Sorry this blog is long overdue!
Let me share about some of the things I have processed during month 1 of the Race. Also I am asking you from the bottom of my heart to please consider donating to my world Race account by clicking on the donate link. I am still roughly 4 000 $ away to being fully funded, this would allow me to stay on the field and keep sharing the love ! Thank you !
You may see a lot of adorable pictures on Facebook and instagram about my life on the Race, pictures of magestic sunsets, orphans holding hands, mountains and falls and laughing team-mates with emplified colors through filters but what instagram does not show is the ugly side of life, the hard and the mundain. It does not show the little flooded tent barely standing in the middle of a Storm in raining season Africa or me wet and full of mud trying to patch the holes at night. It does not show the 105 mosquito bites on my body, the entire days spent slashing grass with a machete under a burning sun, the tears because all you want is a shower or a meal that’s not beans and rice or Nshima (that dreadfull packed corn meal) !! The Race is weird, awkward, hard, but also life changing. Here’s how the race really went for me month 1, regardless of the nice instagram pics.
So we are fresh off the plane, we arrive in Mozambique, we are doing ministry and living at this home for boys, we teach everything, from life skills to geography and I give an arts class in the evening where teenage boys are brought to share about their hopes and dreams through arts for what it seems the first time ever. At night we have awsome dance parties, where the kids teach us some moves. Ministry is life changing and the strenght of these boys is inspiring. Yet at some point I become sick.
It is 50 degree Celcius, the power is out, I am dirty and the sand is sneeking in everywhere, Under my nails, in the corner of my eyes, in every creasses of fabric or skin, it gets in my mouth too when I try to breathe. There’s a draught at the moment and there’s no water in the house, the drinking water is boiling hot and it tastes like chemicals because of the pills we add to purify it. I am laying on the hard cement floor, unable to move, suffering through every second, I do not even have the energy anymore to get up to puke so I just turn my head to the side where theres a bag and my stomach convulses but nothing gets out. I have been pucking for 2 days in an unbearable heat lying on the hard cement floor. My hair is sticking in sweat to my face, I have pooped in my African colored dress and flies are attacking me, I don’t even fight back anymore and let them crawl over my face and my eyelids. I manage to fall asleap on the concrete in the small boiling hot room, curled up on the floor in between two other squad mates. I wake up and it is night, there’s a set of glowing red eyes looking right at me, and something hot on my feet. A rat is sitting on my ankle! I kick it with all the energy I have left!
In Mozambique Black Magic and withchcraft are thouroughly engrained in the culture, people consult witch doctors for medical or personal affairs, this often means worshiping and making offerends to demons or making sacrifices. Our host had a terrific experience where a child was involved in a sacrifice ritual in her own house and the child ended up dying, right where we were sleeping that month. Such rituals often target white people because we are believed to have money and power and this is mainly what people are looking for when they use witchcraft. I was scared the whole month, whenever we closed the lights to go to bed, I turned to my side, away from the door and tried to fall asleep. I constantly felt like someone was standing in the doorway, watching me in the darkness. I fell asleap with my music on repeating the name of Jesus Christ on and on.
This is going to sound crazy to most but there was a Fence by the entrance of the property and one day as I walked past it, for a split second, I saw a dark figure leaning against the corner. It looked right in my eyes, with, I could have sworn, the exact same red eyes as the rat that was lying on my foot that night where I was sick. In Africa I definitly have experienced both good and evil in ways that I can hardly explain, Talk about standing in a church where someone starts convulsing on the ground and speaking things in a voice that does not sound like hers. In moments of fear and insecurity my past starts creeping in, flashes of things I had stored away pop up. There’s nothing to turn to, no comforts to take refugee in, only me and a stary sky, ever so silent.
Month 1 was hard. I had no clue how to bond with my team, I felt alone in the crowd, being a French-Canadian with an American organisation was difficult at times, I often felt like me and my team-mates had nothing in common culturaly. It gets overwhelming at times, like I am drowning in a load of information about the country I am trying to fit in – America, and the actual country we are staying in. Without mentioning the language barrier which is a real struggle for me in large group contexts. However, No matter how hard it gets I am so gratefull to get to learn in such an intensive way, litteraly there’s a month worth of adventures, learning and experiences crammed in every single day on the race.
I have learned a lot about abandonnement month 1, I realised that I turn to comforts whenever I feel stressed instead of facing my problems. I cling fiercly to object which make me feel comfortable; my laptop, my movies, my music, my food, my netflix account, my comfi bed. My comforts are also rooted in independance, my freedom to go out whenever I want, to drink a beer, to take a shower when I want, to eat good food, to cook for myself, to drink a cup of coffee, to turn off the lights when I want, to sleep when I want, to take a walk, to go online, to even control temparature in my appartment. That month ALL of the previous were taken away from me and I was stuck between four burning hot walls and a tole roof, with no comforts whatsoever, no bed, no water, no electricity for days at a time, no space or privacy and the hardest; dreadfull food that I could not bring myself to even swollow. We also were fenced in and locked Inside the house at dark. I realy had to stop and take a hard look at how I actualy am dépendant on things that should not matter as much as they do, at how I put my value in crutches.
One night, feeling lonely again, looking at the black sky and listening to the chant of the crickets I came to the realisation that I needed to take the reigns of my own life. It started with engaging with the people I did life with, no matter how uncomfortable the converstaions are at first I need to stop looking for the easy option and opt out of relashionships with people to cling onto comforts. Yes I have been hurt, yes I have been abandonned and rejected and ridiculed and I will probably be again, yes I feel socialy awkward and struggle with social anxiety and introversion but life is relashional and meaningless without relashionships! So I decided to go and talk to the most extraverted girl on my team and I had the best time and laughed so much. Even though we do not always see eye to eye we can honestly say that we love each other now after 3 months of co-existance and this is what real and raw community living is. Loving people and Learning from people whom you would never have been friends with in (real life) and do not agree with most times.
Blury visions of a past I can hardly remember keep creeping in at the most random moments of the day on the Race and all I want to do is turn towards comforts, where is my food? Where is my beer, netflix and my dark bedroom? I was stuck with myself and I had to, for probably the first time ever, really face myself and my past without any crutches or masks available.
My whole life I have looked to fill an unbearable emptyness, a swolen pit in my stomach, it draged me to the darkest corners and the the darkest alleys, to the highest highs, the crazyest most exhilarating, most dangerous adventures. I just wanted to feel something, anything in the senselessness that was life, I was never one to conform, I felt like I would never fit in, always at the margins of society and taking identity in marginality. To me life was like a bottomless pit, I was craving more and fighting against routine, against social norms, dictatorship and paternalism. I traveled eagerly and recklessly, was homeless, hijhicked, got involved in strikes, riots, social movements, boudhism, I got involved in a undergroung world, an abusive relashionship, I raved, had sex with a ton of people, I was drunk and High every week-end for a while. I remember the highs and the lows, the pure intensity, the extasy of it all, one that would never last and leave you craving for more. I remember waking up on dirty couches, the flashing lights and blarring music, the dark alleys, the food orgies, the satin sheets, a room painted red, the pills, the strangers, the money, cleaning the blood on the kitchen floor, a door slamming shut, puking in a sink, bottles under a leather jacket, my reflection Under the blinding light in the window of the subway train, mascara down on my cheeks, barefoot in the snow, no jacket on. And, a kind of love that rises in the night and fades in daylight, a violent love, one that is meant to hurt but that you are unable to leave, it grabs you by the arm and leaves a purpule mark, like a stigma, you are never the same after such a type of love.
My past, it creeps in on me at times, the same way the Memory of a good shower will… I am not shure which one is most painfull quite honestly. Month 1, I have made the décision that no matter what happened to me I would not let my past define ME, I failed, but I tried again, and I am trying again today, and I will again tomorrow. This IS the biggest lesson I am Learning on the race. I am a beautifull daughter of God, his beloved daughter of whom he is proud, he loved me so much he gave his only son for me, I must be pretty important, I have never felt realy important before Jesus. I decided that I was going to stop being the victim of my own life. I am going to stop letting circumstances influence me and I am going to BE an influence, I will BE the change I wish to see in the world.
We are all looking for happyness to some degree and through different means. When I started talking to Johna (the name was changed for privacy), I was harshly but beneficialy reminded that you cannot always control the situations life throw at you but that joy on the other hand is an intentional choice. Jonah is a 15 years old boy who constantly has a smile on his face, he lives at the house where we worked for the month in Mozambique, he does not have much, just the necessary water, rice and beans and air to breathe. It was amazing because Jonah, as the awsome student he was could speak fluently in French and he got to tell me a little about himself. Most teenagers at the house we were came from rough and abusive backgrounds with parents who had either passed away or were unfit to take care of them. These teenagers had some pretty deep scars and had been through things that no 14-15 year old should ever have to go through. Yet Jonah told me how greatfull he was for what he had, for the chance he was given at life through éducation, through this house, his extended new family and through God, his father, that loved him unconditionaly and forever. He went on about awsome nights with the other boys playing music on a plastic can and singing, the wonderfull beans and rice they have for dinner, the cake they get once in a while and when I asked him about his future he told me he has dreams of visiting other countries, knowing many languages, of becoming a pastor and getting married. He did not focus on the fact that he has not seen his mother since she left him to live with a man in South Africa and their children or that he was severely abused growing up, that he lived in a house of prostitution. He has a smile like I have never seen before, a gratefullness that threw me aback. Jonah is not a victim of his life, he owns his life and knows that he is no orphan, he is a beloved son. I hold back tears because I know this kid has been through unspeakable attrocities and yet he holds so much joy and exhales so much love. Jonah is filled with a kind of love that is unbreakable, yet he is breaking the patterns of brokeness in which he was brought up.
I tried so hard to fill up the pit but it swallowed everything I filled it with. Until I yelled out to the sky trying the last thing I could possibly think of. Facing what I had been running from my whole life, turning to what I had fought against for so long. And I found him right behind me, at first it was more of a confrontation where I rejected his love, afraid and unable to even receive love. Yet he met me where I was at. He did not ask me to be better or more ready before I came to him, he welcomed me with open arms and the hole in my chest started to heal slowly. His love… It felt it like a ton of bricks, litteraly it was so intense once that it almost threw me on the ground, I will always remember the physicallity of it. And even though at that time I was altering between belief and unbelief God kept talking to me in ways that I can hardly describe, I felt his love so intensely and sincerely when I decided to open up that I could not deny his presence anymore.
Pieces of my past life creep in on me in the roughest moments, when there’s nothing to turn to, through illness and lonelyness and pure exhaustion. But all these hardships I push through because I am growing to be different women through them, a stronger woman at the least. Sometimes I need to remind myself of why I am here and where I come from and then I push onto the hardships. I am here on a quest, a journey to find my real self, to learn to love myself, the real me, not the idea of me. I want to earase these labels that I believed in for so long, molding my identity according to them; the borderline Vanessa, the excentric, the intense, the traveller, the rebel, the marginal, the dark, the female object, the partyer, the liberal, the dirty, the broken, the alchoolic, the student, the hore, the slut, the cute, the submissive, the introverted, the awkward, the angry, the anxious, the insecure, the perfectionist, the fat. All these Vanessas are costumes and masks I have worn for too long, the only identity I want to be rooted in is the beloved Vanessa, the one that was created IN THE IMAGE of God ; strong, compassionate, intelligent, capable of insane love, a creator, an artist, a leader, a healer, an influence, a masterpiece, a perceiver. One who walks in freedom and is not afraid to be simply and magnificiently herself.
