Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Circle of Life

Rain, rain, go away!! It is officially winter so it is raining like crazy in Cape Town these days! And the thing about rain here is that is always brings friends: heavy wind and bitter chill. Now remember my room is outside so I have no escape from the weather. So me, the rain, and the cold have done some intense bonding over the last week. As annoying as it is for me to stand in the pouring rain and heavy winds as I wait for the bus in the mornings, and as cold as my bed is every night no matter how many blankets I have, there are some things that I absolutely love about this weather. I LOVE laying in my bed at night and listening to the rain. The sound is so loud in my room. Its like being caught in a rain storm and hiding under a tree for shelter. I can see and hear the rain all around me, but I don't get wet. I love it. It's absolutely beautiful.
Although summer is my favorite time of year and I could sit in the sun at the beach my entire life and be totally happy, I do have respect for winter. I do not enjoy it, but I respect it. Winter is a time where things die and are washed away in preparation for the next season of growth. I don't know the verse off of the top of my head, but somewhere in the bible it talks about old things being washed away and all things becoming new. In order for the new, for the next stage of growth to come, some "old" things have to die. That's just the way God intended it. Unfortunately, I learned this all to well this week.
My week was amazing with the kids. As I said in my last blog the orphanage has unfortunately fallen apart since the owner has been in the hospital so most of the kids have vanished, but my work with the kids at the school has been going great!! Sadly, this week is my last week with them because they start exams next week and then go on break for June and July. So after tomorrow I have about 2 months off from work. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself for 2 whole months!
So because its the last week the kids have been working on their final skits for me all week. They have been going really great! There are 4 groups. Each group picked a topic then created, directed, and performed their masterpieces. Tomorrow we are having a last day celebration and they will perform the final products then. I am so excited to watch them! They worked so hard on them and as I've been coaching each skit I have seen the drastic improvement. It brings so much joy to my heart!
However, when I came to work on Monday I got some really upsetting news. One of my children, a young boy, had passed away. Apparently he was not only HIV positive, he had AIDS, and I didn't even know it. He seemed perfectly healthy. He was always running around and doing Micheal Jackson dance moves and volunteering to participate in my demonstrations. I mean he was FULL of life, and then just like that, over the weekend, he is gone. I cant even really describe the feeling that I get when I think about it. I am still kind of in shock. It happened so quickly. The whole situation is just really, really sad.
So yesterday, Tuesday, the school staff held a prayer meeting at the boy's home which of course Natalie and I attended. The funeral is on Saturday. The school has rented a bus to transport us and all the 7th graders to the cemetery after the funeral, but the ceremony will be held at the home as well. As I was sitting in the prayer meeting I was looking around at this boy's home. It was just a tiny little shack handmade from tin and a few wooden planks. It was barely standing up. The wholes in the ceiling were stuffed with grocery bags and other trash to keep the rain out. The "beds" were mattresses on the floor, we had to bring in benches with us to sit on, and the closest toilet was over a block away. I couldn't help but think "My God, these are no ordinary middle class children i'm teaching here". I kept thinking about all I teach them about having big dreams and holding your head up high and using your full voice and using up the entire space on the stage... as I was looking around I just realized how foreign that all sounds to them. I am so hard on them about holding their heads up high when it is physically impossible for them to do so in their own homes! I tell them to use their entire bodies and the entire stage space when they are used to sleeping with multiple people in one bed and trying to take up as little space as possible! My point is: THESE KIDS ARE WORKING HARD!! They are stepping outside of everything they know to succeed in my class. That thought really humbled me. It made me feel as though what i'm teaching them is really making a big difference in their lives. It's opening doors for them and showing them a world they might not otherwise have known exists. I am just so thankful to be able to provide that for them. And as I said before this is the season (literally) for death so that we can prepare for growth and new life in the future. So I am trying not to let my child's death get me down too much, im trying to just remember that its just God making space for all the new and great things He has in store. I was so blessed to have my precious little angel with me for 2 joy-filled months and now I have to focus on creating more and more joy-filled days, months, and hopefully years with the 39 precious angels I have left and hopefully the many more that are to come.

Also, speaking of the good things that are to come, THIS SATURDAY is the day that the Board of Trustees from the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust have their meeting where they decide on who gets the grant money. They will inform us of their decision next week!! Please say a special prayer for me on Saturday that God blesses me with favor so the Board will choose me! WHEN i get my letter of congratulations I will Blog about it right away!

Happy mothers day mothers! Love and light to you all!

"Nonceba"

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Life Lesson

A lot has changed since the last time I blogged. I guess i'll just get the obvious out there first just for the sake of being able to read this years from now and remember my experience.
A couple weeks ago I moved out of my room in the house and into a room outside the house in the garden. It is the most gorgeous room ive ever seen in my life literally. It's hard to describe, but when you are in the room its like being inside and outside at the same time. You can hear the wind and the animals. There a pleants growing from outside into the room. It was a tool shed, but Hazel (the owner of the house) turned it into a room. Its Indian themed, there are beautiful rugs and fabrics covering the floors and walls of the room, there is gorgeous Indian art work, my door is glass so the sun shines right through, and as soon as you step outside my door you are in our gorgeous garden. The room has a very sacred and spiritual feel to it.
I have been wanting to move into this room for a very long time but it has always been occupied. Surprisingly the man that was living in the room before suddenly had to move out, so the room became available and I jumped right on it!
To be honest, my move into the room started out on a bad foot. I got a text from Hazel while I was at work one day saying that the room I wanted had suddenly become available. But unfortunately, although she never goes into our rooms, she was going to have to move all of my stuff out of my old room and into my new room while i was at work because someone was coming for my old room in just a couple hours. After reading that text I could feel my blood begin to boil. I was pissed! I stepped out of work for a moment and went to cool off. I took some deep breaths and began to monitor my emotions. Anger is not a pure emotion, it is secondary. It comes when you are feeling an extreme of another emotion such as hurt, guilt, rejection etc. So after some deep cleansing breaths and contemplation I realized that my anger had nothing to with Hazel. I've learned that in these situations in life you must always dig deep and find the reasons in you past experiences for your extreme emotional reactions because usually it has nothing to do with the person you are "angry" at, and everything to do with your own experience. I realized that what was happening was that all my previous experience with forced moving and people coming in while you are not home and moving your stuff which is such a blow to your privacy was coming up. I was taking all of my "anger" from those past experiences and allowing it to combine and then explode on this current situation and on Hazel who was just trying to do me a favor by giving me the room ive been wanting before someone else came and took it. As soon as I realized that I prayed about it, took some deep breaths and exhaled all of that negative energy, anger, and left-over emotion from past experience out into the universe where I allowed it to dissipate. I then inhaled all the love and forgiveness I could and felt it as it moved into my nose and then through my entire body. I came home and apologized to Hazel and pat myself on the back for breaking another pattern and moving one step closer to level of purity and love I want to reach in my life.
I lived happily in my room for about 3 nights before I made a HUGE mistake. I got too comfortable, and didn't listen to my inner spiritual guidance that was trying to lovingly speak to me. Now please understand that I do not believe in fault. I believe in responsibility wholeheartedly but I don't believe in placing fault. Anyway, it was a Friday night and Hazel, all my housemates, Mpho, and I went to go listen to a Marimba band playing in town. We got home at around midnight so Mpho just slept over. When we walked into my room I closed my door and put my keys on my night stand. As I laid my keys down my inner guidance softly, gently, and swiftly told me to lock my door. But, because I have to go outside to use the bathroom and I pee like a hundred times per night I decided to keep it unlocked so I can easily come back and forth to the bathroom. Mpho and I got into pj's, said a quick prayer, then laid in my bed and went to sleep. For maybe the 3rd time in my entire life I did not have to get up one time to use the bathroom. But at 6:20am I heard a noise, opened my eyes and saw a man standing over my bed. He quickly reached over, grabbed my computer which was right next to my bed, slammed it shut, and ran out. By the time I was fully alert and realized what had happened my computer was gone. It all happened so fast. When I opened my eyes I remember saying sleepily "someone's in my room" but it wasnt until he slammed the computer shut that I fully woke up and began to scream. I was totally in shock. I started to run after him, but quickly decided that that was a horrible idea as he may have been armed or had other men out there waiting for him. So, I sat there in shock and confusion as Mpho woke up and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
Now, here's what is strange about the situation: In order to get into our garden this man had to break into our neighbor's yard which is protected by a very tall gate, choose not to break into her big beautiful house, somehow climb on top of her roof without a latter or anything, hop from her roof to our roof, come into our garden, walk past our huge 6 bedroom house that was UNLOCKED and filled with laptops, dvd players, cell phones etc but choose not to go in. He then had to pass the other room in the garden where 2 huge dogs that bark when they hear a car coming from a block away, but whom were absolutely silent this night, choose not to go into that room, go around a wall that conceals my door, quietly jiggle open my doorknob (its screwed on wrong so its hard to open) still without the dogs hearing, and come into my room. Some of you arent going to like this, but guys, this didnt happen by accident. I believe there was some sort of divine intervention. It was Life trying to teach me a huge lesson. On 4/21/2010 I wrote in my journal:
"I love my new room. Its so peaceful and serene and pure. Its weird to see my laptop in here lol. It looks like it doesnt belong. Technology just doesnt blend in to this room. I should leave my laptop in the house and use the time in my room for meditation and reading."
The next day 4/22/2010, after a hard day at work I wrote:
"I learned a very hard lesson today. I learned that no matter what I must TRUST and LISTEN (these words are capitalized in my journal not just here) to my "Ori", my internal spiritual guidance. It will not lead me astray."
Now the thing about life is, it will teach you lessons then present you with situations to test you and see if you've really learned the lesson or not, obviously I had not. I ignored my internal spiritual guidance and therefore, my laptop was stolen.
In addition to that lesson I have learned that we have to protect the "things" that we value. My laptop was the most valuable material thing that I owned and I did not protect it. So from this experience I learned what happens to the your valuables when you dont protect them: they get stolen. I had an epiphany. We tend to not protect our valuables. Im talking about things like our purity, our integrity, our friendships, our quite time, our time with family etc, so consequently people come and steal them away from us while we are not alert, while we are "sleeping". It is only afterwards that we realize what happened and ask ourselves questions like "Why is my relationship with my family so messed up? Why am I so stressed? Why am I so lonely? When did I stop taking time to pray? Wat ever happened to the good old days? Why is it so hard for me to hug my sister? Why am I still so angry with my mother/father? Why did I sleep with him/her? Why does what she said to me hurt so badly? etc etc etc. Guys, take it from me so you dont have to learn this lesson as painfully as I did: PROTECT the 'things' you value. Remember what/who is important in life. If you don't anyone can just come into your life while your not looking and take those things/people/memories/etc away from you and it will hurt.
Love and Light,
Nonceba