By Luc Watelet (Stormy / Family / Holidays)
Dear Life,
It is dark now; dark because our corner of the earth turned away from the sun; dark because many are worried about those who are creating selfish havoc on our planet; dark because I am not sure of my precise role in all of this – I only know I am here to help create peace; and dark because we can hear the wind and people here have been gearing up to protect this oasis they love with their lives against the sand storm.
Dear Life,
I am alone in my tent. To me, being alone used to mean being abandoned, or rejected, or ignored. Tonight, my heart is open. This place and its people have welcomed me in ways I never imagined. The food and the music and the dancing all contribute to a sense of celebration. Darkness and light coexist simultaneously.
Meeting the boy today and the goat he was running after … The way his father invited me into his family by asking me to check on his son; the way the boy showed me his precious shiny coin as a good omen to me; and the way his mother took me to dance. I felt at home in my body for the first time in my life. I was seeking this through lust but making love always failed to give me this feeling.
I belong. Odd for me who never belonged anywhere before. I have been floating with no family, from one place to another, one job, one contract to another, or one lover to another… I am expected to participate here, and be myself, and I have a sense of purpose even if not all of it is clear to me.
I came to Africa to teach and I am the one learning. And now I am to help guide our ways through the uncertainties of war toward peace for humanity, something I did not know I had in me. It is all a bit disorienting; time has shifted and I have lost my sense of reality.
I left the United States for Africa a month ago as part of a one of the Centers for Disease Control programs on epidemiology and public health. I was hired on contract for my knowledge in the field of biostatistics – a field I was trying to leave – but I did not know how else to make a living. It was supposed to be for a week, two, at the most. Everything changed so abruptly. It does not matter in the big picture how I got here of course, but my mind keeps trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The plane landed in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and we were immediately redirected north riding in the back of a smelly smoky diesel truck with no suspension left. The thought crossed my mind that I’d surely be back home alone for the end of the year Holidays. Now, I am not so sure. We eventually arrived in the desert where camels and a guide greeted us. Phil, my temporary boss from the CDC, simply told us that he received an order from higher authorities and that information would be provided as needed. We are in a state of emergency, a state of war. The whole world is on alert. Why don’t we take famines, homelessness, or the use of children-soldiers as seriously? What happened to the heart of humanity?
We followed our guide. Phil and our other companions fled on the scare of bandits coming in our direction. We continued the two of us, Mary Magdalene and me. We both changed gender in our own time. She became Rumi. I became a man and then later a woman again. I became the gender I needed the moment a purpose surfaced for it. It has to do with transmuting lust into humanitarian love for me, but it is also so that I am the best vehicle for my work given those around me.
Dear Life,
I cannot sleep. My heart is fuller than I ever imagined possible. How can I be this happy when most of the world is concerned with the atrocities of a possible war? I feel drawn to see the incredible beauty around me rather than the doom and misery. A part of me seems to know that in the midst of all the chaos, in the midst of all the suffering, in the midst of the choice by many governments, multinational corporations, banking institutions and the media, to serve money and the economy at the expense of people, animals and nature … there is a part of me that knows that it is temporary, that the stormy weather coming upon us is a reminder and a contribution from deep within the earth to clean up our acts and that everything will be new. We will come together as one people, naked to one another, naked to our true fragrances and beauty. We will be ready to be with each other according to our unique exquisite purpose and, because of this, there will be no use for jealously, seeking recognition or mean spirited competition. We will be free.
Dear Life,
I am now going to end my prayer of gratitude to you, and also to Mary Magdalene and Rumi who I hope to thank in person some day, and to the camel who infused me with his calming energy as he passed. I feel deep tears coming to my eyes, tears that have been waiting to come out to the surface of my life for what seems to be an eternity, tears of deep grief for what humanity has to leave behind and tears of deep joy for the unimaginable bliss that will inevitably come.
The wind howls and the sand hisses, unrestrained. Change is set in motion.