Oneness and Love are Stronger than Fear and Hate

So much has happened since my last post!  But first of all, I have to tell you that as I sat down to write tonight, my little bird friend from my last post began rustling the leaves in the honeysuckle vine next to my patio table.  Little bird has not landed on my hand again since that day in August, but it is sure comforting to know that my wild kingdom family is nearby.  Today the wildlife theme has been frogs.  I have been surrounded by cute little bright green guys hopping around and gobbling up bugs.  Yesterday I saw the red tailed hawk again, too, and great big moths.  I will have to look that up.

Big news!  The yoga studio that I have been teaching at in the back half of the Cross Fit space is moving to an actual studio next weekend!  The new space is beautiful and serene, just like a yoga studio ought to be.  We have been slowly but surely cleaning, painting, and moving things into the space in the past few days, with the rest of the move and set up to occur on Friday. First classes are on Saturday the 17^th! No more clanging and grunting noises filtering into the yoga room during savasana!  It was a wonderful partnership while it lasted, and a nice place to begin my teaching career, though.  I taught my last class there yesterday and I have to say that I will miss it a little, but not enough not to be excited to move to our own space.  The studio is being set up by a group of four yoga teachers and one aspiring yoga teacher, and it has been a wonderful partnership experience with each of us pitching in in the ways that we are best able to help out, coordinating our schedules and working on the project when we can in order to make it a reality.  Very inspiring!  Partnership and working together as one is what it is all about!

In other connectedness news, today was the 10^th anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks on the United States, and  I commemorated the event by listening to the first of a series of weekly Sunday morning teleseminar kicking off something called 40 Days To Oneness.  October 24^th is Oneness Day, this year will be the second annual Oneness Day.  Like Earth Day where we celebrate the earth and how we care for it, on Oneness Day we celebrate how we are all a part of the human family, how we are connected rather than how we are separate, and how we take care of each other.  We are stronger when we stand together – just like the example above of the group of women I am a part of that is setting up the yoga studio.  It coincides with a lot of the reading I have been doing lately about how we are all energetically linked, and that the stuff that we are made of is not what we can see but what we can’t see.  We are in the spaces in between things.  It’s like how the house feels different when someone is either home or not home. It’s stuff you can’t see – the energy – that you’re picking up on when you notice that. 

In addition to all of the above, I’m also doing a energy work course that talks mostly about how our lives happen through us rather than to us.  It’s taking responsibility for our choices and actions to a whole new level of depth.  Our thoughts have energetic weight and impact our experience by acting as a filter that determines what reaches us.  This is why two people who experience the same thing will have a different experience with it.  The feelings that we have felt and the decisions that we have made as a result going back further than we remember – going back even before we came into our physical existence through the experiences and decisions and agreements made by others in our family lineages, are all stored in our energy field for our experiences to filter through. It’s fascinating.  In that course, this week we are noticing and evaluating at the old agreements that we have made in the past – things that we have declared or decreed and my not even remember that are still filtering our experience today.  Many of these “contracts” no longer serve us, and they can be renegotiated energetically.  I have heard this many times but I didn’t really get how to do this until this course provided an activity that can be used as a tool to renegotiate these contracts.   I did this work this morning and I could truly feel a shift within me, especially when I added Reiki and asked for support.  There is a lot out there that happens around us that we do not see, and I am beginning to pick up on the subtle vibrations and listen to that inner voice more and more.  

I am literally learning so much lately that it is difficult keep up with it and blog about it because by the time I sit down at my computer, a new lesson has come along, and I am completely absorbed in it.  I seem to be manifesting a crash course in subtle energy work.

Speaking of vibrations, I also read an interesting thing this weekend.  Since they started measuring the frequencies of the energy of the earth, it has more than doubled.  This is the shift that people are talking about and that many of us feel occurring.  Along with this increase in frequency, it almost feels like time is speeding up.  Not only in that we are all so busy, but in that it takes almost no time at all for the energy that we send out to reverberate back to us in the form of the results we have just asked for, consciously or unconsciously.  The trick is to be aware of “where you are coming from” because it’s no longer possible to ignore the fact that we are responsible for the results.   We are the source of our experience, no way around it.  We are powerfully creative beings that dream up our experience as we go through our daily lives.

Finally, on the subject of vibrations and reverberations, another thing I realized this weekend is that, although the tragedy of 9/11 was absolutely mind blowingly horrible, one of the things that it spuured was our collective and powerful coming together to counteract the violence that had been done.  At first we were consoling one another, but as time progressed, it became a habit t connect and what a beautiful legacy. I remember the silence of that day and the next several days after that because all flights were cancelled and the skies were quiet.  In that silence, we looked both within and to those who were around us and appreciated what we had – each other, and this appreciation endured.  The terrorists sought to divide us with the darkness of fear, but the light of love and connection won out, demonstrating to us yet again that light pierces darkness, and love will always be stronger than fear.

A Bird in the Hand – My Secret Goldfinch Life

The back of my house faces east, which means the sun rises over my backyard. One of my favorite things to do is to eat breakfast on the patio, facing the sun, and allowing its warmth and light to wash over me as the wind rustles through the leaves of the trees and I listen to the birds sing. This morning, as I was sitting down with my omelet and a cup of coffee, a little goldfinch fell out of the honeysuckle and creeper vines that grow on a trellis next to the table on my patio. The little guy or gal was just sitting there on the ground under my chair, and seemed a little stunned and wiped out. Baby bird was new enough that it still had some of the fuzzy feathers that little baby birds are born with wisping out from between it’s more mature feathers that are built for flying.

I was worried that baby bird would be harassed by my curious whippets should it move. They are gentle dogs, but they have an instinct to chase, catch, and kill small things that move, and I, in an effort to avoid potential carnage, I scooped little baby bird up very carefully in my cupped hands. Baby was scared, of course, and I was worried about the additional trauma I was causing. Knowing what I do about energy, I shifted my energy as best I could to send what I hoped were supportive and safe messages to the baby bird’s circuitry. But I could feel it trembling, and I could picture its little heart beating far too hard and fast for good health. Being an energy worker and healer, I shifted to allow Reiki to flow through my palms in an effort to comfort the little being there. She calmed down after a few moments, partially due to exhaustion, I’m sure. She didn’t try to fly away, however, but instead gripped onto the skin of my hands with her little baby bird feet. She was clearly feeling dazed, but my hands felt safe to hold onto. I decided to place her over my heart to see what might happen, and to my surprise she rested there gently and her little eyes began to close.

My abandoned breakfast was calling to me, and so was my coffee, so after a little, while I decided to move baby bird from my chest to some sort of soft and safe place next to me on the table. I carried the baby into the house and picked up a dishtowel to place her on outside.

She rested there, looking sleepy, while I ate a little more breakfast and sipped a little more coffee. She opened her little mouth, like she was hoping to be fed. It was hot on the patio, and I wondered if she was thirsty. Her little mouth was open long enough that it started to look dry inside. Not being a bird myself, I’m not built in a way to feed her the way her momma does, but that little mouth was pleading with me. I left the bird on the table, and went to find a bottle cap that I put water in, and set it down next to her little beak. She didn’t seem to know what to do with the water at all. I realized I was going to have to put it in her mouth somehow.

I decided to use my finger and see what happened. It was awkward because even my smallest finger was huge compared to that little mouth, and I felt clumsy as I tried to drip water into her mouth. Her beak was at the wrong angle to just drip water into, and I ended up putting it on top of her beak. She instinctively swallowed it, her little tongue working, and the water seemed to revive her. She became more alert, and she started peeping softly, but she still rested there, opening her little mouth, hopefully. I picked her up again, and she gripped my fingers with her feet, made little peeping noises, and looked right at me with her little baby bird eyes. I wondered what she must be thinking and feeling. She seemed totally content to remain there on my hand and made no effort to fly away.

By this time, it had been an hour or more since we first started this interaction, and I wondered what was going to happen. It was such an unusual thing to happen that I thought surely something must be terribly wrong with this little bird, and I began to worry that it was dying because it was not acting like birds normally act around human beings.

My dogs just watched all this, they didn’t seem surprised at all that their mom was interacting with another animal in nature, and they treated it like this sort of thing was completely normal and natural, even to be expected. They didn’t seem jealous of the attention that this little creature was getting, and they didn’t interfere at all. It was pretty interesting, they just seemed to be supportive.

With the bird still on my hand, I went back inside and got a camera to take pictures. The little bird stayed on my hand, totally content where she was, not feeling any urge to go and explore my house, and seemingly not worried or afraid. Amazing. But things needed to shift back to normal. I wasn’t going to be able to take care of a little bird in my home along with two sight hounds who, although perfectly behaved so far, would eventually feel the need to capture this little baby bird, and besides, there would be bird poop everywhere.

I placed the bird on a branch in the vines beside the table. I had to place her little feet on the branches, she wasn’t eager to leave me at all, and once in the vines, she remained there with me in her sight. She was looking right at me as if she understood the communion we had had at a more basic level than I did. For another hour while I sat out there reading, she stayed in the vines above me. Eventually she began to sing in a little baby bird voice, and after a while, I realized that now there were about four goldfinches in my yard, all of them singing. It was actually quite loud. I wondered if one of them was baby’s real mommy hoping to guide her home. None of them seemed worried, though, they seemed encouraging; their voices were happy. For a moment, I felt a part of the goldfinch community in honor of my role as a goldfinch mommy during the previous few hours. It was cool, but also a little weird.

She stayed there until I went into the house to do the dishes. When I came back out, I couldn’t find her. I hope that she made it safely to her next branch, that she lives a long happy goldfinch life singing happy goldfinch songs. And, each time I see a goldfinch in my yard, I will wonder if it’s her coming home to check on me.

Shifting Beliefs to Shift Outcomes

Week after week, I have been realizing that it has been a couple of months since I last posted anything here, even though I have thought about it many times, and I intended to write more posts about the Dominican Republic trip in the previous two months. 

It took about a month for me to finally come back to “earth” and integrate my experiences with the people of the Dominican Republic – I am so changed after that trip.  That was the first time I had been surrounded by people who were truly open to creating the best out of each experience, and truly open to connecting with other people, come what may.  People in the US seemed so closed off and guarded and often joyless by comparison.  That’s not to say that things are better in the DR, certainly there are hardships there of the type that many in the US will never experience.  Things are simply different.  The focus is different.  I guess when you live in a place that lacks all of the toys and material distractions that we have in the first world, your focus is bound to be a lot different. 

I was expecting to find people that wallowed in their lack of material items, resentful of what I have acquired and hold so easily, and depressed about the lack of prospects they have in comparison.  Instead, I found warm friendly people who are curious what is around them, who seem notice the best of everything, and rather than focus on what they don’t have, they focus on what they do have more often than not. 

It completely rocked my world and spurred a huge internal shift in my way of thinking that I had been waiting for.  An internal childlike part of me that I had suppressed many years ago under the mantle perceived expectations and responsibility was woken up.  Beliefs I had either set aside or taken up are being held up for my examination, and so that I can decide if the choices I am making now still support what I believe life to be about.  Energetic parts of me that I had closed down due to the mistaken belief that I needed to close down to survive were opened back up.  Being kinesthetic, this was the only way that I was going to get the message that I had been hearing and reading over and over, understanding intellectually, but not emotionally or spiritually, even though I knew I needed to.  More than any other trip I have taken, this one touched my heart and soul. I knew I had made many, many “deals” in my life, tradeoffs chosen for the anticipated and culturally sanctioned results that I was supposed to get rather than tuning into the true voice of my heart, and I had been feeling a vague sense of resentment and depression that some of the “deals” that I had sacrificed my true voice for where not netting out the way they were supposed to.  I have been on this path for a while, and I have a while further to travel, as anyone who is on this path knows.  

So, on this trip, I found myself shifting away from my masculine influenced need to form a plan and execute it to success, and indeed shifting away from how success has been defined for me up until now. I was living in a place where the variables are different, and in order to succeed, you have to let go.  This is a place where you don’t know if you will have water to flush the toilet, wash your hands, and shower all the time. Many if not most of the conveniences that you rely on and expect while you’re at home are not reliable, you have to constantly shift your plan to fit what is available at the moment, and adapt your plan to using that.  The creature comforts that are a given at home are not a given here, but what you can expect, and what you can rely on, is that there will always be someone to talk to, and someone who is up for doing something at a moment’s notice, and if you need help, all you have to do is step outside your door and maybe walk down the street.      Very different from the US where you may not even see many of your neighbors, even if you know them, and it is extremely likely that you don’t know them to begin with.  Is this isolation really working for us?  At the same time, though, the entire world is getting smaller and smaller.  Thanks to online social networks, we have the ability to connect with the people in every corner of the globe at any given moment if we choose to connect.  The world has changed a lot.  Some of what has changed is working, and some of it isn’t.  Sometimes things seem to be happening very quickly and we have little or no control over what is happening, but maybe where the “control point” is is different than we have been conditioned to believe.  

Many of us are feeling The Shift that everyone is talking about these days.  As the economic, social, and political structures that we have been living under are falling apart around us, we realize that, as a species, we are not going to be able to continue doing what we have been doing and continue to flourish.  In order to flourish, we need to do things differently – many things radically differently, but there seems to be a gap between this knowledge and our ability to actually change our actions as a collective.   We may have a sense of what is needed, but there are many fears surrounding actually making the changes we need to make.  We know that our ideas are wrong, and yet we cling to them because they are familiar.  We know that this is not going to bring us the results that we seek, the growth that we seek and that calls to us from the deep midst of our being, yet we are afraid to take those steps. 

The first step – and a very important step – is for us to realize and accept that they way we have been doing things isn’t working.  Most of us have already done this work.  The next step is to realize that our actions come from our beliefs, and that these beliefs need to evolve.  This is tricky, because in order to do this, we need to become really clear about what our beliefs actually are.  This can be difficult because these are beliefs that we have internalized and are imbedded so deeply many of them are not even conscious beliefs.  When we make a decision, we run our ideas through a filter that includes these beliefs that we are largely unaware of.  We see their unfavorable results, but the contents filter are so automatic and hidden from us that we don’t see how they are impacting our experience.  It is hard for us to change our experience because we don’t know exactly where it is coming from.  It seems to be outside us, but really, it is happening inside us at a very deep level. We may feel powerless to change, but we are not.  if we can identify those beliefs, we can see their impact, AND we can question them, AND we can change them.  When we change our beliefs, we change our experiences.

From the Daily Om: The Most Fulfilling Road

I liked this one! It’s from today’s Daily Om (7/15/2011)

Our lives are made up of a complex network of pathways that we can use to move from one phase of life to the next. For some of us, our paths are wide, smooth, and clearly marked. Many people, however, find that they have a difficult time figuring out where they need to go next. Determining which “next step” will land you on the most direct route to fulfillment and the realization of your life purpose may not seem easy.

There are many ways to discover what the next step on your life path should be. If you are someone who seeks to satisfy your soul, it is vital that you make this inquiry. Often, your inner voice will counsel you that it’s time for a change, and it is very important to trust yourself because only you know what is best for you. Personal growth always results when you let yourself expand beyond the farthest borders of what your life has been so far. When figuring out what your next step will be, you may want to review your life experiences. The choices you’ve made and the dreams you’ve held onto can give you an idea of what you don’t want to do anymore and what you might like to do next. It is also a good idea to think about creative ways you can use your skills and satisfy your passions. Visualizing your perfect future and making a list of ways to manifest that future can help you choose a logical next step that’s in harmony with your desires. Meditation, journal writing, ta! king a class, and other creative activities may inspire you and provide insight regarding the next step in life that will bring you the most satisfaction.

It is when you are willing to listen to yourself and be fearless that figuring out your next step becomes easy. Beneath the fear and hesitation and uncertainty lies your inner knowing that always knows which step you need to take next. If you can allow the taking of your next step to be as easy as putting one foot in front of the next, you’ll notice that your next step is always the one that is right in front of you. All you have to do is put one foot forward and on the ground.

First Hours in Habanero, DR

copyright 2011 Avalon Yoga & Wellness, LLC

In the relative cool of early morning, I am in bed contemplating the number of mosquitoes plastered against the mosquito netting, longing to sink their beaks into me and add to the multitude of welts I have already accumulated.  I didn’t sleep much again last night, it was too hot, too humid, too noisy, and I had too many thoughts to process.   I know that I won’t have the time that I need to process them until I have been back home in the US for a while.

Life here is different.  From the moment we arrived in Habanero, this was clear.  The house we are staying in is a cinderblock house with a cement floor that was built by the government.  It is surrounded by a number of other houses exactly the same as this one.  The floor is lumpy and not level, and the doors do not fit properly, having been made with green wood that changed shape as it was dried while in the shape of a door.  The house is small, probably the same size as the first floor of the modest house I own in the US; consisting of 3 bedrooms, one bathroom, a living area, tiny eating area, and tiny kitchen. There are metal louvers over the window openings, like in Hawaii.  There are no screens, and the bugs enter freely and abundantly.  The floor in the shower is not level; there is a broom in it and sign in there that reminds you to sweep the water to the drain when you are done showering.  Water flows here from a cistern that sets on the roof and has to be filled with a pump from the cistern underground next to the house, and in order to do that, you have to place the pump into the lower cistern and run a hose up to the rooftop cistern, and you can only do this when there is electricity, which is not all the time. 

There is a small refrigerator, but you’ve got to put the things you really want to keep cool in the cooler next to it because of the spotty power situation.  In this house, we’re lucky enough to have an inverter which charges five car battery sized boxes mounted under the eaves at the back door, but the batteries only run the lights and the fans and not the fridge, it draws too much. 

Across the street is a big shade tree under which a number of townspeople sit at all times of day, waiting out the heat.  There is birthday party across the street the night we arrive, music blares from who knows where, and people are gathered around.  People come by to meet us, the latest Americans to visit the town they live in. 

After applying the first of many coats of DEET, we take a stroll around the town with one of our hosts, walking past several cows that roam the streets seeming to belong either to everyone or no one. Our first stop is a banana grove, but a couple of the townspeople motion us back to the town before we go too far down the path, a couple of men on a motorcycle have just rode past us, the guy on the back is holding a big rock in his hand.  We head one block to the church where a service is being held in Spanish. We go in and sit down, the floor is loose dirt, rocky, and dusty, and uneven under my sandals.  The man at the pulpit is delivering a sermon to a small crowd of people who periodically shout “Amen!”  and “Glory to God!” in Spanish.  The woman nearest me swats at flies with a piece of cloth.  After a short time, we leave and go to the school, a tidy cinderblock building painted two contrasting shades of tan.  By now, a handful of children have begun to tag along, and three or four of them pay duck, duck, goose as we look at the school grounds, covered in weeds, plant debris, and garbage.  We move to the front of the school where one of the children looks up and reads the name of the school painted above the front door, he seems pleased.  We move on to the poorer part of town where the houses are built with sticks and have dirt floors.  Here a group of people are gathered under a coconut tree, opening coconuts that they have knocked out of the trees with long sticks and cut into with machetes, so that they can drink the coconut water. The machetes make me nervous, particularly because they are in the hands of kids that seem to young to be handling them, in my US perspective.  They ask us if we want some coconut water too, and some kids scamper off to another tree with their long stick to knock down coconuts from another tree that they think is better.  Once the coconuts come back, one of the adults uses his machete to peel it so that there is a drinking hole in one end, and I am nervous that he will slice off the end of one of his fingers, but he is practiced at this.  Soon, some other children show up with some kind of fruit in their hands that they give to us.  It tastes like a natural sour patch candy and is delicious.  We eventually make our way back to the house where dinner is almost ready.   More people come by to introduce themselves, and have trouble pronouncing our names.  I decide to call myself Lynda while I am here so that it might be easier for people to remember and pronounce my name. 

Eventually night falls and I expect it to get cooler, but it doesn’t really.  Thunder and lightening booms and flashes in the distance.  We head out for a walk with the food that is left over from dinner, meeting other townspeople along the way as we deliver it to one of the families that lives in one of the shacks.  Eventually, it starts raining, and I think “Oh good, this will cool things off,” but it doesn’t it only adds to the humidity. Eventually I go to bed under this mosquito net that I am now staring at, there are bugs, dogs barking, music playing, and the voices of children and adults at the birthday party.  It’s noisy and hard to sleep, even with earplugs in, but eventually the people noise outside dies down, and sometime in the night I manage to fall into interrupted sleep.

Connecting the Dots

X is a Haitian man who fled Haiti on foot and arrived in Habanero last August. He and his wife share a house that is really a shack with a dirt floor. They have three children that they can’t afford to feed because he doesn’t have papers and is therefore unable to work at anything but odd and menial jobs. Earlier in the year, he asked Brenda to take one of his children because he can’t afford to feed everyone. The first night we arrived in Habanero, I went with Brenda to his house to deliver a plate of food. The door was closed when we arrived, and they had tucked some fabric around the door to keep smoke from a wood fire inside, I assume to keep the mosquitoes out. They had no light at their house, and no flashlight. We told him we would be back with a flashlight, and asked him to help us with translating lessons for the kids at school as he speaks some English in addition to Spanish.

Being Haitian, he also speaks French, which meant that he was one of the people that I was most able to communicate with while I was in the DR. He showed up at the school the first day we worked with the kids, but he hung back for some reason. Perhaps he was fearful of being recognized as an illegal by the other translators that we had hired, or maybe he is just very reserved. After class, we spoke for a bit in front of the school before making our way back to Scott and Brenda’s house for lunch. He told me how badly he needed work, how much he wanted to work, and how hard it was for him to find any because he was not in the country legally. Once we arrived, he sat beside the other translators on the bench in the backyard under the shade of a tree, so perhaps it wasn’t fear of being turned in that kept him quiet. Maybe he is just reserved. He ate with us, and then disappeared, heading back home. I didn’t see him again until a few days later when we had movie night.

Brenda and Scott use a laptop and inFocus projector to project movies and photo slide shows onto the side of their house. More on this later.

He came by after the first movie, Harry Potter, ended, and we sat on the bench under the tree and talked while the second movie played. Although my French is not all that outstanding and he is out of practice due to having spoken only Spanish for the past year, we were able to converse quite a bit. He had come with his roommate who sat nearby and listened to us, although I don’t think his roommate spoke any French. When I asked him why we hadn’t seen him at the school, he told me that he had found a job raking in a field. He was pleased to have a job. He wants to improve his English and asked if we had any books that might help him. Now we get to the reason why he didn’t think he could help at the school. Here is another adult in the town of Habanero who would like to learn English but has no resources to do so.

Imagine being from a place where conditions are so bad that living in a dirt floor shack with your wife, three children, and roommates is preferable. You can’t work and you can’t go to the doctor because although it’s free for the Dominicans, it not for you, and you’re afraid of being deported. Toward the end of the week, a different Haitian man came to our doorstep for help because he had cut off the end of his finger. Scott took him to the clinic and paid the 10 bucks it cost to have his finger sewn up because he didn’t have it.

At another point in the week, I met another Haitian man on the beach clearing brush by hand with a machete. He spoke less French than X so language was more of a barrier and I wasn’t able to get his story. His situation was clearly different, though, because he was working for some kind of service, I believe the military. At first I thought he was a policeman, then I thought he said he was a fireman, but later he turned up in Habanero for English class in a uniform of some sort that looked military. He had to leave class early to walk back to where he needed to be in order to be there on time, and I never saw him again.

I wished I had a translator for every conversation I tried to have that week so that I could learn more of everyone’s story. The values of a place where you have nothing are different, and you know your neighbors. You’re related to many of them, but that’s another post.

And yet they are not all that unhappy. The people that I met made the best of everything they had and people help take care of each other. Keep in mind I spent most of my time with kids aged 6-14 who probably have a different perspective than their older siblings and parents or other adults, of course.

I feel lucky to have spent almost all my time actually in the community we served in. It gave us the chance to sit side by side with these kids and visit as best we could given the language challenges. I got to see how people interacted with one another in different situations. There was a lot of sitting around going on with the locals, and at first I maintained my first world productivity mindset but as the week wore on and I was more and more sleep deprived, that slid away a bit. It was hot, and hotter in the house are in the school than outside, and at times it felt hard to move.

The heat was not as hard to bare as the bugs were, though. It wasn’t the mosquitoes, it was everything else. I have never had so many bug bites in my life. One evening while teaching English I became so overheated that I felt feverish and my bug bites felt like chicken skin in the fridge, but I powered on because the amount of time we had to spend was so limited, my discomfort seemed less important than what they might get out of what we were doing. I drank water like crazy and carried around a big water bottle that they were intrigued by. I was determined to avoid dehydration, but I did feel like my brain had melted a little bit from the heat and lack of sleep.

I didn’t think about home that much because there wasn’t much down time, and because life is so different there than it is here. I feel like I wasn’t there long enough to really know fully what I was experiencing in any given moment, and I had more questions than answers. Once again I am determined to learn Spanish so that when I go back I can connect. I want to know what’s really going on, what people think really rather than my assumptions, and I want to hear from them what they feel they really need. What do the children think they need?

It Takes More than a Week to Change the World

copyright Avalon Yoga & Wellness, LLC

I suppose it’s only fitting that, as I sit to write my first blog post about my experience in the tiny town of Habanero in the Dominican Republic with Evergreen4Kids, the one Dominican song that I brought back with me starts playing on my iPod. It is also fitting that the song, which is from a CD given to me by a Haitian man that I met on the beach outside Barahona, doesn’t match anything on Shazam, an iPhone app that “listens” to songs, identifies them, and then pulls them up on iTunes. Like the corner of the Dominican Republic that I spent the last week in, technology fails.

Power only flows to Habanero a third of the time and on no set schedule. Only half of the town has water on a regular, dependable basis. The side of the highway that I stayed on only has water when a man paid by the government physically goes up to the pump and turns it on, and he has to turn it off and on because the water on that particular portion of the line has to feed more than one village and they have to take turns. Apparently the man who turns on the pump and is a resident of Habanero has a girlfriend in the other town. Perhaps that is why the water had not flowed in two weeks by the time we arrived.

That isn’t the only thing that there is a shortage of. During the week that we were there, anywhere from 6 to 20 children lined the back step and waited at the back door for breakfast every morning having not eaten at home, and then boisterously followed us to the school every morning where we were met with other excited children from the village who waited at the front door to the school to be let in and paid attention to by an adult.

Reflecting back, I realize I spent the whole week in culture shock. I had never spent time and visited with people who live literally in shacks with dirt floors, and, at the risk of being politically incorrect, I had also not spent that much time with people who are not Caucasian or Asian, and, being used to sometimes experiencing resentment of some African Americans in the US, I was hesitant at first to let my guard down.  Race aside, I was honestly surprised that everyone that I met – in Habanero and anywhere else that we went, was not only warm and friendly, but eager to meet me, talk to me, and find out about me, and genuinely so.  I was surprised and not surprised to find that people who live in shacks with dirt floors were very warm and accepting of me, and were as curious about me as I was about them. It was refreshing to be around people who look at what is on the inside rather than resent how we might be different.

Connection is what I focused on while I was there. The children in Habanero are, for the most part, very good kids who have the same basic needs for love and attention that kids anywhere have, only many of them don’t get it at home. Their parents are gone – in other countries working, in prison, having just abandoned them, or there are too many children in one family to pay adequate attention to. That’s where I come in: Although I am a childless wonder in the US, in the Dominican I am and auntie many children, ages 6-14.

The connections that made the biggest impression on me were those I made with pre-teen girls. These girls sought me out, needing attention and acceptance. Imagine how hard it must be for them going through that transition without the guidance of an adult to help them navigate it. I met one young woman, Natalia, who is 14 and who the other children said was married. She is just a girl, probably on her way to being a mother herself, and in desperate need of connection with an older woman as a role model – so much so that even one that doesn’t speak her language felt like a godsend, and she followed us around, enduring the teasing of the others just to be around someone who doesn’t look down on her.

Another young woman that I was most struck by was Graciela, a 12 year old girl whose mother lives in Spain, father has deserted the family, and who lives with her brother, Yadti, with their grandmother. Graciela is bitter and defensive and not inclined to let people get close to her, but somehow over the course of the week, I made an impression and she became attached to me, and midway through the week, she told me that she thought of me as the mother that she never had, and that she wished she could come with me in my suitcases when I left. That was a connection that I didn’t expect. She is in a tricky spot, with the right encouragement, acceptance and support, she could stay “on track,” but is very close to giving up. Her brother, Yadti, already has. He told me that in the Dominican Republic, education doesn’t matter, that there is no reason to be educated, so why should he stick with it? That conversation broke my heart and frustrated me at the same time.

Another girl, Yisa, 11, wrote to me during our first daily English class to tell me that I was very important to her. She is very bright and has a lot of potential, I only hope that she can find the support and encouragement that she needs to continue her education, and I wish that it could be me. I found myself wondering how I could return to Habanero as soon as possible so as not to waste any time with these girls who were looking up to us.

I have many more impressions of Habanero which I look forward to sharing as I digest them into readable form.