Journal of a PVC Parent Cont.

Journal continued:
This is an entry word from word from my journal:
“West Africa, the real West Africa, not just pictures we have taken but the real sights and sounds, smells, tastes, fabric and cultural clothing. The people, the poverty, illness and harshness of life contrasted to the grace and beauty in which it is lived. For me what stands out is the women enduring it all with grace and a sisterhood that seems stronger than family ties. To be a woman in West Africa means hard work, patience, grace and an aloofness that is easily broken with a kind word, act or a sympathetic smile. They have welcomed me into the group upon occasion and it is like being held on your mother’s lap. I am no longer a Toubab (white woman) tourist, I am a woman accepted by them and included in their pride of their child or sympathies for what I am enduring with them. Like the woman helping me run to the pit latrine even though the bus driver is angrily honking his horn. Or the woman on the bus this morning whose baby was making a connection with me, or the woman whose back I supported while she sat in the middle of 5 adults and 4 young children in the bus bench seat in front of me (9 human beings in one seat!) nursing her baby. Aseta, who loves my son and fed him for a year in Mauritania. The women on the Car Rapid (Old rickety bus that is far from rapid) who knew that the three toubabs were being cheated by too high a faire and stood up for us or the young mother who feed us in Zach’s village when she barely had enough for her little family. It is these moments when Africa is no longer overwhelming. It is their acceptance that makes me feel comfortable and safe and OK to leave my son in the grace of the people of West Africa. Most of the time I am shut out of this embrace, but when I am let in, I know that I am more than a tourist or a Toubab, I am one of them…a woman.”