"Stories Matter!
Many stories matter.
Stories have been used to disposses and to malign.
But stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.
Stories can break the dignity of a people.
But stories can also repair that broken dignity."
~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"You need to know that this is deeply personal. I live among Muslims who have taken me in, fed me, given up their bed for me, cared for me when I wrecked my motorcycle, and have patiently listened to me massacre their language until I could communicate and be a friend."
(K. Hoch. Friend Working in a West African Country)
"Meanwhile there is Jeremiah, and the people like him who keep showing up in our homes and communities and churches, who go beyond the boundaries of what is safe and comfortable, learn new languages, discover alien cultures, brave hostility and misunderstanding, and who have the scars and tell the stories that prove that the life of faith can be lived in every place and among all peoples— must be lived in every place, among all peoples."
-- Eugene Peterson, "Run with the Horses"
"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"
(Karen Blixen)
"No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his
background, or his religion. People must learn to hate,and if they can learn to hate,they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally the human heart than its
opposite." (Nelson Mandela)
Calvinists probably doubt it. But I don't. I've seen it everywhere, and in many a remote place
"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in such a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." (Nelson Mandela)
"We were poling our way through the outpost country, a country of lonely, isolated farms, of messages that never arrive or arrive too late, of sudden sickness and inexplicable fevers and death, of snakes and bugs and downpours of rain, of loneliness, of women living and working alone all day in hacked-out jungle clearings, hauling water in gourds, pounding clothes on rocks, caring for sickly children, worrying. It was a country of distances, separations, longing, of deferred dreams, of small rewards; of muddy trails, stumbling horses, plants that grow two feet a day and choke the crops, armies of ants, blood-sucking lice on the bodies and in the eyes of the livestock. It is heroic country, too.
But when you ask yourself why anyone would live here, completely cut off from the world of comfort and security, there is no easy answer. Perhaps it is man's deepest wish to struggle against great odds, or perhaps the answer lies in that little band of grandchildren swarming around Don Julio. Maybe it is all for them."
(Living Poor: Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 107. Rio Verde, Ecuador)
"I would have left with the others if i'd had the means. We have no dignity. Our dignity was sold off. Because when they beat your wife in front of you, beat your sister in front of you, and you can't say anything. They beat your very own mother in front of you, and you...you can't say a word. You have absolutely no dignity left. What are you going to do here except leave if you can."
(Seydou Baba Kounta of Timbuktu. Speaking of the horrors of Islamic radicals occupation of the city over the last year.)
"We need to urgently focus on reconciliation. That's what can bring about lasting peace. Because Mali is a big country, a country with a very long history and a wealth of cultural diversity. Its different peoples have lived together,married one another. To say now that they should be separated is wrong. Mali is indivisible. Mali is secular. Mali is democratic. That should be the starting point of dialogue. Not autonomy! If every community demanded autonomy, Mali wouldn't exist anymore." (Abderahmane Ben Essayouti, Inmam of Timbuktu's Grand Mosque.)
("Islam doesn't force anyone to be Muslim."The Imamas, IRIN documentary June 12, 2013)
"Whatever happens, we'll always manage to sort it out under the palaver tree or in the hallway." (Old mans Words in Timbuktu Mali)
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| Our neighbor getting her hair done, while we chat and giggle under the mango tree |
