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Showing posts from 2012

Christmas in Zimbabwe

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When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.  -Mary Oliver After many years of celebrating Christmas together in as a family post-divorce with my ex-husband and our four children, this year I made the decision to go to Africa for the holiday. It was a last minute decision after much soul-searching. I really wanted to be with my four children on Christmas this year.   My children are ages 17-22 so time is limited with them as they create their own lives outside of family. I especially needed to be with family after losing my stepfather on November 30, 2012.   Mom and my soul father John My own father died twenty-four years ago when I was twenty-five. My stepfather, John, came into my mother's life seventeen years later.   I called him my soul father because calling him a stepfather just didn't seem good enough for a man like John. My mom and John met and married

Blessings and Grace

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Tariro and Cheepo November 30, 2012 Graduation Day           “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a nation."                                                    -Nelson Mandela November 30, 2012 was a special day in Zimbabwe.  Thirty-two children celebrated their end of the school year graduation from the school supported by House of Loveness.  In a country where many orphans drop out of school by first grade, these children were beating the odds. It was a moment filled with blessings, resourcefulness and grace. The blessings were for a school that opened in May 2010 after a conversation House of Loveness founder Betsy Blankenbaker had with a local foster mother in Zimbabwe who wanted to teach but there were no opportunities. The local schools that were

Meeting Primrose

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       This photo means a lot to me. You know the phrase, You’ve come a long way baby? That’s what I think when I see this photo.      I was just off a 24 hour flight from the US to Zimbabwe. Only a few hours earlier at the airport in Johannesburg, I had sent one last text to my family in the US: Arrive in Zim in a few hours and will be holding Loveness soon . Instead, when I got off the plane in Zimbabwe, I was told Loveness had died. This photo was taken a few hours after that.      I had been taken to the hospital where Loveness’s body was in the morgue. I still wanted to hold her. But first with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes, I passed through the Children’s Ward at the hospital and met these three children, all abandoned. I am holding Tanya, Cheepo is sleeping in the crib they all shared and staring me down is Primrose.  There were a total of six abandoned children in the hospital on that day. Four infants, including Lovenes

Seeing The Faces Beyond Kony

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Brighton, age 9 (March 2012) supported by House of Loveness, Zimbabwe I've had to spend some time collecting my thoughts about the recent Invisible Children campaign.  The minute the campaign went viral and I saw the urgent appeal on Facebook from my friends and their children, I was perplexed.  The outpouring of urgency from the campaign didn't make sense because I knew Kony (the head of the LRA) that the campaign was focused on capturing (with your donations) was no longer in Uganda AND no longer a threat. His damage was done years ago. The children that survived his atrocities do deserve our help.   The focus should be on empowering the children's future, not on making Kony a household name. I have never met the filmmakers of Invisible Children but I do know they spoke at my own children's school 2 years ago.  They pulled in on their bus, showed their film and got the children engaged in conversations about Africa and how to help. I know their intentions were g