christina, how i wish i had the means and career flexibility to jump on a plane and come help you and your LiA team for two weeks -- i would do it in a heart beat! stay strong, and hopefully the knowledge of the lives you are touching, at home and away (like mine!) will give you just that extra boost. i know what it feels like to run on fumes, grrl.

don't stay in your seat or on the computer for an extra minute for Peace Tiles until you have gotten through Kiva and given your back the rest it deserves. above everything, take care of your back even if someone has to scrape you off the computer -- once a back goes, its not pretty for a long time. TAKE CARE OF YOU for an extra two hours a day at least. Just stop and put those hands down and lie down. Listen to the birds in the garden, the diesels and the motos going by. Watch the curtains flutter in the breeze. Take care of your back!

I won't begrudge a moment away from peace tiles if i know you are taking care of you.

with love --

Hi Cristina, I feel the same as Lars, If I could, I would be there tomorrow to give you a hand, maybe one of my trips to Africa will allow me to stop in and help for a while:)

Jackie and I will be praying for you, so hang in there.

Please don't hesitate to PM us if there is anything we can do to help.

Ray

Christina,

Too much work and no play, no good. Look at what you've done allready in such a short space. Look after yourself in all its manifestations first, as this will allow you greater energy into the wonderfull work you're doing.

Christina,

I hope you get your groove back. Take some time, have a picnic lunch and look at the mountains, sky or whatever is peaceful.

By the way, where is your website?

Best, Paul Hamlin - Baku, Azerbaijan

Thank you for all the good work and global Trotting. I would like to communicate personally with you if you please before your trip to gulu my home land. I am an acholi by tribe and also the organizer and representative of invisible children of toronto. My email address is solomonakena@acholinet.com I am also one of the founders of the two only acholi community websites websites located at www.acholinet.com and www.acholiteck.com Please visit these sites at your leisure. Thank you and bless. I hope to hear soon from you.

Solomon

NAkirabo said:

Dear Onet friends ~

If I seem absent, distracted, or less productively engaged on some things here than you might have expected or wished me to be, please note that I am/have been running on depleted resources for quite some time now and am fully aware that I'm not giving as much as I would like to on things that are important to me. I am trying in my way to recharge while still moving forward, and it's feeling very much like I am grinding my gears.

As most of my friends here must realize by now, I have been plugging away since the beginning of the year at getting a lot of stuff actually done that I have been trying to do for about 5 years. I've got a microfinance program started again! I've also finally built a functional website which is certainly the best one since the old lifeinafrica.com from the 1999-2001 period. Funny how these came together so quickly and relatively quietly in just the past 2 months, after so many years of desperation over not being able to get it done. Come to think of it, I moved out of my always discouraging husband's house 2 months ago. hmmm. Can't help feeling those developments are related somehow.

As pleased as I am that things are coming together, I am also recognizing increasingly that I am intellectually and physically exhausted. I'm having some major back problems and there is nobody in country who can help me with it (my spine has a long metal rod in it that was placed to correct scholiosis about 25 years ago). The power schedule means that I'm often missing sleep to steal hours in the middle of the night when the power comes on unexpectedly. I leave the light switched on in my bedroom so that I can get up and work if the option presents itself- which it regularly does for 3-4 hours at around 2am. It sounds extreme, but it's helped us to stay on schedule more or less. The generator at LiA helps a lot, but we simply can't afford to keep it on all the time. In spite of Uganda's power crisis, though, we have really made an enormous amount of progress for which I am very grateful to everyone here who has helped.

But I am losing my steam. I'm feeling sloppy - out of my groove - in some areas where I should be doing better.

I left too much to the last minute on the Kiva application (which is about 14 pages long!). Knew I'd gotten a decent start on it, but then focused for too long on the internal stuff and left some critical details to get a bit bungled at the end. Need to get it in by tomorrow, because then I am leaving to Gulu for 4 days, to be followed by a quick trip to Nairobi to see a man about a consulting job. The consulting job would be for the month of May, which works professionally but means I will miss my middle son's birthday. My oldest son's teacher just told me he's having trouble in school, and here I am leaving for a week. I've got other commitments which tell me I should not go to Gulu but stay home and get the online work done. But I think I am going to go anyway.

I think I need some time to think. I guess I need to find the groove of inspiration that will finally put my own life back in gear. I need to refocus on regaining my edge. Perhaps I will find it in Gulu with a few days of focus on starting things there. I want to see the children again, and get to know them better. Somehow I think they can help me find in myself what I need to get back on track.

And yes, I also need to figure out what to do with this back of mine. It is painful to breath (ribcage expands, putting pressure on a vertebra that's out of line but should not be). I figure that can't be good. My pain tolerance is pretty high but I don't think I can do this for long. And I do think it's affecting my ability to focus. To be honest, it terrifies me to imagine what it might take to fix this, as the technology in my spine is apparently not used anywhere anymore.

All of this is to say that if you've been needing my input on something that I have not yet gotten to you, I apologize and ask that you be patient while I go through this period of shifting gears in my life. I'm not disappearing or intentionally reducing my participation here... just trying to find a comfortable way to breathe again and recharge now that I've crossed the finish line on the long race that building the LiA community has been.

Thanks for bearing with me - and for listening. Now about that Kiva application...

C