Month: July 2012

LesleyPearlLeave a comment

LesleyPearl's avatarbodysherpa

We just got back from dinner – Ethiopian food. The music is cranked outside the CommonWealth Guest House where we are staying and people are dancing in the yard. Last night it was Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers singing Islands in the Stream. The music seems as random as the architecture.

Tin shacks dot one side of the green hills. Modern, clean-lined homes surrounded by walls the other. It reminds me of Mexico. The dichotomy is everywhere. Women in traditional African fabrics, baskets on their heads, walk side-by-side with women in jeans. Sidewalks (and dirt roads) teem with people walking. Toyotas line up in traffic. 

Those who visited Rwanda four years ago are amazed by the growth and changes. Today we visited the WE-ACTx clinic that provides comprehensive health and human services to women and children with HIV and AIDS. A doctor from Cook County Hospital in Chicago founded the…

View original post 358 more words

On My Way to Africa

LesleyPearlLeave a comment

Africa!

Those words sounded like magic –rolled out in almost a whisper by a child in the 1970s television commercial for the Detroit Zoo.

Today, in about 3 hours, I board a plane from Chicago to Rwanda (via Brussels).

Many of my friends have asked “Why?”. 

“Why Africa?” “Why  Rwanda?”

I could rattle off any number of seemingly plausibly answers, but really, I’m going because I can.   I had dreamed of Africa for as long as I can remember.  My synagogue announced a service trip.  Funds were available.  And it was time.  My friend Deb has a juicier answer.  She calls my going “divine enticement.”  Something beyond me, coaxing me there.    

I’ll be joining my congregation in working with two different AIDS organizations.  One, WE-ACTx, provides access to treatment and services for women and children with AIDS and HIV.   The other, CHABHA, funds and supports children orphaned by AIDS.

I’ve been given the following advice by those who have traveled: Surrender.  Drop expectations. And breathe it in.  I’ve learned a little about doing just that over the past five years.  And so I am optimistic.

My passport and yellow-fever vacination certification is tucked into my bag, along with my wallet.  I have a rain shell that my friend Michael brought to me Monday night.  And I’m traveling in shoes not quite suited for Africa.  I’ll change them when I arrive.

 Friends have asked me to write and to take photos.   This is my beginning.