deborah santana

Last Day in Kenya

meshelle — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:29:19 +0000

“I come from Kibera, an area in Nairobi. None of my friends are able to attend secondary school and they tell me ‘good luck’ and wish me hope.”

These are the words of one of the Daraja girls I interviewed – three from Form 2 – in their second year of secondary school, two who had just arrived on campus. Their stories are similar. Siblings are unable to attend high school, like friends, because of the expense. The opportunity to receive an education at Daraja Academy is something each girl is grateful to receive and they want to be here in order to fulfill their dreams.

Kenya is the land that birthed Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Like the Daraja girls, Wangari Maathai was determined to get an education even though most girls in Kenya were uneducated. There are no limits to what the Daraja girls can achieve, especially now that they are in the nurturing environment of Daraja Academy. Their energies and their minds have access to an uncharted territory of possibilities. Classes are taken in Mathematics, Biology, History, Music, Physics, English, Swahili, and Chemistry. The students are in Study Hall from 6:30 – 7 AM and again from 7 – 9 PM; classes begin at 8 AM and end at 3:20 PM. I see girls washing floors, helping each other, cleaning tables, and hanging their laundry on clotheslines behind their dorms. Life is school. School is life.

I have one more full day here at Daraja and in the afternoon peace I listen to rain sweeping over the campus like hands on piano keys – a tender, powerful waterfall of beauty, similar to the magnitude of talent that I see in the girls. A song, a poem, a smile, words of gratitude for being with their scholastic sisters, the experience of being at this private, four-year boarding school this week has given me the gift of remembering what is important in life: Being in a community where growth comes from embracing another’s content of being and offering a hand to walk with someone into the future.

A Form 1 girl (first year student) said that she never expected to attend secondary school, but was told of Daraja by an aunt. She went to a church for an interview with the directors and two teachers. Her Class 8 scores were exceptional, but there were no family funds to send her to school. I asked her how her first few days at Daraja were. “A miracle,” she said. “Everyone is so welcoming and the campus is wonderful!”

There are many things that Daraja needs: water, solar power, laptop computers, textbooks, a new dorm. But there are many things Daraja has that cannot be bought: excitement to learn and every teachers’ dedication to expand these girls’ horizons, respect for humanity, and the promise that these girls’ futures will be brighter than their pasts. Daraja Academy is power and love and I leave with the smiles and love of angels.

From Kenya

meshelle — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:12:59 +0000

March 1, 2010
The Daraja Academy campus sits on 60 acres of savannah land dotted with acacia trees, radiant orange and burgundy bougainvillea, tall cacti, and the most luscious red earth underneath. After bumping along rutted dirt roads from the town of Nanyuki, through Naibor, we reached Dol Dol Road and entered the white painted gate of the campus. A bit delirious from the long flight, it seemed that Jason and Jenni, the directors, glowed as they waved us into their arms. “Karibu! Welcome to Daraja!”
The Forms 2’s, the class of twenty-six girls who began their studies here last year, the first class of the four-year scholarship program for secondary students, were in the dining hall. Navy blue sweaters over gray skirts, white socks and black shoes, their uniforms only made their uniqueness shine, and twenty-six brightly smiling flowers looked at the newest Americans to descend on their school with love.
I felt as if I knew some of the girls from the videos and photos on the Daraja Academy website. I had read some of the letters they had written to apply to the school, but putting names with the clear, intelligent faces as some of the girls put out their hands to shake mine was an emotional moment.
Three girls took us on a quick tour of the dorms and classrooms: this campus had housed the Baraka Boys, a program that brought middle school boys from the Baltimore school system to Kenya to open their minds and eyes to possibilities and opportunities. Although it closed and Daraja moved in four years later, there are reminders of the boys in paintings of animals on the walls and in the workers and teachers who taught the boys who are still here. The girls laughed as they taught me Swahili words: “jambo” – “hello;” “schule” – “school;” and “asanté” – “thank you.”
After a restful sleep, I awakened to the sounds of Africa, hundreds of birds whistling and chirping in multiple pitches and tones – an orchestra of nature. The sky lightened as the sun inched its way up the mountain behind the school, reflecting on Mt. Kenya to the east. A most magical morning. The Form 1’s were arriving today, and each Form 2 girl excitedly awaited her “little sister.” The second year girls remembered how they had felt when they had arrived – aware of the journey they were embarking on to know the world and themselves better. We all waited at the gate as girls arrived on foot from the neighboring villages, or in matatus – vans; others were picked up by volunteers and delivered to the campus. Uniforms were laid out in the lounge, along with keys to lockers, backpacks, and each girl received a can of shoe polish and a brush. I felt as if I was witnessing each new student’s birth – they entered the lounge quiet, their eyes cast down, then left smiling as their big sisters piled everything into their arms, and led them off to see their new domicile. Parents stood watching, mostly silent except for one father who beamed and told us, through a teacher who translated, that his daughter had always loved to read and wanted nothing more to receive a secondary education. Jubilation, anticipation, bits of trepidation, and outright joy swirled across Daraja as every teacher, student and amazed visitor, like me, did their part to make the bridge from home to classroom for these twenty-six new girls.
(… to be continued)

Pilgrimage

meshelle — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:46:36 +0000

A dream of mine has been to assist girls in receiving advanced educations to help them assume roles of leadership in the world. More than sending money for scholarships or school supplies, I have longed to have a connection with the young women served by my foundation, Do A Little. Today I leave for Kenya to visit Daraja Academy. Twenty-six new students will move on campus later this week, joining twenty-six girls who have studied at Daraja for one year. The science teacher said, “There are mountains we will climb together,” about the opportunities these girls have to receive an education, about the hard work and dedication they will apply to their studies, which will change their lives. In Kenya, girls are often married at an early age, rather than offered an education. Families frequently have to choose between sending girls to school or having their help in the home. From the neighboring villages of Naibor and Nanyuki, to the Ugandan border, and as far away as the coast of the Indian Ocean, girls from five different tribes have been interviewed and invited to receive a free secondary education at Daraja Academy.

I travel to Daraja to experience and receive the African souls of these girls. Daraja Academy does not want to American-ize these girls, but with Kenyan teachers and staff, along with the American founders and directors, the academy seeks to level the playing field so that the girls can soar with the power of their minds.

On this pilgrimage to Daraja Academy, I carry oneness and harmony from Do A Little supporters in my heart.

http://daraja-academy.org/

Bridge to Happiness

meshelle — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:53:30 +0000

It is a marvelous new year, one that brings us to the end of another decade. I remember New Year’s Eve 2000 –the major media hysteria about all that could possibly go wrong as computers changed centuries, how some people hoarded water and food; I was in Las Vegas with my family, thinking about the stars and sky outside our hotel.

In this new decade, my commitment to balance the access to education, justice, and human rights for girls and women remains my focal point. I will travel to Kenya to visit the Daraja Academy, a secondary boarding school for girls whose mission is to “cultivate a community of individuals with a sense of cultural awareness, social conscience, and environmental responsibility, while instilling talents that will enable the [girls] to open doors to a global society.”

The Daraja website states that “in Kenya, hundreds of thousands of the country’s qualified, passionate students are excluded from education beyond the 8th grade because of financial reasons beyond their control. Those who are stuck in poverty cannot earn a secondary school degree and without a secondary school degree they will not be able to get out of poverty.” The Girl Effect, a non-profit that is working to bring educational opportunities to girls through funding education, providing microloans, and raising awareness (http://www.girleffect.org/) states that girls receive less than 2 cents of every dollar of aid. Daraja Academy welcomed its first 25 students last year and is providing a free education for girls in grades 9 – 12 who would otherwise not be able to attend secondary school. Statistics show that when a girl is educated, she is more likely to share her education with her family, her community and her country.

One 17-year-old Daraja student wrote, “I want to be a doctor when I’m older. If I could change one thing about the world [it would be] poverty.” Another girl, 16 years old, wrote, “I believe that when I become a president I could change corruption in our country.”

Daraja is a Swahili word that means bridge. A 14-year-old student wrote, “Daraja Academy will not serve [only] as a bridge as a student progresses from primary to secondary school, but it will also serve as a bridge between Kenyan students and American students in cyber classes.”

2010 – a new year, a commitment from my heart and life to continue to work for change. Education, giving of oneself, and connecting with new friends across the globe can build a bridge to happiness.

Gratitude always,
Deborah

Plastic Pollution

meshelle — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:16:59 +0000

Last night, I was given a large, ocean-blue glass marble by an adorable 8-year-old girl and her wide-eyed 5-year-old brother. The significance of the gift was to take the information that was being discussed in their home – about plastic pollution – and pass the facts on to others, even by giving the marble away.

A group of about twenty scientists, artists, environmentalists, and concerned philanthropists was invited to a dinner by the Plastic Pollution Coalition. I have recycled for more than a decade, carry my cloth bags to shop, refuse packaging whenever I can, and consider my birth city of San Francisco the most progressive place because it was the first city in the United States to ban the use of plastic bags. But, what I learned last night made me feel a bit like WalMart. Scientists know and share the facts, but corporations and individuals do not make shifts in the use of plastics because of convenience.

I will cite a few facts and suggest a few solutions, knowing that we all want the oceans, the earth, and our own bodies to be free of this substance:
1. Plastic is not biodegradable. It is made from petroleum and the earth cannot digest it.
2. Plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that absorb toxic chemicals and are consumed by wildlife and enter our food chain to poison us.
3. Harmful chemicals leached by plastics are present in our tissues and our blood.
4. Recycling is not a sustainable solution because our plastic waste is in landfills, downcycled, or exported to other countries where it does not break down.
5. There are at least four oceanic Garbage Patches – miles of plastic fragments carrying PCBs, DDT and other toxins. The largest of these garbage swills is known as the Pacific Gyre, or The Great Garbage Patch.

To rethink single use plastics is the greatest solution. Refusing to use disposable cups, bottles, plastic ware, bags, etc will empower us and bring awareness to retailers and corporations so the pollution can stop. Every five minutes, Americans throw away enough plastic drinking water bottles to cover eight football stadiums. Every five minutes. And those bottles live for five hundred years.

The Plastic Pollution Coalition calls this issue “Humanity’s Next Challenge.” I agree.
When I returned home last night, I placed my ocean-blue marble on my bathroom counter. Each time I see it, I am reminded to change my own habits even more and to work with this group to stop the over-packaging of products and over use of plastic in the world.
www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org

The Finish Party

meshelle — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:43:58 +0000

January 2005, a group of women writers convened in a generous circle to support one another in finishing manuscripts for publication. Award-winning short story author, ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere), invited us to her home and cooked a sumptuous Southern lunch as we gathered around her kitchen table discussing our writing projects and what we hoped to achieve by committing to meeting once a month to critique each other’s work. I was newly published (Space Between the Stars: My Journey to an Open Heart), had completed multiple book tours, and was thinking about beginning a work of fiction. The timing was perfect, as the writing group I had been part of for four years had just disbanded.

The most compelling aspects of getting to know the women were the intellectual acumen, the diverse backgrounds and life experiences, the joy, and openness emanating from each one.

It is a tribute to the fortitude and creative abundance of each writer that we have thrived and grown closer with each passing year. Two brilliant babies have been born, two mothers buried, three new novels published; we have celebrated two marriages, weathered one divorce and one separation; traveled together to Palm Desert, Lake Tahoe, Maui and Costa Rica. We have read our various writings as a group at Book Passage in Corte Madera, and whistled, screamed and hooted at each other’s book signings across America, and we have cried in pairs or trios over our private hurts and life changes.

I would not be the writer I am today without these remarkable, erudite, sometimes bossy, always gracious, multi-lingual women. I am grateful to know each one and to samba through life with them.

Please read each of their books – all so different that you will be amazed at how we can sit in a room together and navigate caringly through critiquing chapters, paragraphs, characters and themes. (See my links page for the websites for authors ZZ Packer, Lalita Tademy, Nichelle Tramble, Renée Swindle, Farai Chideya, Jacqueline Luckett & Alyss Dixson-Morris.)

And read the article ZZ wrote about us in O Magazine: http://www.finishparty.com/articles.asp

The newest books published –
Farai Chideya: Kiss the Sky, a novel about the life of Sophie “Sky” Lee, a thirty-something black rock musician making a comeback in New York City in 2000. There are a few hitches to her plans: Sky’s guitarist is her mercurial, drug-abusing ex-husband; her manager is also her boyfriend; and Sky herself is frightened of the cost she’ll pay to reach the pinnacle of fame.

Jacqueline Luckett – (pre-order now!): Searching for Tina Turner, a novel about Lena Harrison Spencer, a woman in her mid-fifties, whose time has come to face the hard truths of what it means to have it all and still find herself unfulfilled. When Lena determines that she needs to completely change her life, Tina Turner becomes the icon from whose story she derives strength, even though everyone else tells her she’s crazy for giving up her cashmere cocoon.

Another Address

meshelle — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:32:09 +0000

I erased another address of one of my children today, changed her contact info in my iPhone, and as I wrote in her new street and city, thought about my mother’s tattered address book. Mom didn’t bother to write in pencil, so she wrote our new addresses in ink, in her miniature handwriting, above or on the side of the old ones, every inch of the page covered with details of the new places we lived. My sister and I would marvel and laugh whenever we saw how many times we had moved after we left our parent’s home. Or sometimes cry, remembering the trauma and emotional upheaval that occurred at a certain location.

Moving – to a new city, a new apartment, a new life – represents, to me, the unstoppable changes that occur in this human existence. We change jobs, cars, doctors, favorite foods, significant others, perfumes, beliefs, hair color, friends. We have a favorite author and devour all of her books, then open to someone else’s words and purview of life; we follow a beloved teacher, leader, or band, and then leave them to adore someone new. Like seasons, we pass from one variation of ourselves to another, never leaving the core of who we are, but shedding, growing, and creating our form over and over again.

Change demands courage, demands faith, and a sense that all will be right, even if everything is different. I welcome change – it is a part of my character to love what is new – but many people are petrified to enter the unknown, even though it is inevitable to stand at the edge of a place we have never been.

As this child of mine flew off, I wrote her new address in pencil, and envisioned her excelling in her new place, trusting that this adventure is exactly the change she needs.

“Here is the instruction: Only connect. Wherever you are, right now, pay attention. Forever.” – Sylvia Boorstein

Receive Your Life

meshelle — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:31:14 +0000

The energetic system of our human essence embodies the capacity to seek peace, even in the most trying circumstances. Noted neuroscientist, Peggy La Cerra wrote, “Despite our differences, we are all the handiwork of the energetic universe, and each of us – and everything in the world around us – manifests its laws. At moments of self-realization, regardless of the path we took to get there, we see that everything is – and always has been – ‘at one with the universe,’ aligned with the exquisitely principled beauty of the whole.” (Spirituality & Health Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009)

It is my belief that the world is the classroom for humans, and how I respond to the vagaries of my life will directly correspond with the serenity I feel. Each of us has the interior capacity to succeed in life, but being able to be at ease when things are not as we want allows us to become strong within. When I have an upset such as anger, disappointment, sadness, or confusion, I sit with the feelings until they settle. And they always do, whether it is within five minutes of meditating at my shrine, or twenty minutes, or forty-five. It sometimes takes reading the writings of spiritual teachers and seekers, the poetry of Rumi or Ruth Forman, or listening to the music of Deva Premal or Corinne Bailey Rae. It might take sipping a cup of hot tea as I gaze out the window at the sky, or a long hike on a mountain trail, or all of the above, but it is possible to find strength and peace.

One of the gentlest ways to reunify oneself is to accept who we are at this moment. Not to wish for some other experience: a younger body, that a difficult project was completed, or for someone else to change. What can I accept about this moment that will bring me into harmony with myself? Can I feel the design of my own life as part of a perfect plan?

This morning at the beginning of yoga class, teacher Jonathan Povsky said, “Receive your life.” Every cell in my body shimmered in recognition of this idea. Most often, I am pushing my schedule, coaxing my mind, or striving to fix my life. The thought that I could receive myself, just as I am, welcoming every nuance and aspect, was lovely. It released me from the illusion that I have to do something extraordinary to pay for my existence on earth, and it put me in harmony with La Cerra’s idea that I am “at one with the universe.”

October 2009

meshelle — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:24:44 +0000

Every experience arrives at the perfect moment. Outside my window, a worker funnels pieces of cut trees into a grinder, making a furious noise of wood against steel. It is jarring, but reminds me of the gravitas of my journey. The arborists have removed the unnecessary limbs and given the trees room to grow, providing space for more sunlight and oxygen to reach the exposed bark. These two years on my own have been a lesson of grace as I have pruned limbs of my life, giving myself room to grow in new ways.

Pema Chodron wrote, “If you are alive, if you have heart, if you can love, if you can be compassionate…then you won’t have any resentment or resistance…Lovingkindness is the sense of satisfaction with who we are and what we have” (The Wisdom of No Escape). Compassion is truly the vehicle through which we can accept and love ourselves, and others, adjusting to the changes in our lives. It is a blanket in which we can wrap what happens that may hurt us, or not make sense, and become wide in our love.

I am sending a blanket of compassion, tempered with joy, into the world. Finding peace depends on being in touch with what is important within us. My passion and purpose are fed by the grantees of Do A Little. Through them, I have courage and exhilarating joy to walk through life.

Poetry In Motion

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:42:46 +0000

My mother and I shared a love of reading. When Mary Oliver was scheduled to speak at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, I purchased tickets, thinking how lovely it would be to take Mom to hear the poet. It would be a delightful evening we could enjoy together. But Mom couldn’t go out without her oxygen tank, and she was too embarrassed to carry it along because it made an intermittent clicking noise that would have been loud in the audience. So, Earllynn and I went, which was a gift also, to be with my friend of thirty-five years. Mary Oliver’s words carry me deeper inside myself and into nature. From her thirty-year perch in New England, she has written about the entire world: plants, rivers, snow, small brown birds, Whitman, geese, blossoms, attics, Percy her dog, crows, doors, hair, even Rumsfeld and Bush! Oliver read ten poems or so after an introduction by Pat Holt. I scooped Oliver’s spirit and soul into my belly.

Of course, she read “Wild Geese,” which she said she will be reading until she is 101. I love her past: she applied to Vassar but attended Ohio State; she explained that she had many As but also Ds in high school, because she could not stay inside the classrooms. Nature called her outside. She also was not good at mathematics. She led a simple life in order to be a poet, sent poems to magazines, and was surprised when she received a letter of acceptance for publication—but, of course, no money. The audience laughed. Her honor and integrity merged with my own passages of life experience and evoked my respect and oneness with her simplicity—that she knew so young what was true and important, who she was and is, and lived that so well. She did not speak of her doubts or struggles, but only of the certainty with which silence and nature give her riches and fullness. Two years ago she began going to church, which has changed her writing again. When asked why she has begun to write about politics when she did not previously, she said, “Because politics has never been so bad.” Her thoughts are wondrously ordinary, yet her words impart extraordinary wisdom.

The woman sitting next to me had a pungent odor that hung like a shadow across my seat. Midway through the lecture she fell asleep, until the audience clapped, and then her head jerked up and she began to scratch. I was a thin bookmark in my seat trying to stay away from her smell and think positive thoughts. Even that discomfort could not diminish the poet’s brilliance and the astonishing beauty of her words; it was a reflection of the yin and yang of nature—not good or bad—simply being.