Getting The Plane Off The Ground

Iffley Heights

Hurting the People we Love

As the days draw close when I will be leaving my much beloved home, Iffley Heights and venturing to Rose Hill I have become aware of how I have hurt many of the people I love because I have not communicated clearly why I am moving and for how long. The truth is that I don’t know how long I am moving for… and I am moving because I love something more than I love my comfort, my perfect and my divine housemates. I am realizing that this is a trend in my life… because I have not developed the words to share with people WHY I love this Faith so much they don’t have the opportunity to know that I am not abandoning them, even though I know it feels that way.

How does this concept relate to football?

What is a good analogy for this in football? Its not like transferring players, is it? Because when we talk about players being bought or sold we can understand that move… however much it pains us to loose a good player, we can see that they were offered a better deal; more money, more fame and so on. With this it is different because it looks like the person is doing them self an injustice… moving 10 min down the road to the ghetto? WHY?!? What are your thoughts? How can I relate this one?

Broken bodies and a mother’s heart

Broken Bodies

While I was pioneering in Tanzania (helping out with developing the activities of the Baha’i community) I got very ill… I started loosing blood and having severe pain on a daily biases. During the summer months before I was due to enroll at the local university I went home to see my family and get medical treatment. As I got off the airplane my mom was craning he head to look around me. I smiled at her and she gave me a polite smile and continued looking past me. For a moment I was confused as to why she wasn’t running to me and embracing me and wondering who she was looking for. A family friend tugged my mothers sleeve and whispered in her while while pointing at me. My mother shook her head confidently and said something along the line of, “that isn’t Clare”. I was really shocked… If I wasn’t Clare, then who was I? I continued to smile at her and then slowly my mother recognized me. Tears welled up in her eyes as she realized that I was her daughter and realized the sad state of health that I was in. I don’t remember ever looking really ill, but my family and friends noticed the physical changes that my body had undergone. It was often a challenge for them to be happy with my choice to live in Tanzania when it hurt them to know I wasn’t in good health.

Back to the Hospital

Throughout the summer I started to feel better, but the bleeding never stopped. I went to many doctors who were able to give me medication to take care of the tropical diseases, but none were able to diagnose the

Hospitals

bleeding or stomach cramping. After a while I convinced myself that everyone must have this experience and no one complains about it, so I decided that I should stop worrying about it and not think of the pain. During a family reunion, on the more ‘colourful’ and ‘wild’ side of the family, I ate the same food as the 107 other people and started feeling ill… later that night I was taken to the emergency room because I couldn’t stop being ill (a pleasant way of saying ‘loosing my stomach’) and was diagnosed with food poisoning. My immune system was so weak that something so small that other people didn’t even get a runny stomach affected me so greatly that I was in the hospital. The  evening was a little more exciting then I had hopped and involved a adverse reaction to one of the drugs, many injections of morphine, an attempted escape from the hospital in one of the ‘high’ moments, getting locked in the linen closet and passing out, and the sad news my mom had to hear from the doctor that my kidneys and liver looked like a 70 year old mans and were malfunctioning. It was possibly my worst birthday ever… and possibly my best. That little fiasco at the hospital probably saved my life… because my family became aware that I wasn’t well and they encouraged me to get further treatment before returning back to Africa.

Goodbye

I can not even imagine what they were going through. Their 18 year old daughter wants to go back to a country where they can’t contact her anytime they want, where they can’t help her if she continues to be ill, where they can’t make sure that she is safe and happy. They are such heroes because in the midst of this they allowed me to make my own choices, for better and for worse.

It was only 10 days before my plane was scheduled to leave for Tanzania that a surgeon was able to identify what was wrong with me, apparently the various diseases has eaten away part of my intestines and  had leave a great big fissure, fistula and abscess in its place. The tear was become bigger and my body wasn’t sure where to send what and the wrong things were going to the wrong places… causing me to start go septic. Yuck. He told me to go find my mom and meet him at the hospital in an hour for an ‘emergancy’ surgery. Before we went running our various paths to the hospital he sad me down and said, “Clare, do you realize that 10 days more and this would have killed you? You need to cancel your trip back to Africa and stay in America for at least 9months to ensure that this properly heals. I need to let you know that there is the chance of 1/1000 that this surgery will not be successful and you will require an additional surgery, one that they will not be able to do in Tanzania. Please let me know that you will not go back to Tanzania for 9 months.” I was on the verge of tears just hearing that I was sick and that I needed surgery (i had never had any surgery before).

Hurting a Mother’s Heart

I drove over to my mom’s work and told her what the doctor told me. I will never forget that she was giving a workshop when I arrived and that she was annoyed at me for pulling her out of the session mid-sentence, and then watching her face change through a myriad of emotions as she saw my worried face and understood the meaning of the words I was telling her. At that moment she was so strong for me, not just physically… but she never told me I shouldn’t have gone to Africa, she was strong in a silent and spiritual manner.

Don

The surgery was uneventful, it wasn’t pleasant but I didn’t suffer to much either. I found it difficult to walk for a few days or to sit, but other than that it was painless and quick. I was happy to be in a western hospital with clean sterile needles and I didn’t even mind my hospital gown that had the open flap in the back. Apparently as I gained consciousness I started laughing and telling my mom that I fooled the doctor and that I was still going back to Tanzania. My mom hopped that it was just the drugs talking and not her 18 year old only daughter.

Tough Choice to Make

After a few days I decided that I didn’t really want to go to Africa again if I was sick. Especially after having the surgery I decided it would be best to live someplace with a bathtub so that my bum could heal well. I attended a function at the local university and realized that it wasn’t too late to apply to study that fall. I became so excited of having the university life that I had seen in movies since a child. However, in my heart I knew that I was meant to be going to Tanzania. I wrote to a few friends and institutions asking for guidance. They encouraged me to seek medical guidance too.

Sacrifice as a Plane?

Taking Off!

One of the things that I have constantly remembered is what a youth named Adib told me he read in a book by Ruhiyyih Khanum, he said that she described sacrifice as a place… on a ground a plane is safe and secure, it can get to where it wants to go by using its tiny wheels. The pilot can look out the window and direct its movement based on what they see. However, it is only when the plane goes into the air and leaves behind the comfort of the safe and solid ground, and sacrifices its use of the widows to navigate the plan can it achieve what it is meant to achieve. It is only when the plane is in the air that the equipment will fully be operational. On the ground the plan must move slow and is bound by traffic… however when it is in the air it is fast and unconstrained. I was very moved by this idea of sacrifice and trust.

Princess Diaries

One of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to go to the movie theatre. As children growing up we would go for special occasions and to this day it remains close to my heart. When I was feeling a little bit better my mother took me to the theatre and we watched Disney’s Princess Diaries. It was only during the last 15 min of the movie that I decided that I would go back to East Africa. It was during the part where she is reading the letter from her father about service. What I understood from that letter is that sometimes we do things for others or for our Faith that we would never do for ourselves. I realized that the one thing that I had left to give (or I thought I had to give) was myself and my university degree.

Princess Diaries

I know that to everyone else this sounds crazy. I heard the reasons why I shouldn’t go back, “there are many people who can go and do this, you are not well… you should not go” or “what kind of degree will you get there, you must also think of the future… we need people who are well educated”. I also saw the look in my family members eyes as I said good-bye to them at the airport.  If at any point my mother would have said, “don’t go Clare, stay here”, I would have. If at any point she would have said, “You need to do a degree at a university where it matters”, I would have. I didn’t know if my health would last for long enough to carry my bags through the 5 airports that I would visit to get there. I stood there at my home airport crying, wondering if I was making the right choice… completely unsure of what I was doing and afraid that this was the last time that I would be able to hug my mother or see her face. In the midst of my mother’s internal agony at watching her ill daughter leave to place she couldn’t follow she praised my efforts and told me to trust in God.

This might sound like the end of the story… but in reality it is the start of the story, not just my story… but also the story of my parents, my siblings and my friends. Making the choice to leave hurt most of them in such a deep and profound way that I was completely unaware of.

Tomorrow I will tell you the other half of this story. The other half of the story can be found here: Learning to Fly