I just had to write about the palm tree :)

...Omonoba...
Our people say:
Yoruba: Bí a bá rí òkú ìkà níle, tí a fi ese tá; ìkà-á di méji. 
Eng: If one sees the corpse of a wicked person on the ground and one kicks it, there are then two wicked people-Yoruba Proverb.
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Hey guys, it's been a roller-coaster week from conferencing with my friends for the African Youth Organizations to hosting my friends to hanging out with my nothing-short-of-awesome brother, etc. So, I hope everyone is doing great. I am taking advantage of my summer until work starts and life becomes busy again. Anyway, at my friend's request, I wrote the following for his foundation website. Here's the extended version:


'As soon as I realized how much I must give to my homeland and humanity in general, I started working and I have become a better person. But I still have so much to do. You see, my farmer father would make us help him plant palm trees that neither of us thought we would have need for. You know, we would be reluctant when we thought  about how long it would take a palm tree to grow. But then, each week, we would eat banga soup made from palm fruit and drink palm wine. The next morning, we would sweep the floor with brooms made from palm-leaf stems. At Easter, we would hold palm fronds. And we would play ayo with palm kernels and crack the unused ones for nuts. Rafia was all over our home. Someone planted all those trees. So it’s okay if I plant seeds that I may not benefit from directly because somewhere along the line, someone would use my tree for shade and I would use someone else’s for food. Someone asked me why I have to be the one who choses to work and I thought that was a question with an obvious answer. I never bought into the myth that for instance, a foreigner with a big camera and heavy anti-malaria doses will be able to come in and solve our malaria problems without the help of the locals. Only we, who breathe, live with and sometimes die because of these mosquitoes can face them {mosquitoes} head-on. I have long outgrown the hypocrisy of wanting to act for me all the time and that wouldn't change soon except of course I believe that there is some remotely possible way of surviving by, with and for myself. '


I just had to throw this in. IT IS SNOWING IN COLORADO AS I SPEAK. I do not understand the multi-polarity of this weather. So, no hiking, no outside activities. The benefits of course are that I get to write more, cook more and spend time studying my Bible, reading books and playing my guitar. So, here, this post is not a poem or the typical post but all the same I hope someone has been encouraged to live selflessly. And just a reminder that the solutions to Africa's problems lie with us the African youth. 


Á demain,
NakedSha.