Sadly another good-bye is in our horizon. A dear friend of Marion and Davina is moving out of Nigeria this week. Today we had a little good-bye tea for our departing friend.

Farewell sweet girl...

xoxo

Just wanted to check in and say a quick hello. My Internet has just returned after a few day absence. Speaking of absence I am on my third day of husband missing. He is up in a part of world that requires armoured vehicles and big guns! Last night our evening call was interrupted because the security helicopter was landing on the compound for the night. I asked Roger that in the case of an emergency (like a bomb going off) which five people would be the ones to get dibbs on the helicopter? I joked that I would love to see a bunch of engineers fighting (the most diplomatic race on the planet) Roger response cracked me up, "which ever one of us could through our calculators hardest"! I laughed so hard. I think that just might be a Napoleon Dynamite Skill...nunchuck skills, computer hacking skills, calculator throwing skills...

I hope you have delights to look forward to this weekend (like the cinnamon sweetness above.) I will also hope that your Husband is safe and sound, spending his weekend with you and not in some foreign land where militia are a threat!

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.

This week lovely 'brown paper packages perfectly tied up with string' arrived from the wonderful world of Etsy. I bought a beautiful reusable Christmas advent that has been upcycled from antique linen. It is simply charming. I have been thinking of twenty-four perfect ways to put it to good use! Mr.Principle ordered me some of those labels I had wished for. They were well worth all the wishing. I have a few pleasurable things to use during his two-week stint away...yet again! I am not complaining, wait, I am complaining, two weeks alone, three kids, West Africa...

Nothing a little Esty~loving won't cure!

I hope packages of charm show up for you today.

xoxo

Rosaleen