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He left Niger on March 19th during the night. Up to that very moment, I was spinning as if a strong current of new energy was twisting every aspect of my Being in an invisible cosmic dance. I was taking in each moment we had left in this thing we call ‘our togetherness’. Yes, I am witnessing a new model of relationship being birthed before my eyes; it is something both James and I never knew before, something we are letting happen to us and through us. It is so powerful that at any moment it could tear us to pieces, yet so gentle that it contains within it the healing stillness of the entire universe. I feel it rising from within us as an ancient flame coming up to embrace the resurrection of our souls.
Each early morning for three months, we walked through the deep dark sand for twenty minutes or so, then James would say goodbye, take my laptop bag off his back and place it on my shoulders. It was my turn to carry the load for the rest of my daily journey to work. We would stare at each other for a minute, smiling… I was so grateful to have this magnificent being of Light in my life. In Niger, West Africa, one doesn’t show public affection between a man and a woman as a way to be respectful to the local culture. However, my affection for this man who had decided to take three months off personal leave from his job in Ohio for the first time in twenty years so that he could be closer to me in Africa during my second year teaching here was something I could never translate into words on paper.
Why am I here in Niger away from my soul partner? I came to the poorest country in the world in a moment of grace when I allowed myself to be truly open to the Source of Infinite Universal Love and when I asked to become an empty vessel for the new consciousness spreading its wings all over the earth. It was late summer of 2007. I said an intense heartfelt prayer and my eyes filled up with tears. A minute later, my cell phone rang. The voice on the phone told me about Niger, and I felt an instant deep heart connection to this unknown wilderness. I knew it was calling me in. I had been having dreams in which I was some place far away and I was speaking French. The school director gave me three weeks to pack my things and say goodbye to my Midwest world as I knew it then: Cezarina, as a young Romanian-American woman of 32 who had been living in a community house with two wonderful healing women for the past six months while going through a dissolution of marriage and navigating a new soul relationship with James. Before moving to Ohio, she had been married for 11 years and she had lived in Southern Illinois with her husband and her two cats.
I have been in Niger now for almost two years; I have been teaching K-1 at the American International School in Niamey since September 2007 introducing creative approaches such as yoga, dance, canvas painting and drama to daily learning and observing a beautiful empowering transformation in my school children. They are given powerful tools as a foundation for a new future and I am learning to share our transformational experiences by using a classroom website called ‘Ms. Trone’s K-1 Magical E-Garden’ (URL: www.freewebs.com/mstronek1/)
I have been given the gift to be the change I want to see in the world around me and especially in the deprived landscape of mother Africa. Each Sunday morning, I open my house for free yoga classes. This is my worship to the One Source of Divine Love/God/Universe, to life itself. A little while ago, I have been so blessed to meet a couple of Muslim young men who are discovering yoga and meditation as powerful tools for everyday living. One of them has already started to dream about bringing yoga to Niger to his own people to help their minds expand and their lives change for the better. I told him I am here for the work that has been started.
Two days after my loving partner James left Niger, my Moldovian friend who works for Unicef in Niger took me along to the Hash, the big one hour walk through the African wilderness. One hundred or so Europeans working in Niger and other westerners get together once a week on Saturdays at 5 PM and follow the traces of shredded paper along the vast orange landscape filled with thorn bushes and dark volcanic rocks. James loved this walk while he was here, so I set my intention to celebrate that feeling, my memory of his intense joy during and after the walking experience. Last time I saw him walk, I was standing with others on a rocky mesa looking down at the desert pathways beneath and seeing my beloved’s form blend with the orange sand and the grayish thicket of Niger. I walked as if he was walking beside me. I thought of our soul dance together, our coming and falling apart like the waves of a great ocean. Just a few hours earlier, I was able to hear his gentle voice on the phone during his transit from JFK airport to Detroit, MI. I made a commitment to stay present with this walk. My feet sank deeper and deeper into the sand until I felt alive again with sand inside my shoes and James’ words still lingering in my ears, ‘I was walking in the streets of Casablanca during my layover and I noticed how my sandals were still orange with the sand of Niger…An old man, a shoe shiner passed me by and I decided to let him wipe the sand off. You should have seen these sandals after he was done; the shine was so intense that I could hardly stare at them…’ One of my questions to James during that phone conversation was, ‘Hey, how does it feel to be back in America?’ I had not been back there for eight months now, so I felt a bit disconnected. His answer surprised me, but it was simple and beautiful, ‘All I can tell you right now is that everything seems too shiny and loud. I just want to run and hide somewhere.’
A few hours later, as I was sweeping the porch at my house here in Niamey, I suddenly realized the treasure hiding beneath James’s words both times as he shared the story of the shining of the shoes and how he felt the contrast of shine and noise while re-entering the western world. Being in Niger for a little while is like being cradled in the arms of Mother Earth herself… One absorbs the raw wilderness communion in ways unspoken. One aligns to the center of their Being, the core of their existence. How can you tear a baby away from their mother’s bosom without witnessing the tears and their heartbreak? I remember witnessing my own transition as I had spent my first three months in Niger last Fall and then went back to Ohio for my two weeks winter vacation. I felt as if I was splitting between worlds. I arrived in Yellow Springs, OH and was wearing my bright colored dresses made here in Niger almost each day as if they were my security blankets. I told James on the phone to be gentle on himself through this powerful journey.
Here we are again, yesterday in one divine embrace, now each of us is holding up the other end of the world while our souls are integrating the powerful dance of co-creation and healing. James is back in his world now searching for what it is he should be doing next. I have made a commitment to stay in Niger another year working as a K-1 teacher, and as I am writing this, I have started taking online training as a life coach. We will see each other again for two months this summer and James will witness the reunion with my two beautiful cats I had left behind two years ago in Southern Illinois. He has graciously decided to take care of them for the time I will be gone again.
Each step I am taking on my walk to work each morning buries my feet in the dark orange sand, reminding me of the Oneness I share with all life here in Niger: the goats eating trash, the naked children running wildly through the dirt piles, the meek donkeys carrying heavy burdens on their backs, the straight rows of African men bowing down to Allah five times a day, the African women passing by with water buckets on their heads and wearing their babies wrapped in bright colored fabrics around their strong backs. In my inner awareness, I am one with Niger now, my heart has been molded to take the shape of this place as if Universal Love is freely pouring itself through this form into the dry and empty river beds spreading like invisible new blood vessels underneath the West African landscape.
oneness : Nifer : west Africa : soul relationship : love relationship : consciousness : yoga : meditation : international education :
oneness : Nifer : west Africa : soul relationship : love relationship : consciousness : yoga : meditation : international education :
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