Heartful and Heartsick

This land of my birth is once again captivating me. I left as an 11-year-old and was briefly back here once in 2016, so this longer trip returns me back into the heart of Angola.

This week we rest for four days at Carpe Diem beach resort in Caboledo. A surfer’s paradise they say! Yes – certainly we are seizing each moment: this beautiful mama and her baby in the first sunset, the chicken who visits me at every meal, the wailing peacock who wakes me up along with roosters. Scrumptious grilled fish and my childhood most special treat – orange gazoza.

Very few tourists as it’s midweek and off-season because the rains have just begun. The farmers are planting everywhere. Greening power! And mosquitoes arriving….

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This morning, I was led in a ritual of thanksgiving and grief on the beach before a few hours of torrential thunderstorms descended and our breakfast was almost rained out!

The heart is strewn with the crushed dried flower petals that some of you kindly gave me after my car collision. The healing lavender from our courtyard garden and sage from the desert.

My heart is full and overflowing with gratitude AND I am heartsick with the reality that right here, close to the river Kwanza which served as a river road to the ocean, is the place where enslaved individuals were forcibly baptized before their impending journey into the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade.

The harrowing, often hidden epoch of slavery in Angola haunts me and breaks my heart.

These terrifying years of violence haunt the spirit of this physically outstanding place of beauty and untold wealth of every kind in her peoples and community of beings. As I walk and pray on this sand, I am compelled to attempt to hold this impossible grief and to trust for Ancestral Wisdom to know my birthright part in offering some small measure of healing. I feel like a drop in the ocean. I honor my parents who tried in their own ways of loving service, colored with all the shades of colonialism.

Violence is rife with extreme poverty and need, especially in the dense urban areas. The war displaced millions of rural Africans as they were forced into the few population centers. Luanda now teems with 7 million people. Every company has guards and security. Security is one of the largest businesses in the country. Our friend’s company has 150 guards who are managed and trained by an extremely honorable man we enjoyed spending time with. His stories curl your hair when he speaks about being almost killed in southern Angola during the war of independence.

The rift between those with power and the disempowered continues at every turn. For example, it is the norm in unethical business structures that if someone wants a significant job, first you pay the guard at the front to let you in the door to take you to the secretary. In order to begin the process, one must pay the secretary, and then you are taken to an inside middle person whom you pay to get to the decision holder of power for that job. If you are given a job, then you pay that inside person 30% of your salary for as long as you have it. Imagine the corruption and hostile antagonism that continues to fester in the heart of business and economic development.

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Here’s a quick video of Uli with his colleagues and the passersby in Luanda Bay after he had sweated long enough in his business suit (ha). I was delighted to have fish dinner with these dedicated men who have spent years abroad in global business and now determined to come back into Angola with heart commitment to serve her people from the ground up, Angola as a nation, all beings, all flora and fauna has suffered for centuries in attempting to mitigate so many roots of violence. AND so much is growing, blossoming in different places as we hear heart-warming stories and meet ones who are on the pathways of change while being earth-centric.

Yes! Heartful and heartsick join today in a healing dance of longing to flourish. Many here tell us that the time is ripe for fresh vision and leadership to rise. It is my prayer that somehow this trip for us personally will open whatever relational door is ready to open in ways that are truly reciprocal.

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An inspiration, from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s just-published book The Serviceberry.

We are reading it together here.

“ALL FLOURISHING IS MUTUAL”

I encourage you to find and read this book – give it as a present to someone you love.

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