here i am

 Good day reader, whoever you are wherever you are whatever you be I hope you are joyful in spirit.

I am well. Thank God! It has been quite a while since I last updated this... and has been an interesting and intense journey to this point. I was intending to go to Bosnia-Herzegovina, but am currently writing this in an air conditioned mall in Accra, Ghana. Long story short God has a very spontaneous and alarmingly vibrant sense of humour. Most of the time I try to join in on the laugh and go along with it. 

I have been here for fifteen days. Staying in a small rural village half an hour by wild taxi to the atlantic ocean. Every night I go to bed around 8:30pm and wake up around 5:30am. My sleeping habits alone attest to how different my life is lived on the grounds here, than home in Ontario.The sunrise and sunsets here are really subtle, they happen gradually with no intense colours, just pale black fading slowly to a very pale pink. Most nights I sleep well in the unimaginable heat but somenights, like last night, I can't sleep. I lay awake singing songs from the choir school I went to when I was little or in reflection about the days events.  I have been finding a lot of sweetness from singing lately, realizing more deeply how important song is to me. I like this:

"When you sing, you don't wonder whether or not singing is useful; you sing. That's how you are to pray." Hermann Hesse, Narcicuss and Goldmund.

When without my largest comforts: my family, Nick, friends, religious communities, farmiliar food, MacGuiness (loving canine companion) I rely a lot on song and my secret stash of chocolate in my room! Hahaha, I have been getting more into the rhythmn of life in this beautiful country, through connecting more with people through menial tasks. For example: holding a table steady as Mary, my host sister chops greens, or fanning the small fire as she stirs a pot of Bancou. Sometimes Mary calls me Madame Leigh, so I call her Madame Patience, her patience with me is incredible...

My host family is very generous and kind with me. I am learning some of the local language with jest and effort to wrap my mouth around the incredible sounds my host sisters are able to make. They laugh as I try to pronounce a word that is spelt "kpa" but to my white ear sounds like "bpang". Mary gets a riot out of it but is ceaselessly patient with me.

Been praying for increased gratitude the past six months or so, and cannot explain how thankful I have been feeling, been contemplating beauty/ugliness a lot too,

30 seconds left in the internet cafe, all for now. I am happy, healthy, and thoughtful... my love is with you all, thank you for everything.... Leigh

Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
- from Idris' Bible

 

"than a wo/man... can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and creative force inside the shrine of his soil." Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund