Someone today mentioned a name I hadn't heard in a long time and it got me thinking about Africa. Actually, it got me thinking about being somewhere else. I hadn't felt it in a while but now it's back. I want to be in another country. The happiest I've ever been has been when I was somewhere other than Montreal. Like I said, it's been dormant for the past year or so but now it has begun again. When I was in Africa the Oxfam people explained it like being bitten by a travel bug. It can lie dormant but then the itch begins again. If I get the new job I'm praying for this year and then get laid off I am soooo going somewhere for 3-4 months. I need it to be happy.

Now the fun part: where shall I go?

OK, so this is really the longest I've gone without blogigng. I just don't have the driver or time anymore. Geez, how many times have I said that here?

Serirously though, I'll try to blog out more of life in days to come.

Yesterday was a day of good news all around.

Firstly, I spoke with my mom on the phone and our pastor, who went on a mission to El Salvador 2 weeks ago, was happy with the church my mother founded with God in Chirilagua. He said it's a church full of the Holy Spirit. Praise the Lord!

Second good news: I had my first weigh in yesterday and I lost… drum roll please… 7 pounds in the first week! Like Carmen, my Mexican roommate, would say: AHUA!

Third of all: my aforementioned Mexican roommate received a box of goodies from her sister in NY. I'm happy for her of course.

And last but not least the Habs kicked the Bruins's butts last night. WOO HOO! 5-0 baby, Price got a shut out and it was all good. That means we advance to the next round. Yeah baby, that's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.

I watched Ghost last night and when Sam, you remember Sam, right? Patrick Swayze, was at his funeral listening to his eulogy, I wondered what people will say about me and it got me to thinking. Yeah, sure everybody will say that I was a nice person, patient, a born again Christian blah, blah, blah, etc. But will anybody actually say something about who I really am? No and I’ll tell you why: I am a cocoon. I don’t let anyone near enough to get to know me. I’ve put up a big wall around my feelings, and I’m talking about the wall of China proportions. I think I was raised by Vulcans and then secretly returned to my mother after her memory was wiped clean. Seriously, I don’t show emotions although I feel them. The only exception seems to be when I’m watching movies, especially Bollywood movies. These movies have a knack for making me cry. If you want to cry yourself silly, Niagara Falls proportions, watch Kal Ho Naa Ho. Then you can try Khabie Khushie Khabie Gham. If you don’t cry watching those films you’re Vulcan.

My writing has been put on what has become a very long hiatus. *sigh* Oh well, hopefully reading on all of the books that are supposed to make me a super-novelist will improve my English. One book suggested I don’t use the spell checker on my word processor. How evil is that? Who in the world does that? Good grief man.

The thing is, the story is still moving along in my head; I’ve had to buy a note book to jot down tidbits of ideas while driving or at work. Some days it’s all I can do from digging into my purse and pulling out the silver notebook to write some spoofed up idea about my heroine, her past, her future, her friends and of course the conflict. It’s odd that she’s still in my head, my heroine I mean. Even thought I’m not writing per say, she’s still evolving. I really should drop the books and just write before she gets disgruntled and decides to jump out of my head.

Other than that, my mother is back for good. I had missed her a lot but living with her sometimes drives me right up the wall. She knows I love her.

I also started another diet. I’ve really got to lose some weight. The doctor says I’m a bit hypertensive and that my blood sugar is a bit up. That means I’ve eaten myself into a disease! How horrible is that?!

Anywho, anybody out there reading this, pray for me so I can keep up with the diet and get healthier and get back to my writing my novel.

I’ve decided to write a book. I have an idea in my head that is just longing to burst out and be told. I had actually written nearly 50 pages when I decided that I should at the very least buy a book that shows how the art is accomplished. I realized that I already did half the things those wonderful books teach you to do but holly macro!! I also realized that I’m sadly lacking in many other areas. Writing sure is fun, particularly when the ideas just seem to flow but then stupid writers block creeps up on you and it seems that your imagination and creativity have run dry, like mud that has suddenly dried up and cracks.

I had to stop writing and go back to character creation. It’s going really slow, but I hope to get back to writing my story down soon. On the up side, writing up my characters first is providing me with many cool plots to explore!

So, happy writing!

How I long to idly sit and ponder at the questions of life so I can be able to come up with beautiful prose for my blog.

I haven’t blogged in a very long time; I haven’t the time or the inclination anymore. To be a writer, even a blog writer, you must sit and think. At least, I need to sit and think.

My mind has become like a beehive under attack. My thoughts are bees, buzzing from one synapse to another, urged by the promise of freedom and retribution beyond the walls that hold my grey matter. I can’t contain it for much longer, it will eventually come out. The valve has been turned, teasing it all, but I know it will eventually all come pouring out. I hope I’m ready for it, I know that at the moment I’m not.

I suddenly developed a thirst to explore more of this foreign, red country. I wanted to speak with more burkinabes, to learn more about their culture and habits and way of life and why they did what they did. I made many African friends, especially with the youth from the church I was attending. They were a lot of fun and I truly enjoyed their company. But there was a thorn on my side: my room mates. They didn't like me. Why I couldn't befriend them was not something that was to be revealed to me although I tried to reason it. One of them hated me and the other was just indifferent. To this day I ignore why and confess myself befuddled over it for I've always believed myself to be an easygoing person. Eventually I began to ignore them as they did me although the one that hated me would do or say things to get under my skin. It wasn't easy to live in the same house with her but at least I had friends. I had even become friendly with the night guard and maid. To my delight I found out that my maid was Christian as well and had a Christian husband. I met him one evening as I was getting ready to settle for the night. I wasn't really used to having people call on me but I did my best to entertain those who did. We got to talking about spiritual matters and I found out that his father was a pastor in a highly superstitious village called Pielimpikou. He had been a pastor there for 16 years when his predecesors all left only after one year, not being able to handle the spiritual warfare of the village. I wanted to meet this older pastor who lived in poverty because of Christ, who was a brave warrior who knew why he was fighting. So when Christmas was just around the corner and my room mates had decided on a whim to throw a Christmas bash, I elected to not attend. At first I didn't know where I would go because to hear them plan it, the party would go through to the early hours of the morning. I couldn't possibly stay locked up in my room, I wouldn't be at peace. I started to thing about going somewhere exotic, fun, somewhere totally alien from everything I knew. All of my Oxfam colleagues would be doing a "western" ritual, reminiscing about home and snow and Christmas shopping but I wanted to be in Africa, living it and enjoying it.

One very hot and sunny day when Madelaine was doing our laundry outdoors, she sat on the armchair where I was sitting reading and she mentioned that she was going to enjoy her Christmas vacation. Imagine a big bright light bulb suddenly lighting up atop of my head. Why not go to her home village and meet the pastor I so wanted to speak with? I even offered to pay her bus ticket if she would take me with her. Her eyes lit up as brightly as my light bulb had and suddenly I was involved in the preparations of our "trip". And what a trip it proved to be.

Here's a short story about my Christmas 2000.

Cultural shock

My five month term as a young volunteer in Africa was coming to an end. I was stationed in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, in a house made of beige bricks in a nice neighborhood. It wasn’t the most beautiful neighborhood but it was decent.

Burkina is a beautiful country with equally beautiful people but even so, I experienced a deep cultural shock: poverty. It’s deeply imbedded in harsh poverty. Where ever you went poverty was slapped in your face and the sting of the slap lasted longer when you realized you were powerless to help them all, and especially when, despite their impoverished lifestyle, they were very hospitable and would treat you with so much respect.

My first month had been spent trying to come to grips with this reality. I had seen poverty before on TV but this was so much different. This was real. These were real beggars in the streets, real dirty little children who looked mal nourished with their inflated stomachs, real mothers who would come knocking at your door not to ask for a handout, but for a job, any job, to be able to feed their children.

It was so heart breaking. I wouldn’t leave my house except to go to work and to church. I didn’t have any friends and I would spend my days off locked in my room listening to music or writing. This went on for a full month. One fine day, in my taxi I smiled. I smiled because I was suddenly happy of being there. Not that I stopped caring about the poor, but I just accepted that what I was there to do was the best I could do. To teach, to teach others to teach others so they would be more self-sustainable.

So with this realization and renewed happiness, I began to enjoy myself more, to see that even if they were poor they had dignity and that they were hardworking people who made ends meet no matter what. The most surprising discovery of all was that they were happy, happier than those who have it all in developed countries. How do I know this? They don’t know what stress is.

The next night found Lindsay and Nina cloaked and hooded, making their way surreptitiously into the darkened landscape. The orange moon hung low in the sky, barely shedding any light on the path they took. It was a cool night with the wind blowing from the north, the way they were headed. As they had left the village, the air had been filled with the sweet scent of gardenias and the soft sounds of a sleeping village, crickets chirping, a baby crying in someone’s house, a door opening and then banging softly shut. Now the air was quite except for the wind howling and their labored breaths as they took a particularly steep hill upwards.

Lindsay will always remember the night she fled from her grandmother’s house. She took a quick glance at her younger cousin walking to her right and sighed for the umpteenth time. She had long given up hope her cousin Nina would change her mind and stay behind. She had tried scaring her into staying, telling her there were many unknown variables ahead, that there would be many life threatening risks, she even tried telling her she was sure she was destined to only make it back in a coffin. But nothing had deterred her little cousin. Nina was usually a level-headed young girl. She listened to her elders and obeyed them most of the time, did her homework when she got home, did her share of chores without complaints. But once she got it in her head that an injustice was being done she became quite passionate. She always rooted for the underdog team, always wanted the little guy to win, and always helped those who needed it, whether they asked for it or not. Lindsay wished her cousin had stayed behind but at the same time she was very glad not to be alone in this journey, for it was to be a journey filled with mystery and dread, death and magic, the basic elemental battle between good and evil. Every book Lindsay had ever read about adventures had had a distinct line between good and bad, where the good guy wore white and the bad guy wore black and the good guy always won. The heroes in all those stories had been brave and skilled in something and had had brave friends who were skilled in something beneficial who would die fighting. But Lindsay didn’t feel particularly brave and she definitely did not have any skills except baking great pies and she didn’t think baking pies was going to help her get her Pearl back from Detoria.

-Are you sure this is the right way?

Her cousin’s sudden question brought her back from her reverie and made her stop and pull out the hastened map Comnard had drawn her yester eve.

-Yes, she told Nina with her eyes still on the map. It says so right here that we were to pass the Brisendor hills and then to follow the Eng river downward. There’s the river now, she said pointing to a silvery line winding between two hills and disappearing behind a third.