After a song session with the kids at the Kenyan Refugee camp I sat and met with the elders. I listened. They were eager to tell me their stories. One guy, Peter, who was about my age, told me through his swollen eyes about how he'd be lynched by a mob and then had to watch as his home and all of the things he'd spent his life collecting went up in smoke. I promised him I would tell his story. So here I am. I cant imagine having something so terrible happen to you and to feel like theres no one to tell it to. It happens all the time. They had all suffered.....they had no homes....little food.....they'd seen death...yet they knew how to dance and celebrate the gift that is the moment. Amazing.
The problems in this corner of the world are completely out of control and can be overwhelming, often to the point of paralysis. Millions of refugees, Sudan Genocide, 5.4 Million dead in the last ten years in Congo! I barely even knew there was anything happening in Congo. Kenyas burning, 28% of pregnant women in South Africa have AIDS. We're bombarded and theres no way that our ability to act/react can keep up with our levels of awareness. Internet, CNN, BBC, barraging my eyes and my conscious constantly.
Somehow though I believe that there is enough. That we weren't dumped on this planet without enough resources to feed ourselves and all live descent lives. Sounds crazy and so far off. When I pray, I pray that we get out of our own way. We're blessed with a suns that is constantly showering and recharging a super fertile
planet that just wants to give and give. There is enough. Theres enough space. Theres enough food. Theres enough energy. Theres enough money. Theres enough. It is we who poison the earth and hoard her resources. Then we fight trillion dollar wars over these resources so then theres no money for medicine or education for the basic and the obvious. Had we not gone to war with Iraq and invested the Trillions of dollars elsewhere, we could have crossed off one of the big ones...AIDs or Cancer maybe...World hunger for sure...vaccinations easy...education for all..Sustainable energy...probably several of these. We could collectively choose such a reality, but we get stuck in our patterns, in the same old same old. You know when you get on the back of a grey-hound bus and it smells like piss and you cant stand the smell but after a few minutes you get used to the smell and it seems like it goes away. it doesn't.
Ill tell you Its been wonderfully startling for me the last few weeks.
One night I was in Uganda, the next morning in a Cafe in Amsterdam, Cuddle puddle that night in New York City and then San Salvador by noon the next day. Head spinning, reality shifting on a dime. Amsterdam and her sterility and straight lines with the mud huts of Uganda still fresh in my eye. Thousands die each day from diarrhea. Rehydration salts cost 3 dollars a packet. So Im stuck asking myself how do I buy anything I dont need.
I read recently that every 110 hours a million more humans arrive on the planet then die into it. Every seventh person on the planet is a Chinese peasant. Humans drink over a billion cups of tea a day. The insects outway us and the chickens outnumber us four to one. We're tiny...You and Everyone you know make up a sampling error on any global census, yet your it. The dust of the earth whom this world was created for.
