Guest Entry by Sarah Stone

After reading Joanne's blog and imagining her for months, I got to visit her this past December. I arrived on the day after Christmas. On my second day in Lliongwe, I woke up early and put on Joanne's blue scrubs. We drove to Bottom together - matching outfits and pony tails. The last time Joanne and I were dressed in an identical manner was at a 9th grade volleyball game. I want to write about wearing Joanne's clothes because it felt like slipping on a new skin and shedding an old one.

My Mother and I have been emailing about my trip - so many people have been responding to the emails I sent from Malawi with different perspectives, a lot of words about soul searching and life changing. Mom's perspective has been one that I was expecting - suffering is a human condition. Joanne's mother and I had a similar conversation one night before I left to go to Malawi. Suffering is something I am familar with. I have spent the last several years working with children and families that are invisible to most of America - whether they be in Detroit, Applachia, or East Austin, TX. I often battle with the underlying question of "Why?"

Inherent in this for me though is my struggle to buck back at the idea that suffering and injustice should be accepted at some or any level - that it is just the way things are and always have been and always will be. At the same time I am violently aware that there are many times when all I can do is bear witness so that injustice and pain are not suffered alone.

I feel like this when I read Joanne's blog and I felt this the entire time I was in Malawi. I felt it when I held a baby whose legs were no bigger than my pointer finger and whose countenance was that of an old man. I couldn't get it out of my head as I held him to comfort his cries that he was already tired and so angry that he was just born - it seemed that he had already lived a life of dissapointment and that the flies crawling on his body were just one more annoyance.

My Mom wrote about how she didn't think it would be a life changing experience for me to go to Africa - and it wasn't necessarily - it was more of a life affirming and clarifying experience. I want to live a life that is true. I want to live brave. Living a life of purpose requires that I am clear on what is important to me and what is not and that my ideals and values are reflected in my every day living. My trip to Africa propelled me on this path in a way that hasn't happend for quite some time. I am having the feeling that this is making sense to all of you who have read Joanne's blog. I think that Joanne is the bravest and most true to herself person that I know.

My trip to Africa clarified the following for me:

• my connection to the human spirit, I have a deeper and stronger sense of being connected to people around the world
• my connection to how what I use/misuse/throw away is related to the resources that other people have/don't have
  
• my connection to living a life that is giving of love to the world; the importance of being more loving and kind is paramount to me after my trip.

I guess that interconnectivity is the largest lesson that I have come back with - this sense that we are all part of something bigger. My trip was a tangible reminder of this. Living in America with all our television and cars and possessions is deeply isolating in so many ways. I wasn't aware of how isolated I had become living in this country until I put on Joanne's blue scrubs.

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