwrap wealth, will you please, please remember one who is lost. Will you hold your gift tight to your heart and feel its privilege? Will you shed a tear of prayer for one of the numbers in the growing mountain of poverty?

Will you do it for our World? For that Child lost in the shadows of darkness?

I will start by saying my girls had a ton of fun. They loved getting dressed up! Marion was Snow~Queen and Davina was a Dancing~Princess (she is dressed like this every day!)It is not my favorite holiday...have to use bug spray beacuse it is 'Malaria Hour", to much candy, spooky and not so impressed by it's origins.

But it is wonderful watching my beautiful girls dressed up and smiling.

xoxo

Rosaleen

I met her weeks ago, confined to the limitations of a wheel chair ~ confined to poverty. Brown hands reaching, brown eyes begging. A new-born babe clung to the clutches of the grace I would show. The youth of her face and the youth in her arms broke me apart. I gave some change and drove away.

The haunting feeling of injustice followed me as I cared for my babes as I feed them from the abundance of my wealth, bathed them, clothed them. A mother clung to life, just beyond my doors brimming with goodness. I could not function with her need so near. I returned to the place our eyes first met, to the place I found myself ~ just a world away ~ a young mother. We found each other again. I gave her peace offerings. Trying to calm the wrenching feeling building inside. We talked with limitations of class and language. I drove away.

Today I entered a foreign world. I left the neighbourhood of my wealth and walked her slums until I spotted her crawling in the sand, her shocked smile lighting the horrendous surroundings.
Her home. Walls built upon the only place that welcomes her, a spot on earth that hasn’t been claimed. Precarious boards built on stilts, inched above black murky water of a lagoon. Waters of filth the foundation of her survival. Her babes shrills escape through the cracks, rattling my bones, my heart.

I offer her my intentions. Formula for the baby, nourishment ~ beans, rice, water, soap, bottles, clothing. She receives these gifts and searches my eyes with depth, looking for my soul. I crouch to her level, closer to the stench of the waters, closer to poverty. I return her gaze. Tears fill me. My voice is a whisper. I choke on my words “I’m a mother”. She understands. And presents her baby, ripped by the pain of a recent circumcision. I shutter at the crudeness of his wound. I ask of his age, I gasp, two months, I fight the fear gathering in my eyes. He is babe the size of newness, eyes protruding a gut swollen with hunger.
I lower my eyes, hiding my pain, the fragility of our relationship hangs on my responses.
I stroke his arm, brown skin dotted with infection. I ask her of her life. She shares her horrors of abandonment. I ask of the babies health. She says he is fine. She knows, I know ~ It breaks us both. We meet again eye to eye. I tell her, plead with her to ask me, for her ~ for his ~ needs. My voice cracks with urgency “If there is anything ~ anything, please ask”.
The neighbours have gathered around, prostitutes, beggars, thieves, orphans, they speak above us in a language I don’t understand. Humbly the mother asks for medicine to ease her babes pain. I smile a yes. I promise her a return with more water, more food.

It was in our parting I remembered to ask the babes name. Innocence. My mind raced around the meaning of his name. A baby far from the innocence of safety. So far from innocence.

As a bowed my head to duck through the exit of her home I bowed my heart in a desperate prayer. That death would not visit. That Innocence would not disappear into the grave of statistics. I prayed that a light of heaven was shone into the shadows of despair. I begged God to help me fight, as a mother, for this baby born of another world.

I drove away, again. In the quietness, my driver offered me the words of the neighbour’s language. He retold me their words, ‘Jesus has come wearing a white ladies body, bringing gifts of salvation’.

I returned to wealth and washed the grime of diseases from my skin. My skin shredded raw as my heart. I re-entered my world. I kissed my boy, white, robust. My heart splitting with praise and pain, Innocence lingering with me, enlarging my love, tightening my hold on the Cross where hope and faith exist.

Mondays I enjoy getting our life back into the weekday routine. The girls and I touched up our school/play room. It is always nice to start out the fresh week with a bit freshness in the house.

I hope your work week starts out fresh.

xoxo

Rosaleen

We went to the local market this afternoon. Here are just a few things we saw and 'snapped' (African term for taking a photo.) The things in these pictures seem so normal to me. It was not until I returned home and was looking through the photo's with my Canadian eyes I once again realized what a difference there is between the cultures and lifestyles of North America/Africa. Of course I feel blessed to be Canadian as do most Nigerians feel proud to be Nigerian. Just this week I was chatting with a VERY wealthy educated Nigerian who once immigrated to Canada. He only lasted a few months before he returned to Nigeria "his home" as he said while the stars of patriotism danced in his African eyes. I have come to believe that home is so much based on bias or what is familiar to us, home is more about what culture we fit into and and what seems right to us.

Hope you are having a colourful weekend...I have heard Canada is falling with Autumn beauty. If any of you have a picture of a tree that is warming your soul with seasonal colour. Could you, would you share your natural wealth by sending me a picture of it? I would love you forever...truly I would!

My first return to the vibrancy and chaos of Lagos streets. Everything takes place on the streets of Nigeria. From young boys selling peanuts, packages that read 'miss bimbo’; business carts selling containers of clean water, little people begging on roadsides. Marion or Roger commented that a drive though the streets of Lagos is as interesting as a National Geographic documentary. I would have to agree!

The first moments of our school day dawned bright with anticipation. Crisp new books brimming with ideas called the girls to attention. Education starts with a well balanced meal, and truly who could resist taking pictures of my students in their school outfits! Please join us for a few moments of our little homeschool.








The idea for a nature table came from a very inspiring women running with her idea I cleared off a table top and set out the learning tools I have for this science year. The only thing we are missing is the topic of discovery itself, an insect. Have no fear we are heading outdoors in just a few moments to collect ourselves some great African bugs (and trust me this place is crawling with all sorts of bugs!)

Please follow the link over to another mama's homeschool, and get inspired yourself!

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/09/your-free-ticket-to-gods-gallery-free.html