Acknowledgment

I return to this blog every once in a while and I'm not sure if I should keep it live or not.  Over a decade later I love getting to look back on my thoughts and processes as a young mother with a little toddler boy in my twenties.  I am now pushing forty, my son will be a teenager in a couple of weeks and he has a younger eight year old delightful brother. I don't get nearly as much time for art, gardening and writing as I did during those early years of mothering and I am recently divorced but some things have remained the same.  I still love justice and community work and exploring identity,  I still love mothering and I love my Good Creator.  Also my spelling and grammar is still awful but I have since learned why my writing will be full of errors because I now know I am neurodivergent.  But beyond being littered with grammatical errors, something else that I need to acknowledge about my writing a decade ago was that it reflected my knowledge and political education of that stage of life.  I was becoming awakened to a number of political issues and naming those issues with the language I have available to me.  Now as an equity educator I have better naming practices, for example, I know that "B" in Black has to be capitalized when discussing my people.  I know we don't talk about "prostitution" but we talk about "Sex Work".  I know that when discussing Mad-Identifying Folks we need to capitalize those identities as well.  I sometimes want to go back and make corrections to my writing but it feels dishonest and not reflective of my skill and knowledge at the time.  I am open to feedback on best practice on this.  However, for now I do want to include this acknowledgement that on this forum a lot of the public reflections include language that is outdated or not considered to be best practice for naming lived experience or populations.  I also just need to send enormous love to my younger self.  Wow, isn't she courageous and persistent?  Thank you younger self for hanging on so I could emerge.  You are trying so hard to tell the truth even though sometimes you have not yet learned to find your own truth and stand in it.  Thank you Good Creator for helping me hang on!! 💕

Love, 

37 Year Old Fanis  


P.S.  Creator is healing me and I am being healed.  

almost ....(cont'd)

A continuation from this previous post: click here

It was something about a cheetah/or leopard. The vision that the leader had about me. He said he could see the animal running in the dark with a sense of determination and urgency. He then interpreted the vision saying that he could see that I would pursue my calling and the cause of "reaching the lost" with the same sense of urgency as the animal in the vision.

The whole experience served it's somewhat mysterious purpose at the time. We headed back to Dallas, Texas for a few days before I flew back home. When we were in Texas I began thinking of back home with some anxiety. When I had left for my mission trip the house that my family was renting had been sold by the owner and my parents would have to evacuate while I was gone and still hadn't found another affordable home to rent in the small Ontario town in which our immigrant family of seven had settled in. During our team sharing/debriefing time I thought of talking about the situation back home, but I couldn't quite find the words, somehow talking about such things always felt "out of place". Life went on after those few weeks of the summer, I came home to my family being in the process of moving to a nearby small town in a house that had become available in the last minute. The vision of the running animal and the mad black woman in the South Central L.A. Park all become images that that would collect themselves in my gallery of memories, images that I revisit once in a while but not very often.




It is taking me a while to finish writing this piece because I struggle with why I started writing it to begin with. I think I was maybe trying to remind myself of something. I am now twenty seven years old and the vision has come true. But I also find myself in some kind of quarter life crisis, feeling very lost myself on most days. My story still feels out of place although I know I am very ordinary in my struggles. I ask myself often; can I be a good mom and wife who works a job that doesn't pay? If I get the factory job I applied for does it mean that I am another casualty in an economic system that oppresses people like me and took years from my parent's life? Will he... is the Creator repaying the "years the locust has eaten?" Does the fact that another bright black boy I know is possibly getting a federal sentence mean that they are turning this city into South Central L.A? Who was the mad black woman at the park? There was a time that I would say that I was running towards resolution. Or running away from threatening memories of the cops and the children's aid at our front door, oppression at my front door. But there is some peace in recognizing that all this running and stumbling and running again is simply my nature and the way I was created to respod to story in which I have been placed. There is no tidy resolution or escape from the story of our lives. But I believe and I am thankful that there is renewal and restoration.

I think I know why I began writing this. I was trying to remind myself of something; the story of my life. And this is why I cannot finish writing it. One good thing about becoming more brave about telling my story is that it almost always points me back to a bigger story that I am part of.



I have appreciated the journey of sharing my stories on this blog. Writing in this public way has helped me encounter myself and my God, our Creator in ways that have deepened my healing. Thank you for those who have read, engaged and sent me your meaningful thoughts. May you also meet the Healer on your walkabout.

shifting closer

a song



When I move, to you I shift closer,
On a stretch of Ontario concrete you are my far right slower lane
I am a child I clutching your trousers,
I really don't want you to go, I want you to prevent the pain
You let me weep upon your shoulders


As I glow and melt, you’re my candle holder
The paternal scent of your corduroy blazer collects into my brain
Our firm exchange has made me bolder
I feel that I belong somewhere as sort through my loss and gain
As I move, to you I shift closer




"The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too."
~Saint Teresa of Avila

On Continuity and Suffering: Auden, Bruegel, Bishop & Me

My relationship to 19th and 20th Century Western poetry and prose is a bit awkward still. It's still not clear if I appreciate it for its beauty (and the genre is beautiful to me) or if as a reader and writer I feel to it the allegiance a child might feel to the home into which she has been adopted and raised after deciding to leave it. I have started to read poetry again, a practice that had become somewhat deadened to me in recent years. To be *able* to read is just a little better than writing to me; my first marriage was to reading and then to writing!

I started sharing my writing on this blog out of a desire to explore my suffering and healing. I continue to be intrigued by the human experience of suffering. I think that this year I have grown a bit and learned a few things about suffering. In this season of my life the two areas of suffering that I am paying close attention to are:

1. Suffering as a result of justice withheld
2. Suffering as a result of loss

My fascination with the second is personal, and the first has to do with my life's work. I am not interested in suffering for the sake of suffering but because of my life's Spirituality that provides stories and archetypal patterns where life giving events are accomplished within the experience of suffering, resulting in healing that extends beyond the initial scope of suffering. This is exemplified perhaps no better than in The Prayer of St Francis of Assisi when he writes that "it is in dying that we are born to eternal life, Amen".

I mentioned that I think my relationship to suffering has matured this year. I think specifically in a deeper acceptance of *continuity* as a reality within Suffering.

The following pieces for me reflect the themes of Continuity & Suffering:


Twenty Seven

Chicken Madras from the Corner of Northfield and Wisler, A pack of Players for non-smoker, a car radio for company, rainy night, the baby boy cries to have his head wrapped with my head scarf, quasi-life crisis, Season premier of The Office, Emily Dickinson's Narrow Fellow in the Grass, A business plan for Social Justice, A phone discussion with my father about finding the earliest link between the African Coptic Church and Ethiopia, self disappointment, and rest.

"Fall of Icarus" by Bruegel



I do not have a personal affinity to this painting but the Auden poem bellow that I love is based on the piece above, and gives it life for me.


Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.



The Poem above reminds me of some of the dynamics of societal suffering (especially from justice withheld) and the cruelty and therapy of continuity, now Bishop's poem bellow seems more personal to her and I think to me, in the experience of suffering from personal loss, continuity becomes an artificially real way to deal with it, get on with things... there is a sarcasm and anguish in the tone that resonates.



One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Writing

The act of pushing through from beneath and taking a bite of air,

It’s a struggle for sustenance and an inhaling of grace.

Providing no direction in a moment of decision; only confirming that indeed we have reached a crossroads, then moving on to describe the sights of South, and making note of the songs of North.

An unabashed pronouncement of greatness,
and simultaneously a naked exposure of weakness.

Writing is taking and giving,
hiding and emerging.

almost

When I was fifteen I began to entertain thoughts of saving the world, so I sold cookies and washed a few cars one summer whith the help of some good friends in the small town where we lived. I bought a big backpack, the biggest one I ever owned in my life, it reminded me of the tourist muzungus (whites) that used to walk around Nairobi when I was a kid, smiling at everything in their surroundings. If there is anything in this world that will make you feel like you are about to accomplish something seriously epic, it’s probably carrying around a backpack about the size of your own body. I boarded a plane and after a one week detour in Dallas, Texas, where we were provided with the basics and essentials of how to save the world, I ended up eventually in an inner city community in South Central, Los Angeles.


The kids I travelled with giggled a lot, laughed a lot, cried a lot, talked a lot and took many pictures. But I spent that summer like most of my teen years mostly in silence. I was the only non-white member of the short-term mission trip team of young people. But I wasn’t particularly aware of that in those days seeing as most of my world back home, at church and at school was homogeneous. I would break my silence every once in a while to share a thought or force an attempt at a conversation after feeling that my silence was getting awkward. Almost all of the time what ended up coming out of my mouth would be unintentionally funny and soon I was dubbed the funny girl from Canada. It was a comfortable little nook for me to settle in for the rest of the trip, now that I was explained away I could fall back into silence with less awkwardness. It also meant that now during meals when some extroverted voice would notice my silence and single me out sweetly with a “Hey Fanis, why are you so quiet?”, another equally extroverted and eager voice would quickly chirp in “You should have heard what she said to so and so” and then the voice would go on to quote one of my random remarks that would induce the laughter of the whole group. And I would smile comically as if the humour was perfectly intended and feel relieved at having escaped once again the unimaginable task of making myself known.

I think at fourteen and for the rest of our lives, we all feel deeply the desire to be known, but also not quite knowing ourselves, we have to withdraw hastily from any chance of meeting the impossible challenge of making ourselves known.

One day we went to do some drama and give away free stuff, and share the Christian gospel to those who would listen. On that day there was a mad black woman with worn clothes in the park. I felt really struck by her presence. Her mind had given way to either years of drug use or mental illness. I didn’t know her story. But something happened when she came to the park, I felt almost uncomfortable. I felt almost protective of her and indignant for her. I cringed when my team mates talked about her no matter how harmless their words. Looking back I think I was experiencing a crisis of belonging. I didn’t quite belong in the world that she seemed to represent, a hint margin and suffering that was out of the reach of my young imagination. Yet I projected something onto her as she wondered around laughing aloud then mattering to herself: I allowed her to represent all the unknown parts of me that were quiet and withdrawn and did not allow me to quite fit in with my team mates. And for this reason I felt drawn to her. We made eye contact many times during the drama presentation. When she laughed out loud disrupting one of the scenes of the dramatic presentation, I wanted to laugh with her. Something at that moment was perfectly humorous and I felt the joke. But at the same time like everyone else, I was afraid of her. I wanted to contain her, heal her, and explain her… anything to stop the awful muttering and laughing.


Many of the black people I came across in South Central L.A are almost black like me. It’s unexpected because the Black Americans on T.V are usually light skinned and I did not expect to find people that looked like me. It’s kind of like the bodies that they showed littering the streets after Katrina in New Orleans, and the people on T.V that were seeking shelter. They were surprisingly black. The little girls in South Central L.A had their hair twisted in matutas (thick braids). When my team mates started to hug them and take pictures of them. I wanted to shout at them. I wanted the cameras to stop flashing. And in my head I was screaming: “Stop it! What are you doing? Who are you going to show those pictures? You don’t know them! You don’t know me! They are not what you think, they are not faces from your mission trip, they are people like me!” Instead I stood quietly in the background.




We went back to our sleeping accommodations. Before we left L.A one evening we had a prayer service, the charismatic kind that some decades ago were not unfamiliar to that part of the United States. I like charismatic prayer meetings because I always feel free and like myself. Even then I was somewhat aware of the hundred year old history of William Joseph Seymour, a black preacher man born of slaves who started the Azusa Street Revival in L.A that gave birth to the Pentecostal Christian tradition in which I was raised. Seymour had also used his voice through the Azusa Street Revival to engage issues of racial inequality. All these had taken place at the turn of the 19th century just a few blocks from where we then stood during our prayer service.

The leaders took turns praying for each team member and soon it was my turn. When I was a teenager, perhaps as a result of my eccentric/egocentric adolescent imagination or some overenthusiastic sensationalistic sermons at youth meetings, I had developed a strong inner desire to discover that I was destined to fulfill some great purpose that had something to do with saving the world. When it was my turn to be prayed for, I really appreciated the drama and ceremony of the whole ordeal. A group of leaders surrounded me and took turns praying and saying blessings over me. Finally one of the leaders expressed that he was sensing a vision. I was very excited.





To be continued...

Travelling Coach

. . . written as an anniversary song, for my Justin, with the hopes that it will take on a pretty blues tune one afternoon during Izaka's nap, after the missing middle string is replaced on our guitar.


All these years and things that have passed,
carrying us slow and sometimes pulling us fast
to where we are now, sitting on this travelling coach.

And once in a while, when rocking calms
you lean my way and lift a skirt that hangs
curtaining the window of this travelling coach.

Your fingers let in some white-grey light
that escapes from moving fields into our tight
little space, spilling over the darkness of our travelling coach.

And on my left all our baggage is piled
and against your arm is our sleeping child.
I’m happy when your eyes meet mine on this travelling coach.

A family of three we are carried on,
Always thinking of the place we’re coming from
And the hands that hold the whip of this travelling coach.

Canadian black-eyed bean plant as the Kenyan kunde vegetable

This evening I had the wonderful experience of gathering once again with some fellow African women friends of mine at one of the Patchwork Community Gardens. I have been very eager to start talking about some autumn planting and we are all sharing in the exciting process of discovering which veggies that are indigenous to our various African regions can also be found here in Canada.

Today I discovered from one of my fellow African gardeners that the indigenous Kenyan vegetable known as "kunde" that is grown for the consumption of its nutritious leaves, is the same as the Canadian "black-eyed pea/bean".

Grown in Canada, "kunde" is perfect for fall planting as the leaves can begin to be harvested in as little as two to three weeks. For the next couple of weeks, we will be mobilizing a group of women from the local East African immigrant network to fill up some unused garden plots the various Patchwork Community Garden sites with "kunde" seeds.

This gardening season I have also learned a couple of other interesting facts for producing culturally relevant foods: Broccoli leaves can be harvested as a kind of "Sukuma Wiki"; The most common "Sukuma Wiki" (kale) plant available locally is also a winter vegetable that will return in the spring. So much to look forward to!!

Mashambani - acrylic on canvas

red wagon and a letter

Sometimes while waiting for things to change, we ourselves change.... Today I wanted to cheat and drive the van to get groceries at the plaza some blocks up the hill from us. Izaka was excited the first couple of times riding in the van since we got it back because of its novelty and I am quite sure he had forgotten what it was to ride in it. I let him know that we were going to the grocery store, and the announcement was followed by the usual bustle and excitement of getting shoes on and getting all ready to go. When I tried to strap him in the car seat he had one of his I'm-not-going-to-have-this tantrums, he felt deeply cheated out of what had become our traditional grocery store trips. I had to give in because he was right on this one. As soon as he was released he climbed up the porch to pull down his red wagon. So up the hill we went, pulling the red wagon together and my little boy looking very content that he successfully disallowed me to drive.

Many people, who know me well, know that the stories of urban immigrant youth have a major role in shaping my work and passion... so these past several days and the events that have been taking place in the UK have captured my attention significantly. Before the recent events I had come across in my work some articles about some of the increasing tensions in European urban centres that visible minority youth face with parents who cannot access the job market and the experience of relative poverty. I remember two years back reading about similar events in France as youth from immigrant families began to engage the reality that their families and communities were getting squeezed out of opportunities to rise out of poverty.

If I could write a letter to black immigrant youth in the urban cities of the West, especially those who are in the difficult process of realizing that "nobody is coming", if I could send a small message I would say the following:


Dear Black Immigrant Youth,

It is true that there is no politician working for you and that there isn't any policy or program that is coming to save you. It is true that your MBA, Phd, MA mother and father will probably not find employment at all, or if they do work, they are looking at retirement in a menial labour job and face poverty as senior citizens. It is true that you will see some of your brothers and sisters lost to prostitution and drug abuse and mental illness. It is true that you may be arrested. It is true that you may graduate and not get hired. It is true that as a black boy you may be harassed by the cops. It is true that they will hire their own before they hire you. It is true that you are smart. It is true what you see and feel and what you have lived. It is true that you have felt pain; you are not making it up. It is true that the system is not working for you. And that is enough for a moment. For you to hear that it is true. That your story is true.

And given that your story is real and true, the next important question, is then how to *BE* in the reality of your truth. How to be and continue being the black son and daughter of an immigrant mother and father who moved to London, Vancouver, Birmingham, Strasbourg, Toronto, and Boston? If you can find a way to exist in the reality of your true story, if you can do the most radical thing and survive... continue to *BE*, understand that in every living moment of your existence you are strong.

Somehow you have pulled together in some mysterious way different worlds like scenes in a stage drama, you have taken roasted maize from the side of the dusty road, language and dialect, beatings and praise, chemistry and history and exercise books, long flights and snow and black skin and hair extensions, mental illness and scholarships, refugee camps and immigration papers, arguments and fights in the mother tongue, pride and shame and humour, domestic disturbances and dreams, being unknown and misunderstood and being celebrated and entertaining and mastering the social code . . .

You have pulled it all together and smashed it all together into a single expression on your face as you wait in the subway pocketing your black hands a bit dry from the harsh winter air. And just in case your mind wonders in this few moments and you almost begin to doubt it, let me assure you, now that you know are no longer seeking affirmation that your story is true, let me assure you that given the truth of your story you are strong.

I will tell you one more final thing before I end my letter, a shocking thing, but you need to hear it. Most likely, nothing is going to change. At least not the kind of change that you are waiting for or hoping for. This is the story in which you have been dropped into like a stolen black man put on a ship and delivered to a new land; you have been dropped here on this page. This is your new true story. And like the stolen man would have hoped that the hand that holds the whip would come to its senses and lay the whip down, so you too will hope that a policy be developed and the reporters tell the truth but you must begin to separate yourself from that hope at this very moment. You must never wait for such things. But here in the truth of your story, what you must do is begin to hold on to the person that you are. Feel your strength and the fact that you exist and acknowledge that to yourself. And that will help you to see the hand that holds the whip for what it is, and you will begin to continue to exist in a way that does more than reacts to the violence, you will begin to create and continue to be.

Yours truly,
Black Immigrant Young Adult


When I first started using the wagon to pick up groceries, Izaka liked sitting in it on the way up the hill, now in these later days of summer he pulls the wagon right along side me all the way up to the grocery store, and only sits in it when it's filled with groceries on the way home, so that he can get first picks on what he likes.

a treat on the deck

After supper I get to eat a treat on the deck. Much earlier in the day I brought those big muddy gardening shoes inside. I smiled and smiled, moving my feet as fast as I could across the living room and then I hid them inside behind the big sofa, I cried whey mummy took them away.

I went up for nap but I couldn’t make myself sleep. So I chatted and told myself stories and even giggled very loud. After a very long time I think I finally went to sleep; Mama suddenly woke me up. I almost cried but then she said we are going to the park… the BIG PARK.

I had a small snack and then we went to the big park. Mum was in a hurry a bit and kept saying something like “picnic”, but I wanted to stop and look at the animals, and then I wanted to stop at the “Thomas” tracks.

At the picnic there were many people there and things to eat. I felt shy when the big people talked to me, I just really wanted to play, not eat or talk. There was a playground close by I had never played in before. It had bright colours and so many fun places to climb. I played and played.

When it was time to go home we stopped and fed the yak, and this was my favourite part. We call them yak because they look like the yak in my book. In my ABC book when you get to Y, they say Y is for Yack but when daddy is with us he calls them Llama and I like that word too. We also fed the deer.

This time they actually came up to the fence because mummy made a funny sound, we pulled leaves from the ground to feed the deer. And then a slimy tongue touched my fingers, it made me laugh. But I didn’t want it to happen again so I just threw some grass through the fence.

It was timego to home and get some supper, I cried a little because I was having so much fun. Daddy was home when we got back, I like to see daddy and I can even say “daddy home!” I gave him a hug and told him about the big park and then I ate all my food.

After supper I get to eat a treat on the deck. It’s almost the end of a happy day.

eccentric habits which belong to a state of lonliness

I was accidentally a half an hour early for an interview this morning. I don't carry a watch and usually the mishap is against punctuality and not in favor of it. But I did have a chance to take off my heels and walk across the road to the Public Library. I took a stroll through Fiction: DIS - HUS until my fingers rest on my good companion Eliot and what will now be among the top five favourite opening passages from any of my favourite woman authors; it read as follows:


In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses-- and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever--at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers--emigrants from the town into the country--were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness.



Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, by Goerge Eliot (1861)

St. Paul

You write letters from the other side of prison walls. You have made more than peace with death, you have made love and pledges to it; and almost casually you announce in these pages how in fact your being gone from us, will begin your new life.

But for now, persuaded by your sense of concern and mandated by the one whose dusty sandals you and me would fear to carry, you are bound to stay a little longer. And you write to me a little longer.

I continue to read; every now and then pacing between sentences, and then coming to a contemplative stop in front of the sliding glass door. I feel like a wonderer in a big city gallery whose eye has been caught by a piece that reflects and mimics my own slow, mundane, repetitive existence.

I imagine you being anxious for nothing. I wonder how I might be able to tear the secrets of your reality from the words on these pages and smash them into my reality. I sit down again and reach for your letters from this side of my prison walls. Then my eyes fall shut and I allow my whole self be aware of the heated wood of the deck slowly warming the bottom of my bare feet and I think to myself how beautiful it is, that old saying, that the righteous shall live by faith.

On Vehicle Ownership and Normalcy

When it's not a source of frustration for me, I actually find it rather interesting that owning a car in this culture is sometihng of a rite of passage. You don't realize it when you drive one, but sometimes not being behind the wheel provides a new perspective. Owning a car can send the social message that you are a responsible, trustworthy, normal and good person. Admittedly, I am writing this while the sting of a recent experience in which my possession of some of the above attributes was scrutinized based on the fact that I do not own a working vehicle. But outside of inducing frustration, the encounter also made me feel the need to vent and reflect on my own own experience of not owning a working vehicle and the various internal and social dynamics that I have encountered.

So like I said, this is not as a rule but it's been my observation that a vehicle can come to symbolize that a person is responsible, trustworthy, normal and good. Now if you own a car and choose not to drive it, then you are a responsible, trustworthy normal and good person who is also enviromentally conscious or of superior fitness. I think it's interesting that most non-driving commuters in my part of the city also happen to be wearing some kind of tight work out clothes or running while pushing an intense gigantic stroller. So if you are non-student commuter on foot in regular clothes who does not appear to be an olympian behind an intense stroller, then are you? A hobo? And if you're a mom whose got a kid with you, then you might be on your your way to pick up the goverment cheque.

I'm not a student, I'm not an uptowner or downtowner. I live in the suburbs and in recent months we pulled our van off the road as primarily financial choice (and I would like to think a political choice) while things were tight. On the most part I have enjoyed busing, and taking Izaka's stroller on the bus.

I have never really owned a car until I got married and my husband happened to have one. I must have never really been meant to drive because less than a year into our marriage I accidentlally crushed it. We then got a deal on a van just before I got pregnant with my son, and had it for about 2 years, before moving from a small town to the city and pulling it off the road.

I also spend my childhood in a city where it was more rare to own a car than not to. In the 1990's in Nairobi most people took the bus or walked. I think things have changed now. So I guess it's been a bit of an adjustment not driving for the last several months (with some significant inconviniences) but I found that also on many levels it felt familiar and good, and certainly preferable in the winter.

Having said that I have also found myself to be more of anamalie than I enjoyed. During the process of prioritizing our expenses and recognizing that we could not afford to keep our van on the road, one encouraging fact was that we had access to affordable/comfortable public transportation, and also felt that we lived in a city where alternative ways of commuting were celebrated and encouraged; you know, to lessen the carbon footprint and all that. So we made the transition with some naïveté on my part and expectation of a best case scenerio of approving nods or at the very least no stigma or shame.

Quite frankly on the most part not using the van in our day to day lives has really been a non issue. There have been some inconviniences like doctor appointments outside of a bus route and not being able to leave town as frequently as we would have to see loved ones.

But for me the challenge on the most part has been feeling like a bit of an outsider, I guess culturally/socially speaking. I have been very surprised by this. Maybe I should have anticipated the tension should going into the transition, but I felt quite unprepared for the sometimes general experience of feeling like I had something to justify or the isolated incidences of being related to with a hint of condescension, or being given the "charity case" treatment.

I have mostly expereinced patience and kindness of friends and neighbours, but there have been times the, well, I guess painful times, when an acquintance has offered to "rescue" with an obvious intent of shaming or othering. The excessive requirement for explanations and "when are you guys going to put the van back on the road?" probing that can be pressuring and also shaming. Or the blunt challenging and expression of dissapproval that makes one feel judged. I don't write about this to sound like a martyr especially when people around the world are facing real problems like not having anything to eat. I write this as part of my own experience processing but also because I think it's important to have dialogue about some of the cultural resistance that may continue to over-emphasize the nececcity of a car.

There many things (material or otherwise) that some people have that I don't have and perhaps vice vera I would imagine. So why is this one item such a game changer. And I realize now that it is a cultural symbol of normative living.

Suddenly if I was having a bad day or struggle and began to talk about it the first suggestion provided was it was understandable considering we didn't have the van. It was an adjustment for friends and loved ones, and some are yet to adjust. I have found something out about myself in the past few months. I would sometimes rather be alone than be an anamolie in spaces that used to be comfortable for me becaue community and a sense of being understood is important to me.

There is a feeling of wanting to be able to start a story saying "today when I was on the bus with Izaka" without it being taken like I'm asking for help or making a political statmement, and if I need a ride, I want to be able to ask for one like I would a cup of sugar. The latter has been as much of an internal as well as social struggle for me. During the last several months I discovered how I too (although never having purchased one really) had internalized the cultural symbolism of owning a vehicle in my stage of life. And this made me undergo all kinds of inner tensions when having to socially present myself (family) as a regular single income suburban family that just can't affort the use of a car. When I was little and growing up in a neighbourhood in Nairobi, I remember that often if we had run out of somehting that we needed I would be sent to the neighbours house with an empty bown or cup to ask for some sugar or rice or three eggs. If the woman who opened the door did not have any she simply apologized for not having some and then I would try another door. Often little children with empty bowls or cups also knocked at our door. But there was something culturally understood and accepted about seasons of not having and of course you depend on your neighbours. Mama Akinyi, the school teacher, mother and respectable community member that lives two doors down is still a school teacher, mother, and respectable community member when she during the weeks when she is in need of eggs from her neighbour for the children's lunch and the weeks when her salary is enough to buy her own eggs and have some to spare. And not to be preachy, but I think it is just a fact that in western society you are many times what you are able to have.

I appreciate people in my community (many of whom are friends) who are able to afford vehicles yet choose to rely on alternative ways of commuting mostly perhaps due to there desire for creating a better environment. [I equally appreciate those who do so for physical fitness as I imagine it takes a lot of discipline, so I cheer for them, even the ones in intense athletic gear].

I just also feel that in order for the environmental/humanitarian dreams associated with a decreased reliance on cars to be realized, it is necessary to promote alternative means of commuting as something that can belong to the masses. The work of creating a better environment both depends on changing specific personal and family practices but also may mean for some working in public spheres to grow new environmental and community friendly structures.
These kind of calling I have experienced can place you outside the economic security of existing structures, and may result in not simply choosing to not to drive, but in fact being less and less able to live out and afford the cultural symbols that represent values of speed, comfort, convinience, and the accumulation of resources. These values are not inherently bad and I might ask to knock on your door when I need a little speed, comfort or convinience. But I think many agree that there is a need to promote another set of values that are neccessary for survival and have been left of Western cultural progress and the mass production of the automobile.

I guess that if we want to promote a decreased dependency on cars then we have to normalize walking and busing, and yeah I guess biking or skiing (personally I am not likely to do either). I find myself wanting to walk with some out of shape suburban moms. I used to see fat women walk all the time when I was a child. You didn't have to be an olympian to walk to the grocery store. It would nice to see more work men and women in work clothes and ties walking, or parents picking up there kids after school, in uncomfortable shoes, complaining about the cold or the heat. Can walking/busing not belong to the masses anymore?

How do you normalize a life without affording a vehicle? I don't really know completely. Maybe car sharing is one option. I hear and don't really know but that in some European societies these changes are taking place and car's are not such a central cultural symbol. Maybe more out of town buses so we can still visit loved ones out of town or go to the beach two things I miss a lot. I think it has to be normal to talk about not owning a vehicle and still feel like you are a responsible, respectable, trustworthy, normal and good person.

Yesterday I cut the tail end of Izaka's nap short because a flatbed truck showed up in front of our drive way and I couldn't have him miss it. Izaka has many books on trucks and tractors and is learning them by name. He is intrigued by machines, ironically :) I loved watching him watch the parked van that had become part of the landscape in front of our place get lifted and rolled onto the flatbed. My dad knows a guy who might give us a deal, he's an immigrant so it's all good. I get very pre-excited about maybe going to the beach. But trying not to get ahead of myself as I have been reminded the it might be well into the Fall if we get it back at all and it's not scrap. But I'm also not ready to or willing to let go of the lifestyle we have now. I guess if this immigrant mechanic pans out, I will get to enjoy being one of those people who could totally drive but will make the alternative choice to walk or bus, so I'm still normal :)

still here

My life is a circle and I’m living here in this land that I love and hate and love and hate and learn to love again.

Fall, Winter, Summer and Spring. The best thing about Canada or Turtle Island is all these seasons and colours, I am always astounded.

How can one place have so many colours, so many different worlds to see when you look outside the window?

In the Fall I venture out like a traveller on a walkabout. I have a small bag of strategies and desires. God is the great wind Nodin, and she picks up along the way all my scattered thoughts and impulses and makes sense and motion out of everything. And everything is beautiful.

By December passion has frozen into cold resolve, as I come face to face with the reality of death. Death in the old and the gone. Death in the burial sites we trample on. Death in the living faces that stare back at me at the meeting downtown; death in the Toronto Stock Exchange, death trailing the late night news and then creeping into my heart. There are flurries of romance, parades and processions, but I am wrapped and bundled up in my own self- protective, necessary stuff. And but for the silhouette of now naked trees that stand as signposts and reminders, in Ontario’s winter I would be doomed to forget that once a colourful wind blew around me.

Spring is nothing that it claims to be. All I feel is awareness of all that went array. I want to heal so bad. I want to say I can hear a trickling of a brook or feel life in the crackling of melting snow. But the chilled brown street water is soaking through my salted suede boots, my toes are achy, and it’s an uncomfortable, humiliating walk up to the cross, where I sit alone and wait for my resurrection.

Summer is here and you catch me off guard; showing me that my growth is in your readjustment of my expectations. You go from nowhere to being everywhere. And you heal me while my hands are deep in the earth. My good God just like last year, you heal me. I can sit in the sunshine, and cry a bit at what is gone and the mistakes made, and tie up my apron and see what is here now. There is kale in the garden. There is a boy on my lap. My husband is home from work. Canada is still Canada. I can still dream of a Turtle Island Fall. I’m still here and you are everywhere.

sway

Sweet water filling up between my ears
and spilling through my eyes,
sway my skirt close to the floor.

My skirt is made from patches of yellow
curtain cloth torn from the kitchen window
and white lace.

Dancing to the sound of ripples in my chest
and wet eyelids shut I let the tip of my toes,
carry me to the warmth of the quiet sun room.

Baby napping
Laundry hanging
Lavender drying

Sweet water rocking my soul
when your waves turn black and I can’t see
my embroidery stitch,
I’m learning not to cry.
I’ll lay down needle, cotton and thread
and wait for your sweet water
to pass me by

Bondwoman

Strong enough to wait on the one that has left you
In darkness and dust
You sit.

I travel back to where you would have been
With him close to you, eyes tired with hunger and not sleep

Bondwoman,

Strong enough to leave him long enough to let yourself cry.

Tell me your story.

trees planted by water, dark shredded bark, and beautiful immigrant men with silvering beards

A couple things happened these last few days that have been meaningful to me. I will only mention them and not tell the whole story here. The first was a conversation with a taxi driver from the former Yugoslavia, he used to be a corporate lawyer in his old country. After he shared with me a bit about his former life, I also told him about foreign trained parents and there experience getting work in Canada. We talked about the increase of immigrants and the lack of jobs. He narrated some stories of his experience first as an immigrant in Germany then in Canada. "In Germany they didn't like us, but you know they don't lie to you. If you make a deal with a German he won't break it". He said.

I loved the bluntness with which he spoke, he was a beautiful man perhaps in his late fifties with a silvering beared, and his manner of speaking, the honesty and feeling in his voice made me feel like I was in some wonderful old film. I have completely romanticized/dramatized the conversation in my head but that is what I do. Howerver I can't exagerate the purity of the incident that to me was a gift.

"I got into a fight with one of the German guys, you know I told him take your shitty job!" He turned around to make eye contact with me in the cab that was now parked. My passanger door was open as the conversation had continued on my way out the door. "sorry for language, but you know, I used to get into fights with those guys".

"No problem" I excused him with a waive of my hand, and then continued expressively. "But you get it, for me it's not about them liking us, we just have to survive, we just need to find a way to make a life".

"Yes but listen to me," he looked at me more intently and reminded me of an old sailor from a book I might have read, "Money is not everything, the German guy at the cleaning job used to tell me, I can take away your job you know. I told him: You take my country, you take my life, my home, you take my brother, what is this shitty job? But you can't take my soul eh? so you remember that".

"Can I shake you hand?" I asked him before our small encounter came to a close and I shut the door of the taxi. The thought crossed my mind as I walked away that perhaps I am really part of something, some collective stories larger than my own single life.

The second incident that took place in the last couple of days that also matters to me happened yesterday. My father, who earned his Phd in the 90s from a University in South Africa had a little car trouble and took the bus to his night shift at a factory the previous night. Unfortunatey, the morning bus on Sundays that comes out to this end of the city doesn't start till 10:00am and his shift at the factory was over at 6am. So he walked from the uptown bus stop, the many many city blocks on the morning of Father's Day. I don't have very much to say about it except that on Father's Day I when I heard this little narration from a family member I felt very proud of my dad who is approaching his mid fifties. While picking up some chocolate and a card with my two year old for his dad yesterday, Izaka also picked something small up for his Kuka, whom he closely resembles and loves deeply. Daddy if you are reading this we still have to drop off some chocolate before Izaka eats them all.

Learning to start with what I have. That is a lesson that came to me over the course of the day today. I haven't done a lot on my flower bed in the backyard because I want to lay some mulch. The grocery store that is a walking distance from us is out of mulch, I found out after pulling my two year old in his wagon up the hill, anxious to buy some bags of mulch. I had even called ahead of time and the employee said they had some bags of mulch left. So needless to say I felt a bit grouchy pulling the wagon back down the hill with a few groceries and a two year old boy sitting inside it but no mulch.

I have been daydreaming of a dark shade of shredded bark, how pretty it would make my young, not very populated flower bed look. I am the kind of person who needs to see the bag of mulch sitting beside me to motivate me to weed the garden and do some transplanting. I need to know that the outcome is close at hand. But I'm realizing that this way of approaching life is making weeds creep up all over because I'm overlooking the provisions that are already at hand.

Today I was also revisited by this verse from the book of Jeremiah 17:7,

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

nineveh

Circles, Stories and Processing Privilege

Privilege is not a bad word but a gift, I felt reminded today while I was vacuuming. I believe in “owning privilege” but probably don’t practice this very well; especially in the most recent season of my life when I have been steeped in some of the local realities of poverty and oppression.

Also I have felt a bit out of touch with the ways that I am privileged in recent months because of unexpected challenges in our day to day circumstances. The problem with being out of touch with my privilege is that it makes it harder for me to live in a place of gratitude.

I was confronted with my privilege this week when some of the work that I have been involved in was featured in a local newspaper article. It wasn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it made me think of people who work tirelessly for family and community and there work goes unnoticed, uncelebrated. I didn’t think of this immediately. My initial thoughts when the idea of having our work celebrated through a ribbon cutting ceremony was brought forward were of resistance. I felt personally that the goals of my participation in promoting community gardens as a space for meaningful engagement where yet still so far out of reach that such an event seemed like the wrong priority. I have a dream of engaging youth who are experiencing various challenges in urban agriculture as a way to increase wellness and success. With all the hard work that people have volunteered, I still feel that there is a long way to go.

How do you live in a place of gratitude while circumstances are far from ideal and actually very broken? I feel like this is Spirituality 101 in almost every tradition and belief system. But I think we all at least feel the tension in some capacity. In my faith tradition, we are taught that the starting point cannot be one of the condition or circumstance, but rather of the reality of a loving Creator that holds all things together.

Carl Jung is a teacher/thinker that I appreciate and he talks about holding together the “tension of the opposites” and uses the example of the mandala where duality is replaced and opposites are held in supportive union. I find myself and I’m probably not alone in this having to hold together many opposing “energies”/or strong feelings. I guess the temptation for me is to pick one over the other: Poverty versus privilege, rage versus love, anger versus peace, hate versus acceptance. The reality is that I am poor, enraged, experience hatred and anger. I am also privileged, in love, at peace and more and more moving into a place of acceptance.

I think when I have habitually chosen my poverty above my privilege, I feel isolated and undernourished. And I am less likely to do this in the season that I am living out right now, but when I pick my privilege over my poverty, I am likely to become judgemental, unintuitive and cold hearted.

We are all poor and privileged in different ways. But can I be both?

I don’t think the answer is balance, in fact I have come to hate that word, it is mathematical utopia and unnatural to me (just my opinion). What is balance? I cannot exist in a placid equilibrium, I can only exist here on this great garden called earth, a place of snow storms and floods, and sunny days, and gentle breezes, and only God knows which of those you’re going to get, depending on where you were born and where you travel to. My prayer is that in my joureny I would come across mandalas and the medicine wheels. That I would find a healing circle, and be reminded that the Creator holds all things together in the palms of his hands.

Not very surprisingly I am very experiential in my spiritual expressions and needs. And I tell you, I strongly dislike rows of pews. I love prayer circles and sharing circles. A circle means that we are all in this together, that there is no time restriction and that you can dance, cry and be seen and be heard.

I was reading about the history of African American Spirituals that were a way of worship during slavery. How the slaves would attend bush meetings and form circles where they would move and dance in spontaneous expressive worship. In an effort to de-Africanize slaves, they were forbidden to meet in circles and were forced to worship in pews to restrict movement. When reading these stories I felt that circles are for especially meaningful in seasons of struggle when the need for each other is deeply felt, and when you need to wail, and beat your suffering into a drum, wave your arms and speak in tongues. And leave feeling a sense of gratitude.

I have had the poverty and privilege of being involved in a community process that will hopefully promote much needed cultural circles of support in local African immigrant communities.

Anyway, while I was vacuuming, I fel awakened to my privilege. One of my greatest privileges is in my ability to tell my story. Here in this blog and in other spaces, it gives me voice and is empowering. On a global scale and even on a local scale I am relatively and incredibly wealthy. All my most basic needs are met and my son’s basic needs are met. I have a hard working partner. I have love in my life. I have inherited from my parents a love for scholarship and an ability to think well. What I lack in emotional regulation is made up for in passion. I have access to technology and feel empowered to create change in my community. I have citizenship in a stable country. I have an international upbringing and a good education, I have a patient and good Creator.