Project LIGHT Ambassadors,HeadMaster, & Interpreter
What a wonderful, amazing day! The birds start their joyful singing at dawn—I have never heard so many different, yet harmonious melodic bird sounds. There are many more trees around this guest house than where we stayed last year. We are all exhausted from a nineteen hour day and three hours on Rwandan roads. They are much improved from six months ago due to the work of released genocide prisoners, but we still get our chiropractic adjustments and sometimes have to hang on to stay in our seats. The rains have produced such lush deep green vegetation and the landscape is breathtaking. I don’t need my carbon filter face mask for the red dust yet due to the daily rains. They are supposed to end in two weeks.
I continue to be astounded by these young people. They have a combination of innocence and naiveté that is endearing and refreshing, with acute observation and creativity that is delightful to witness. I introduced the Change Game to them where the person who is “it” is to let everyone observe them, then leave the room and change something about their appearance or behavior and come back to let the group discover what they have changed. The first person changed two things, one of them being adding a small dried flower petal perched on top of his ear. Each person after him increased the number or subtlety of what they changed.
They showed such delight and gratitude for receiving the T-shirts made by the students in Children 2 Children at Pacific Grove Middle School (see the createglobalhealing.org website for video of them Skyping with the Rwandan students). The California students also sent crystal hearts with their blessings. Our Project LIGHT Ambassadors accepted the challenge of healing themselves, creating lives of their dreams, and preparing to become leaders not only of their country, but possibly of the world.
One of the things that became very apparent today was the arrogance of those of us in the West. I tried a test inventory to determine how satisfied they are with areas of their lives now, in order to help them with what is most distressing to them, and to measure the change after our program. This test, developed by someone in the U.S., is purported to be multi-cultural. It is so far from understanding the lives of these people and how to use their knowledge base as a basis for their responses that it took two hours to administer the inventory when the publisher quotes eight minutes as time of administration. A part of our mission is providing education to the “helpers” of the world about the true needs and characteristics of the people in Africa (we are barely learning them ourselves, but we have excellent teachers in these young people).
Internet down again. I cannot upload pictures nor send this blog (nor receive e-mail). Since the internet is our only affordable means of communication with the U.S., it is frustrating and feels isolating. It makes me appreciate more the isolation of our students, who until a few months ago had no internet nor computers, no means of transportation to get the 1.5 hour drive into the city, no telephones (the adults there have cell phones which get service most of the time), no newspapers, very, very few books, and only one very old T.V. with very poor reception. Before Create Global Healing brought electricity two years ago, there was even no possibility of T.V. This leaves the students left out of the 21st century. On the other hand, it creates an environment where relationships are primary, there are few distractions from connection with the earth, and they are much less affected by the sensationalism, consumerism, negativity and fear from the popular media. Their survival depends on having resources and learning skills including technology, but I hope they do not pay the heavy price of chronic stress, fear and the drive to consume that plagues our Western world. We are heavily emphasizing values, self-healing, and heart-centeredness along with vocational and entrepreneurship in order to bring as much balance as possible. I will attempt to write tomorrow, but technology here may interrupt that.
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