Peaceful Pathway☮

Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear. So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant -- even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.       So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance

Oh God, why?   I have to bury my puppy today.   My confidante. My best friend.   Guard dog, cuddle buddy, walking partner….my best friend Ceasar.   Yesterday I spend the majority of the day clearing the weeds out of my garden.   As my 13 year-old neighbor Kesa made valentine’s cards in my doorway, the sun started setting and we decided it was time to clean up and head over to Lorato’s for dinner.    As I approached the house, I heard a scratching noise.     “Ceasar, stop it”. I yelled in the house.   It didn’t stop.   When I went inside, I found him convulsing on the floor behind my couch in a pool of foam and feces.   I didn’t know what to do.   I screamed for Kesa to go get Lorato. I tried to hold him still. I didn’t know what else to do.   Lorato came. She brought him outside and poured some milk in his mouth with hopes that the jolting would stop.   It didn’t stop.   The entire village’s power had b

It’s so humorous to me how here I find myself sweating miserably throughout the entirety of Monday, and then on Tuesday I wear my winter jacket to work. I think the weather is a reflection of the mood changes I experience quite often in Botswana.   Never is it simply comfortable: it’s either truly extremely hot or drastically, freezing cold…and the two happen within days of one another.   Last week I spent the majority of my time with the new intake of volunteers.   I gave a presentation with the King’s Foundation on Friday afternoon; and let me tell you: it was much needed.   When we arrived to the academy where they were training, morale was extremely low.   People had been walking out of meetings and begrudgingly conversing about the Ministry of Education.   Since I had not yet met many of the new volunteers, I felt like it would be a great time to give off a good impression.   We arranged for the group to assemble underneath a grass hut (to seek shelter from the hot, after