Sometimes my brain gets on overload and I get overwhelmed with all that floats around in my head. Too many thoughts. Too many books. Too many questions and not enough answers. Too many doubts. Too many fears. Too many what ifs and hows. Too many uncertainties. Too many "to do's." Too many longings and too many dreams.
I'm haunted every day by the thought of Africa. Haunted every day by the question of "What am I supposed to do next about this magnificent dream that is all wrapped up in terrible fears?"
I've been on this binge of reading a handful of books that are slowly - and radically - changing how I view poverty, my role in it, and my thoughts on Africa. I dove headlong into Dambisa Moyo's book Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa. Far too many thoughts on that book to include in this post, but let's just say it's completely changed my view on how to appropriately respond to the needs in Africa.
Then I picked up Deborah Rodriguez's book Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. It's about a woman who for all intents and purposes has no practical skills to offer the women in Afghanistan (or so it seems), where she goes to work with an NGO. She's not even sure why the NGO sent her - she's a hairdresser and everyone else on the team was either a doctor, lawyer, or nurse. What did she have to offer? It's the very question I wrestle with. What do I have to offer a world, a country, that is so desperately in need of practical skills? I don't teach, can't build things, can't heal people, and don't understand the first thing about what it really means to "live bent low," as Katie says. Rodriguez would go on to a open a beauty school that teaches Afghani women how to run their own salons so that they can lift themselves out of poverty and into a better life.
Add to that, Muhammad Yunus's book Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. The guy founded the Grameen Bank in the 1970s. If you don't know what the Grameen Bank is, do your homework. It's staggering the impact his simple economic plan has had on the impoverished. Oh, and let's throw in Jacqueline Novogratz's book The Blue Sweater for good measure. The woman has a favorite blue sweater that she wore all the time as a kid. She eventually donates it to charity. Years later, while running through the streets of Uganda, she sees a little boy wearing a blue sweater. Her blue sweater. She now spends her life devoted to the Acumen Fund and to bridging the gap for the poorest of the poor. I want to work for someone like her someday. Heck, let's just work for her.
Now you can see why my brain is on overload. So many thoughts crowding in and around, over and underneath. And I have no idea what to do with it all, or even where to begin.
I wrote in my journal the other day - after I had printed out Katie's (see link above) blog post about living bent low:
"Am I willing to live bent low? I want to, but I'm afraid. All I know is that Africa burns within me."
What are you supposed to do with the fires within?
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