Happy end of Ramadan May God give us all good health and make us witness to the next Ramadan. May his blessings be upon all those who were with us last year and did not live to see todays celebration. May he forgive their misdeeds and may those of us they might have had offended, unintentionally/or not, forgive them as well. I think particularly of my brother Adam fora Kamia, my fathers name sake, who passed away a week ago today. I remember our last meeting four years ago in Abidjan with Heather Kamia. That is now a dear souvenir forever engraved in our memories. I think of all the children and the powerless around the world who are being killed, displaced and/or traumatized by the actions of the ephemeral powerful and the powers enabling them to do wrong. I think of the abducted women and girls in Nigeria and Cameroon. I think of the Syrian children who, according to NPR, are now unable to distinguish a banana from an apple, because they havent seen wither for so long...if ever. I think of the Children in the Holy Land whose normalcy has only been bombs, rockets, sirens...wars. I think of the children of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea who are losing their parents to a new threat...Ebola, after devastating wars they thought were now things of the past. I think of the child from South America who is being screamed at through the windows of the bus they thought was taking them to UNITED STATES...the land of freedom; after having walked thousands of miles, sustain only by one dream: freedom I think of the child born Christian in part of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Nigeria, Soudan or Mali today, and who might grow up never to see his/her birth place again. I think of the child born Rohingya Muslim in Burma, who has witness the systematic destruction of all hes/shes has ever known as home, by Buddhist extremists. I also think of the children (about 3-7 years old) in my neighborhood who seem to be spending their days trotting the streets, asking people for money sir, can you spare me 25 cents? they ask me a few days ago. But I always want to think of the forces of good acting as conter weights. In particular, I think of The doctors and nurses leading the fight against the Ebola virus in west Africa, at the cost of their own health and...lives. The Doctors, nurses and humanitarians helping the people of Gaza alleviate the hardness of a life made even harsher by currents events. I think of the faces of change in Israel, the U.S and around the world, who are challenging the status quo and demanding a new way of talking for peace. I think of the social worker and all of their network of case managers who are helping families in crises find ressources and lead them from challenges to hope. May next Ramadan finds us all in a much better state than we are in today. May our wishes and prayers, be answered, as is, or by something even better than we could envision. Eid Mubarak, Bonne fete de Tabaski, aw ni sanbe sanbe
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 07:02:58 +0000
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