When I'm Not Blogging...

It's been a while since I posted on this blog.  The proverbial blank page is not synonymous with a lack of exciting topics to write  about however. Every day my experiences here are multi-layered and dynamic...sometimes they contradict each other and other times I need to decide which storyline I wish to follow. Should I write about my children's experiences "in Africa"? I'd like to be able to say that they are here receiving an "African" education but sadly they've been thrown back into a 1972 leftover colonial education although the faces are black and the accents are Kenyan. Should I write about my "saving the world" ventures? That's always fun but rarely do these happenings come in the dramatic form that they are usually expressed in. Rather, the simple, unplanned gestures that should be a part of normal human living are ways that I try to save the world-one act of kindness at a time. Or perhaps I'll write about the hippy farmer's wife that gardens nude beside her husband and practices yoga poses with her feet firmly planted in the Kenyan soil. Or maybe I could write about the ordinary girl from Warwick who moved to "Africa" and became a goddess. "Please place my fruit offering over there" I say as I point with my very cultural- looking scepter. I hear drumming faintly in the background.

But sometimes the experiences and stories never filter onto the blank screen as shapes and symbols that make verbal sense but rather remain as happenings and metaphors in my mind. Sometimes I wonder, "How will I explain this? Or at the moment where I begin to write a new post, the now familiar but nonetheless annoying random electricity outage occurres. As I sit in a dark room surrounded by candles, dynamic life does not lie still. Even in the darkness this place is teaching me something so that when the light returns, another lesson has been learned and the mind filtering process begins again. The old blog post idea now seems futile.

Two weeks ago I posted on my facebook page that, "I feel a blog post brewing". This week a friend of mind responded by saying, "It must be potent now". Indeed the posts are potent and usually roam around in my head for several weeks to several months before making it into written form. But as I am sitting in my living room watching a gecko run by, looking at the coconut on my table that wasn't eaten, the piles of books beside me, the 8lb bottle of Shea butter beside the books, teaching notes, random toys, fish food and painted Easter eggs I think about all of the various streams of my life and see an interweaving of my life's story through all these items.

When I look at the coconut I recall the smiling face of the vendor who sold me 3 this week. I still see his smile, several teeth are missing and the others are pretty decayed but he smiled from the heart and it felt genuine. I think about the many times we tell others to "smile" in the West when on the inside there is a frown. Have we lost the art of accepting one's heart reflection? I look at the books and see not only books that I am reading, but books that my sons, ages 4 and 6 are reading. I remember teaching them to read and smile. I look at the 8lb bottle of Shea butter and hope that a new business venture is looming on tomorrow's horizon.

At the moment I am not the goddess, the super mom or the hippy wife. My scepter has disappeared. Out of frustration I told my husband today that I don’t want to hear about his new agricultural happenings or how he plans to solve world hunger. It’s been several weeks since I’ve seen the garden and my children are behaving like brats. I blame it on the rainy season and the full moon. Perhaps the full moon is a season. Life has not halted its footsteps for me. I am running a race to catch up but as I look up breathless my sweat stained eyes can barely make out the writing. I see that the results have been predetermined.  Although the electricity is still on, a darkened room with flickering candles appears and welcomes me into its embrace. I walk into it as if called upon to partake in a holy Séance. I return illuminated and full. The animation stills. I reach out and touch the allegory. In a single moment where life remains at rest for just one second, I rush over to the computer and begin typing…