Words + pictures + patience = story

I've started my summer fellowship, and as we gear up and share our history and leadership stories with our cohort, I've had some time to reflect on this journey.

If I could have presented my life as I'm currently living it to the "temporarily brave" me that left my job back in 2007, I never would have believed what was in store. How many people get to realize what was once a timid dream? I feel blessed, constantly.

At the same time (and perhaps even more so) the practice of being my best self has never been harder. The momentum of opportunity, the reality of doors opening can sometimes propel you forward while at the same time threaten to stretch and pull your limbs just a little too taught.

Yesterday, while listening to an 83 year-old former school district superintendent/Governor/flight instructor/John Deere salesman talk with passion about how to better educate children, I was reminded of a core identity I've discovered and taken solice in on this path.

I am a story teller.

So why has storytelling been so hard now that I am running a business that has such a profound story to tell? Oh how I've struggled to get the words out lately! I set goals, I set aside time - and yet the message is lost in the transatlantic flights, the hustle to pay the bills, the seemingly never-ending packing and unpacking of bags. I have been increasingly fearful that my words, my energy and my passion will be lost in the heartache of changing times and the growing feeling that I'm more of a permanent observer than a central character in the paradigm I come from.

But, as it often does, the dawn begins to break gently. In the past few days I've been reminded that perhaps the loneliness and often completely oppressive sense of belonging nowhere and everywhere at the same time might trace to my detachment from this core knowledge of who I'm meant to be. Once again, there is a trickle of hope that I'll find the voice and energy to get the words out.

Some of these words need to be committed to fundraising letters and raising support to make a return to Kenya a reality. Some of these words can begin to compliment the images that have flowed in their absence to keep some small piece of my storyteller going in the midst of defining these new roles and opportunities. Many of these words need to be shared for those who have no voice, for the women of Sasa Designs and the countless others they represent.

To all ends, as I sat down to write tonight I stumbled upon a neat way to share some of the photography I've snapped using instagram in the last year. Take a look, and perhaps consider ordering some cards or a print? I get a small portion from each purchase - and you can have a visual reminder of the journey I am so privileged to share with a truly international and utterly inspiring community.

Click here to see what I'm talking about - and please feel free to email me at meganmacdon AT gmail DOT com if you have any questions.

Asante sana for the space to share these thoughts and hopes for the continued support to tell the stories I am discovering along the way.

Did you know "sasa" also means "what's up?"

I suppose when you stop blogging regularly, it serves you right that your blog platform ups and changes itself - making the very process of writing a post wildly discombobulating. All that aside - I did do some writing recently - although as usual, it is somewhere else. For those who aren't on Facebook and availed to my numerous posts, please take a look at why the work we are doing at Sasa Designs by the Deaf is so important: The Roots of Sasa Designs. I continue to marvel at this winding path my life is on - it delivers the most INCREDIBLE opportunities to learn and serve, time and time again.

I must also take the opportunity to share another link, one that is not quite as easy to throw out there - but one by which this work is made possible. Yes folks, it is true - I am officially an economic development specialist in a missionary's clothing. I am still more tempted to call myself the "mission-not" - it just has such a nice ring to it... Still, the reality is, I'm doing this work because I feel called to do so, and I don't for a second doubt that God made this happen. My experience in Kenya, my renewed passion for empowering these amazing women and my propensity for living out of a suitcase with a swarm of june bugs to keep me company at night (wait, what?) compel me to this work. If you are able to help support my work, you will find the opportunity to do so right here. I'm working on a newsletter, but the reality is there aren't enough hours in the day to build this business and pursue my own support - I suppose that's where faith comes in!

I also want to mention that I will be working in the states this summer, thanks to a fellowship that I also hope will help raise funds for my work here. I'll share more about that once my placement is finalized - it's going to be a BUSY summer indeed!

Mom and I get our SASA on!

Stay tuned for a return to normal blog programming (as in highly sporadic, soul-searching observations about humanity) soon!

The start of my summit list

I took some time in Ghana to reflect on my life thus far as I began to chart next steps. One night I was thinking about all the beautiful moments I've had around the world, and how thankful I am for a collection of memories that surpass any photograph I could have taken. I started to write them down and I look forward to adding to this list as memories resurface and new experiences are had. I am calling this my "summit" list in tribute to the beautiful vista each of these moments offered.

• Cuban cigars on the coast of the Mediterranean with my brothers.
• Watching the 2010 world cup in Kenya.
• Starting alone, ending amongst friends hiking through Cappadocia.
• Singing in the Sistine Chapel (I have never been so certain of God’s presence).
• Watching my mom talk to sheep in the Scottish highlands with my Dad and nephew.
• Walking through a soft layer of snow in Red Square late at night after the ballet.
• Fireflies on the evacuation path during a tsunami warning in Vladivastok.
• Bioluminescence that looked like diamonds on a nighttime dhow ride in Lamu.
• Trekking the Routeburn with my siblings.
• Arriving at my destination after my first solo roadtrip in South Africa just as the sunset behind the mountains.
• My first salsa lesson in Costa Rica.
• Hiking in to my family cabin with my best friends in the middle of the night.
• Getting stuck behind an elephant in Amboseli.
• Arriving at sunset in Ithala.
• That first cold coke in Tanzania.
• Squid hunting in Corona del Mar.
• Pear icecream on a solo walk in Paris.
• Singing with my cousins in a Gondola at Christmas.
• My first leisurely walk through an African city at night in Accra.
• Laguna de Apoyo.
• Dancing at Mar y Sombre.
• Carmel beach at sunset with family.
• Running in Rongai.
• Bela's birth.
• Cracked crab at my grandparents table.
• Trying to leap over a rafter in Zurich.
• That moment when I held a baby, sat next to a teenager and comforted a dying child.
• Root beer floats in a half-built house in the Oakland hills.
• Stargazing in the middle of a high school football field.
• Yoga on the beach on Christmas day.
• Dancing with wild abandon in Accra.
• Watching the sun set from my surf board at Old Man’s.
• Napping with my nephew in Moscow.
• Walks with my nephew in Berkeley.
• A surprise birthday party in the middle of a ski hill.
• New years, champagne, a hot tub and friends.
• Ice skating through Gorky Park.
• Singing the national anthem as we landed after every choir tour.
• My dad's solo singing tribute to the MacDonalds at Glencoe.
• Snowball fights in Nkandla on the morning I left Sizanani center.
• Camping in a field of geodes in Namibia.
• Laughing until we cried with mom and dad in the back row at church on Christmas eve.
• The feeling of driving a pickup outside of Nairobi.
• Skinny dipping for the first time by moonlight in Namibia.

Here and there

I want to share some posts from a few sites I've had the pleasure of writing for recently. The first is a post prepared for Vittana about the research my colleague and I conducted leading up to the launch of Opportunity International's first micro-loan for higher education. I am still "high" on the experience of getting to dive into the education arena. As my work continues to evolve, I come back to education over and over. Sometimes, it's a step removed (as in my current work, which focuses on empowering women...who in turn ensure their children go to school), but it's always at the core. Development policy and practice is crazy complex to say the least - but if you measure your returns based on quality of life, opportunity and equality - there is no better priority than education at every level.

Read about a day in my life with Opportunity International Ghana and Vittana here.

The second set of posts are for Go Girl Magazine - a site I learned about after connecting with an amazing group of women following a bid for a spot as a blogger on a trip to Kenya with Vestergaard Frandsend last summer. I wasn't chosen for the trip, but the organizers put all the applicants in touch via a google group, which led me to Go Girl (coincidently, the founder/editor had recently started working at the Rotary Foundation - go figure!). Besides a monthly writing gig, the group also led to a new friend in Kenya named Georgia, who I got to meet in person back in October. Georgia works in PR and when we met for lunch in downtown Nairobi, I had my dear friend Maggie with me. Quick to recognize a promising young woman, Georgia has taken Maggie under her wing and even hired her to help with a few of her work events. Maggie finished high school last year, but does not have the funds to attend university, thus Georgia's mentorship and friendship has been that much more appreciated. All this to say that writing for Go Girl is just a piece of an ever-unfolding story and a reminder of how powerful online communities and connections can be.

You can see my posts for Go Girl here (start from the bottom). I write about my quest to find and embrace "home" wherever I am.

I will be resuming my 30 days of Asante posts soon - now that I am back in the land that reminds me to say THANK YOU every day, no matter what.

With each OPPORTUNITY, a new DOOR opens

When I tell people about the last five years of my life, I always say that once I was brave enough to step away from my current reality and say out loud, "I want to go back to Africa," door after door flew open. All these years later, metaphor becomes reality. I recently began a 4-month contract with Door International, a mission-based organization that serves the deaf community around the world.

One of our artisans, Anna.

I have long been drawn to any service provided to people with physical disabilities in the developing world. The longer I live in this context, the more aware I am of people unfairly ascribed to lives of isolation, humiliation, dependency and general dehumanization as a result of some physical ailment outside of their control (often the result of poverty and the lack of immunizations or poor healthcare in general). A few weeks before I finished my fellowship with Vittana working at Opportunity International in Ghana, I received a job posting from a friend in Nairobi for a Business Manager position. Door had been looking at social business opportunities to provide jobs for the deaf and raise funds for their programs. Having worked with a jewelry consultant that specializes in helping non-profits start businesses, the program had been launched, but needed someone on the ground to develop a local supply chain, navigate shipping and customs issues, take over wholesale and retail responsibilities and oversee the artisans directly. I threw my hat in the ring, another in a long line of steps taken in faith that if it was meant to be, it would.

Winnie, one of our artisans wearing the "Her time to shine" Onyx Necklace.

A few weeks later - here I am! I'll be working with Sasa Designs and helping market our organic farm through the beginning of May, at which point we will review our progress and whether the business can support me working full time or if I am able to raise my own support (I tell you, I didn't see life as a prospective missionary coming - funny where God puts you!). For now, I'm diving in, getting up to speed and learning sign language as fast as I can. And yes, I'm still working on my thesis, which is of course directly tied to this work in the first place. A door opens and things come full circle once again...stay tuned!

One of our artisans, Rose.

All photos by my colleague Whitney Simons.

Sit back and take it all in

Just a little reminder of how awesome this universe is.

World Aids Day: In Rememberance

I wrote this on April 18, 2007 while living in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa:

“There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens the pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and child bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.”

-From Alan Paton's 'Cry the Beloved Country'

What is the meaning of a world where you welcome death for a child because it means the end of suffering - the end of knowing your mother has left you, of feeling too weak to play the games of the children around you, of finding the strength only to cry?

This is the face of AIDS in Africa. Of a child who came three weeks ago and whom I mistook for shy. A child who came in clean and pressed clothes and bright white tennis shoes that swallowed her stick-like legs.

“On admission to the center the child looked malnourished with very thin legs and arms and sunken eyes. According to the grandmother she does not like food, has diarrhea with blood, sweats at night and is restless.”

Her cries were the first I heard here – I went to investigate once when they seemed as though they’d never stop. And even with an arm around her bony back and her head on my knee, they continued. They were cries for which there could be no comfort.

On Saturday we invited her to hit the piñata, and gently took the bat when she broke into tears after one swing. The children shared their candy with her as she held back, as she always did, when they rushed forward to join the excitement.

Two days ago, she went to the hospital for the fifth time this year. She had no stuffed animal for comfort, it was insisted that anything of the sort provided would quickly be stolen in the night. Sister visited her and said she was worried. This morning the prognosis was better – she was smiling and talking to the nurse on duty. When Sister returned to see her after supper she was told she died in the afternoon. We learned her CD4 count this morning, it was 3.

I did not know her before I came here, nor any like her. She existed only in theory, in a far off land where the virus that killed her raged out of control. Then I came to Nkandla and I learned her name. I held her, I watched her, I worried after her and I got to know as much as I could of the shell that remained after three years of constant pain and illness.

Now I introduce her to you for this is all I can do – to offer a face and a name to that which we think we cannot know. This was Lindokuhle. From here on out, may this plague be considered a stranger no more.

In honor of World Aids Day, please consider contributing to The Africa Project, still hard at work with the Nardini Sisters in Nkandla.