Code Pink Journals CodePINK Journals

Work 4 Peace,Hold All Life Sacred,Eliminate Violence! I am on my mobile version of the door-to-door, going town-to-town holding readings/gatherings/discussions of my book "But What Can I Do?" This is my often neglected blog mostly about my travels since 9/11 as I engage in dialogue and actions. It is steaming with my opinions, insights, analyses toward that end of holding all life sacred, dismantling the empire and eliminating violence while creating the society we want ALL to thrive in

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Another red eye

We've made it, stand-by onto the plane for Senegal - a plane delayed several hours because of the scary-exciting thunderstorms dumped on NYC today! Not delayed enough to give me only one airplane trip - if I fly within the same 24 hour period, it counts as one flight - but we're crossing over into maybe 8 hours ahead of east coast time.

The plane is thankfully half empty - we get the luxury economy seats so both Tessie & I can lay down across our own three seats and sleep the night away!

It is an 8 1/2 hour trip but we will not land until around noon Senegal time. I try to put my misgivings aside, to focus my abilities on seeking the best healing for Jasi, to gather my energy in support of my daughter in this healing quest.

And to soak in Senegal, Africa - Africa! I can't believe it. The awe and wonder of me, a single AFDC mom, now an anti-war activist who has eliminated all I can from my life, who is committed to living on less then $500 a month - me flying off the continent of the U.S., across the huge expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, to be a little dot on the mighty continent of Africa.

Visualize train going

We've landed in NYC! I'm excited to be back here after a long time. We take the air train to the subway. One stop before ours, the train is unable to move.

We wait as the doors close, and then open again, just to close - but not until letting even more New Yorkers crowd in.

Jasi gets more and more restless, along with all of us. He asks his mom why is the train not going?

She tells him that if he wants the train to move, he must visualize it moving.

The train doesn't move. We end up tumbling out onto the street, waiting for buses to come shuttle us to another station where we catch a train that is running & then the subway.

And I wonder what he thinks, if he truly believed he just had to visualize the train going, should he even have the faintest idea at 3 years old (almost 4), as brilliant and perceptive as he is (as his mother was before him, and maybe even his grandmother before her - who's left to witness?), can he wrap his mind around visualizing anything, let alone the failure of visualizing manifesting itself in the action?

I suppose the new ager visualizers would claim victory should the train ever moved, but not defeat as it didnt', but say what? He wasn't putting enough energy, enough power, enough want into visualizing?

Didn't the boys during the 1980's, succumbing to HIV/Aids, teach us a sad and painful lesson about "visualization"?

Ess a bagel here we come! I certainly can visualize that!

Why Senegal?

I think my daughter believes deeply that if she's in motion, she is going somewhere.

We are going to board our 3rd over-night red-eye flight in as many weeks.

But why Senegal?

Tessie's boyfriend, Bah, knows a healer from his people who practice pre-geneocide spirituality, and pre-geneocide healing.

And she has a skilled miracle-working herbalist friend from the U.S. who has immigrated to Senegal who supposedly has cured his mother of lung cancer with herbs. She has survived 12 years when expected to die in 2.

I try to get her to weigh the benefits of seeking out these healers with the benefits of staying here, beginning Jasi's nutrition - i.e. totally organic, superfoods, herbs, vitamins we already know about - and getting him to bed, sleeping his 10 to 12 hours a night - while seeking out healers here.

She tells me rice and fish are the staple of Senegalese food. It doesn't sound like the worse diet we could have.

But fish from the ocean, as in mercury, heavy metals, not to mention swarming flies if fishing is similar on the coast of Senegal as it is on the coast of Mexico.

But rice most likely genetically modified, although we have stocked up with organic food for him, but not the amount he would get if we stayed put.

I am unable to convince her, to calm her, to find the pause button. She is on a mission, committed to it, believing in it, and so I am here to help the best I can.

I weep for my daughter. It feels like her choices are to allow her son to be shot (should the LCH advance) or stabbed (should she have to seek chemo & steroids). Horrific choices.

I will try my best to support her - and my - first choice: to try to cure him alternatively

who wants chemo?

Who the hell wants their child, barely a kid, to suffer through chemotherapy, let alone steroids?

Of all the people in the world, my daughter recognizes the immediate, almost instantaneous benefits of western medicine, as well as the devastating side effects.

I am committed, as any mother, to support my daughter's decisions for her child. This little baby boy is her child and she is the one who will reap the joys and/or suffer the consequences of her decisions, no matter what route she goes.