No Effort is Wasted, No Gain Ever Reversed

It's been a few days since my last blog post.  Mainly because we've been traveling a little bit and didn't have internet access for a few days.  I'll start by sharing about my last day at Gracious School with the Skill in Action Team.  We showed up for day four of our service work and began to paint a second coat of paint on the outside and some trim. We finished painting inside, the work crew finished the installation of three toilets and we cleaned up the classrooms. It took all of us to complete these tasks and the school looks fantastic.  One thing that I am very aware of is that it takes time to build a team but the Skill in Action team showed up right away and knew how to work in a collaborative way. No drama, no complaints, no "I don't want to paint."  We worked very hard and I'm proud of the team.

The children were excited to see us and to be around us most of the day, as was the community.  It was interesting to interact with folks witnessing our work.  Some people in Huruma stopped as they walked by. Some started speaking Swahili to me and looked puzzled when I responded by saying, "I don't speak Swahili, I'm from the U.S."  Some children watched from their homes on the third floor looking down with curiosity and interest in what was happening to Gracious School.

At the end of the day Teacher Happiness celebrated us and our work. She had already done that earlier in the week but she wanted to show thanks again. She presented me with a beautiful fruit bowl, full of fruit. She told me the tradition is that when a child comes to visit their mother that they are gifted a chicken.  She didn't think a chicken would do for this occasion since I would have to fly it back to NC, so she gave me the fruit. She also presented me with fabric and wrapped it around me and told me to tell all the folks back home that I have a mother in Kenya.  I have always felt close to Teacher Happiness, she has lit up my world every time I have visited Kenya.  It was nice to have her re-affirm her love, care and maternal connection to me.  Before leaving North Carolina I had been feeling very devastated about racism and oppression. I still am, but I was seen in a way by Teacher Happiness that is rare in my experience at home.  She really saw me, accepted me, held me and for that, I am forever grateful.  It was healing to connect with her, the children, the team and I feel full and will bring some of this energy back with me to NC.  She presented Jeff with a musical gourd that is stunning. His gift of music has cultivated leadership in the children for the past four years.  It was very fitting for her to offer him the instrument and I know that every time he looks at it or picks it up to play, he will think of Gracious.

I've talked to the Skill in Action team about the ripple effects of their work.  We never know who we are impacting, we don't know who is watching us, seeing our work and being inspired in some way.  We just have to do the work.

The Bhagavad Gita offers us many lessons and a few that are very relevant to doing work and practicing non-attachment.

"No effort is wasted, no gain ever reversed. Even a little of this practice will shelter you from sorrow."

"Yoga is skill in action."

"Surrender the fruits of your actions."

Until next time Gracious School.  You always ask us not to forget and to share about you at home.  We never forget and we will share about you with many.

Ubuntu

Small Acts

Well, I'm completely covered in paint and totally satisfied by today's work at Gracious School.

The Skill in Action team showed up for Day 3 of our service work and we spent most of the day painting, painting doors, walls, putting second coats of paint on, painting the exterior of the building and window sills. We worked well together as a team. Around mid-day the children became very interested in what we were doing, they knew we were upgrading their building, brightening it up and they decided they wanted to help. There was a strong sense of pride in their school. The children were excited about the changes and wanted to be part of them.



During Day 1 of our service, a participant in Skill to Action talked about the needs being so great in Huruma where Gracious School is located. And as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I thought about working from the inside out. If we focus on all the needs or what we perceive them to be, we lose sight of what a big difference a seemingly small task can make.  We transformed the school from inside out and it is about much more than our paint brushes. Once we painted some interior walls on Day 1, built desks on Day 2, and today moved to the outside of the building to paint, we started to interact with the community in a very different way.   Folks were around, cooking, talking, hanging up laundry, kids were running around, adults were speaking in Swahli while watching us paint, curious about what was happening in their community.  


"We don't have to engage in grant, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world."-Howard Zinn

We return to Gracious for Day 4, our final day to finish up painting and to practice yoga with the children. It has been a full day, and my body is sore from the work. It's a good kind of sore though, the type of exhaustion that lets me know that I am making change in the world.

What you do Makes a Difference

Today was one of the most rewarding days of my life.  Our team, Skill in Action, returned to Gracious School to build twenty desks for the children.  Now, I haven't held a hammer very much and when I have, I've missed the nail. My aim isn't that great.  But now I feel like I know how to build a desk and so does the rest of the team.  Two carpenters were there to oversee and help us. I appreciated the way that they taught me how to build the desk. They began with the smaller sections, piece by piece showing me how,  then allowing me to build some of the desk and by the end, I was doing pretty well, building most of the desk and missing less nails with the hammer.


In the middle of building the desks, Teacher Happiness called me over, all of the children were around her and she presented me with a dozen roses. She thanked me for coming into the community and thanked our team. Each person on our team received a red rose as a show of appreciation. I know that it is important to the community to give us thanks but I feel like I am receiving much more than I am giving. After the rose ceremony, an amazing thing happened, Irene, a wonderful teacher with the Africa Yoga Project, instructed the children to say, "Skill in Action, Boom!" That's our team cheer. They did, and Jeff captured it on video. It warms up my heart makes me feel so much gratitude for this experience. I remember riding in the car two and a half years ago with Paige Elenson, the Director of the Africa Yoga Project, and talking about leading a yoga teacher training focused on justice and yoga and bringing a group of people with me to Kenya to volunteer with the project.  I am grateful for the folks who traveled from NC, Canada, and Texas to be part of this adventure and for the community receiving us with open hearts.

In the end we had twenty desks, built, varnished and ready for the children to enjoy tomorrow. 

My heart is filled up, completely filled up.

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."-Jane Goodall

“Happily, we do the work.” 

-Lailah Gifty Akita, Beautiful Quotes 

Today we visited Gracious School in Huruma. Jeff and I have been there on each trip to Kenya with the Africa Yoga Project. The project has done many things to support Gracious including building a new school in 2014. Gracious is a school with no electricity, but it has so much light inside of it. The children that fill the classrooms, the teachers, the spirit. This year the classrooms needed an update, fresh paint on the walls, blackboards painted, some skylight's put in and toilets built.

Our Seva Safari team, Skill in Action, arrived this morning ready to work. Samson, the organizer of the service project divided us up, gave us tasks and brushes and we began. It was inspiring to work in a space that is so important to me. Teacher Happiness, the head master was so excited to see us. She is full of energy and inspires the students to set goal, intentions, to vision and to dream.

We finished the first coats of paint and will return tomorrow for more.

During dinner this evening we debriefed the first day of service. For some, being in Huruma, which is an informal settlement, was overwhelming because the needs of the community seem vast. We discussed how a school can change a community and I was reminded of an organizing tool that we talk about in Dismantling Racism work. We talk about moving from the inside out. Work with who is aligned with you and then ripple out into the community. Gracious is the center, or heart and the community is changed for the good because of the presence of the school and the Africa Yoga Project.

I am inspired by my team, they are some of the most compassionate people I know. Full of heart.

Home

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” 

― Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

We're back. We arrived in Kenya last night and settled into our hotel around 11:00pm.  Our travel included 24 hours of plane rides, six and a half hours of layover, visits to Detroit, Amsterdam and our final destination, Nairobi, Kenya.  It is so good to be back in this place that feels like home.
I went to sleep to the sound of a nightclub situated below the hotel room and woke up from a dream to Adhan, the Islamic Call to prayer from the temple near our hotel.

I am quite sure the call to prayer will not even be noticeable after a few day but this morning, after I realized what the sound was, the call, I remembered what a reverent sacred space that I am visiting.

After breakfast and a brief orientation we headed down to the Shine Center, Africa Yoga Project's studio, where I prepped my jet-lagged self to teach a class of at least 150 people.  Kennedy, one of the teachers who I met on my first visit here in 2012, put on my mic, plugged in my phone for my playlist and people lined up, mat to mat ready to breathe and move.  I led the class through an opening meditation focused on what I think is at the heart of the Africa Yoga Project, and intention of service. Africa Yoga Project is clear that the physical practice is an entry way into the transformation that can allow people to be inspired to teach in their communities, which changes their communities.  They know the practice is about something bigger than them. Once students in today's class set their intention, I asked them share it with a person near them.

Then the deep ujayi breath began, while they worked themselves into child's pose.  Tracy Chapman, Fela Kuti, Bob Marley and the like played in the background and we flowed, got sweaty, danced, and really saw each other.  It was a real authentic practice of yoga. It was such an honor to lead and serve.

This afternoon we headed out to Claire's outreach. She is a teacher for the project and took us to an orphanage that she teaches in once a week. We walked up and a little girl in a fancy but tattered lime green dress ran up to me and squeezed on me. Welcoming me to her space.

Claire led the practice and we laughed, danced, sang and did a few down dogs.  Our group got to see Africa Yoga Project in action and we are ready to begin our service project tomorrow.

So wonderful to be back here in this space.

It is only the traveler...

"There are no foreign lands. It is only the traveler that is foreign." -Robert Louis Stevenson

We traveled to the most beautiful places, both in the sweet rooms filled with children and adult yogis, and in the amazing landscape of Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha. 

"One destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."-Henry Miller

Rhythm

"Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances." Maya Angelou


We ended a busy day with a dance party taught by dancers who are more proficient at shaking a leg than us.





The next morning I ventured out to an outreach and Jeff went to the recording studio with Victor who is an amazing musician and being.

The outreach I attended was motivating, inspiring, and ended with as surprise group facilitation of a trauma group. Magdaline who was teaching the outreach told the group about the trauma classes I've been teaching to the Africa Yoga Project teachers and then she opened it up for the group to ask me questions and share.  They shared and shared and I could have easily been there for half of a day. Now my project for next year is formulated, I will co-teach in the outreaches with the teachers about trauma and coping skills.

While in the outreach the children kept on drawing my attention outside and you can see why, right?

After the outreach we headed to Gracious School for our last outreach on this adventure. Jeff and Victor taught music and the children loved it. They thanked us for coming back yet a third time and we promised to see them next year.  

And I had to say goodbye to my sweet girl, Marcy. Her sister asked me if I'd bring her home with me and when I realized that I'm not Madonna or Angelina I knew I couldn't just pick her up and take her. Until next time, Marcy. I love you.