Whispering

full of fear that our strength was lost 

we started from rebirth 

our feet dirty, skin brown, hearts uneven 

we were challenged, broken down 

stripped bare 

left standing, the only ones, we thought 

we heard silence 

cried out, the drums answered 

training our hearts to the rhythm 

of Africa

we waited, searching, listening 

facing the universe, our ears awoke 

to witness the whispering of the world 

calling our strength awake 

reborn, our feet dirty, skin brown 

hearts beating in union with the drums 

our eyes tame, our cries of joy 

our ears full of the universes truth, 

whispering hope

Moments of pause

It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covert your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed we are to have each other? I am alive, and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words...All the while I will know you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost impossible as you pretending that I do not exist. 

- What is the What?  David Eggars

The tears, when they come to come men, are worse than beatings. They're wounded worse by sobbing, men like that, than they are by boots and batons. Tears begin in the heart, but some of us deny the heart so often and for so long, that when it speaks we hear not one but a hundred sorrows in the heartbreak. We know that crying is a good and natural thing. We know that crying isn't a weakness, but a kind of strength. Still, the weeping rips us root by tangled root from the earth, and we crash like fallen trees when we cry.

- Shantarum Gregory David Roberts

To my mind, development is about giving hope to ordinary people that their children will live in a society that has caught up with the rest of the world. Take that hope away and the smart people will use their energies not to develop their society but to escape from it.

-Bottom Billion Paul Collier 

Love in Black and White