Between August 4th to August 26th, Riehlife travels to Southern Africa—South Africa and Botswana.

I’ve decided not to take too many gadgets, so I’ll be leaving my laptop and cellphone at home. I’ll be in erratic computer contact, so I cannot say if I’ll be able to update Riehlife while I’m gone or not. Maybe a little, but erratically.

Therefore, whether you are new to our community here or whether you are a long-time reader, I invite you to browse the archives. They are rich and full. And the sidebar contains information about my poetry book “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary.”

Annette Crymes and I will be traveling to:

Johannesburg…and the village of Phokeng in South Africa…with blogging buddy Damaria Senne (see Portable Village post below).

Gaborone, Botswana…where we’ll meet up with long-time pal Alan Brody…and Gabane, Botswana, where I worked on village development, literacy, and Popular Theater projects…and Maun Botswana, where nature is in its glory…and Makalamabedi, a village where I did my cultural training in 1972 for Peace Corps…and then….

Finishing in Capetown, South Africa, where I have never been, a’tall.

This is a road trip. I am traveling more upscale than I’m used to, and this will take some getting used to. There will be lots of things to get used to, and not much time to do it in, as the pace of the trip is more rapid than any trip I’ve ever embarked upon.

So, wish me luck! Include us in your prayers, if you are so inclined.

And, we’ll see you, reliably back in this space in September. Until then, Darlings, it’ll be catch as catch can.

Iconic Moments are defining life moments we harken back to. On the downside, they may be idealistic images that keep us from being grounded in the now. On the upside, they can serve as guideposts in our lives…to follow what was best and brightest…and create more Iconic Moments to draw from, as Treasured Touchstones.

How do these Iconic Moments come into being? They arise from periods in our lives or life moments that form our peak experiences. These can be crystalized or even enshrined….made into icons. If we think there is nothing more for us beyond the iconographically defined moment, they hold us in the past. All shrines must be tended to be made new.

In returning to a continent that shaped my adult life so strongly, I am doing just that…going beyond the iconographically defined moment…into another moment.

Yes, these iconic images/moments/times in our lives…our peak experiences in which we were and our life was best and brightest, fullest and deepest…these can be treasure that serve as touchstones or dross that drowns us. As we age, it becomes especially important how we hold these past moments…from youth…or whenever they occurred.

My grandfather J.Arthur Thompson (my father’s father) lived with us before his death when I was a teenager and died in our house. In his last years he always went back in his dreams…waking and sleeping…to Korea. He’d been a Methodist missionary there and, among other good works, built the place where the Songdo peace treaty was signed. He’d wake up from a nap, come and stand in his slippers over the hot air register and say, “I’ve just been to a faaaaaaar country.” It was his Iconic Moment in Time….and his preparation for going to the next Faaaaaar Country.

My father Erwin A. Thompson is still very much IN life…more so than myself in some ways….but, at 92, naturally reminisces. His Iconic Moments in Time are his moments of service. These are his Treasure Chest. I wrote a poem for him by that name that appeared in “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary.” World War II is one of his fields of service in the Service and ripe with Iconic Moments in Time.

For me, my five years in Africa was the widest and deepest field of dreams filled with Iconic Moments…that best time. Was it just youth, as someone suggested to me once? No, I don’t think so. It was a soul connection time that infused the rest of my life with meaning and shape and difficulty.

By returning, I infuse new life into this enshrined time and create something new in my life. It’s a creative act. A rather huge one, in my life. All our creative acts do not happen on paper or between the covers of books. Our creative acts are beyond the products we make. Life truly is our art.

Last night I slept under two African quilts, dreaming my trip to the Faaaaaar Country. One quilt I made in Ghana (West Africa) and one I made in Botswana (Southern Africa). Soon, I’ll be back in Southern Africa, taking my quilted dreams with me, to make some new Iconic Moments.

I reviewed this book for Story Circle Book Reviews (reviewing books by, for, and about women) and the review appears on Amazon. It’s good for the book and the whole shebang whenever you mark a review “helpful” there. Love it, if you would…..Janet
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A Coming of Age Story of a Girl and a Country

While set in Botswana and praised by Alexander McCall Smith as a “striking portrait of one of the world’s most beguiling countries,” the deeper subject of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle turns out not to be Africa at all. Rather, Robyn Scott has written a searching portrait of the limits of individualism and an exploration of education in its several forms.

Ordinarily, the problem with being idiosyncratic is that there you are, all by yourself. In this story, however, there’s an entire clan of stark, raving individuals who totally delight one another and somehow come together as a family of eccentrics. I knew a family much like them when I lived in Botswana for three years in the 1970s, learning to speak Setswana.

What constitutes a good education? What makes a family, a culture, a nation? How does the individual fit into these gathering units? What is the trajectory of a marriage? What are the limits of change? How is the dignity of a human being colored one way or another? Searching for Robyn Scott’s views on these basic questions kept me reading. Clearly, this is more than an exotic memoir of a faraway country and people having nothing to do with the rest of us except to entertain.

It is with a sense of homecoming that I enter Robyn Scott’s Twenty Chicken world. Her family is one of a maverick breed of outlanders that has loved this country and contributed to Botswana’s peaceful and harmonious development.
Read the rest of this entry »

These eight men comprise a Portable Village. They bring the feeling of the village and the values of the village to the American Stage, so longing as we are and so needing this as we are as a culture.

Click here to view and here video on You Tube with Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing.

My relatives treated me to a concert by Ladysmith Black Mambazo in St. Louis, Missouri. One of their concerts is a quick trip back to Africa…the magic, the humor, the community, the deep sense of purpose, the lineage, the artistry.

I discovered that my long-time friend Stephanie Farrow–poet, memoirist, and editor had just come back from a Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on their same tour.

Stephanie and I met in Ghana in 1973-1975 when we served in Peace Corps there. We renewed our friendship when we both moved to New Mexico in the 1980s. Since that time, as I moved to California and now back to the Midwest, Stephanie has been a constant friendly, fun, and wise presence in my life.

When Stephanie came home from the Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert she shot me a short email saying: “My heart is full.” There is so much in this brief phrase from her poet-self. It’s amazing how this group of eight men evokes such feelings.

This series of phrases appear on the cover of the 5th landmark season brochure for the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of St. Louis:

To desire
To reminisce
To evoke
To believe
To laugh
To explore
To excite
To encourage
To engage
To shine
To play
To love

For me, my evening with Ladysmith Black Mambazo was like that. The evening with these eight men from South Africa with the big voices and
bigger hearts was all of that…and more, if possible.
Read the rest of this entry »

Portable Village is a phrase that came to me in 2002 when I gave a talk at the Writers Center in San Rafael, California, on “Celebrating an African Experience.” Friends from New Mexico, Lake County, and all around came to support me in this event which combined readings, a slide-talk,good food, and a ceremony in which the audience participated in chanting and a group dance.

The key to my return trip to Africa is just such a Portable Village: those hands filled with bright hearts that reach out to encircle us as we as we dance outward into ever-widening circles and then dance inward into ever-more-refining circles. In plain terms, supportive friends that surround us.

The folks who live in my PORTABLE VILLAGE on this trip are:

1) Annette Crymes, my traveling companion…a fine writer, performer, all-around creative-companionable-hospitable-generous spirit.
You can click here to read a previous Riehlife post on a.r. crymes at BEA.

Click here to read about a.r. crymes on her website.

Annette is a daughter of Oshun/Aphrodite/Venus…the goddess of love and beauty and the arts. I, too, am a daughter of Oshun, and dedicated “Celebrating an African Experience,” my art show, to Her.

Annette also reminds me of my mother in her dedication to her large garden and getting up early to bake from scratch for her guests at a garden tea-party…and wearing an apron throughout.

2) Damaria Senne, my blogging buddy with lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is rooted in the village of Phokeng, will be the first person Annette and I will visit in our Portable Village.

Click here to read a previous Riehlife guestpost (there were several) by Damaria Senne.

We originally met through the The Lieurance-King Article Challenge last fall. We both won our Golden PJs. The challenge brief was to write 15 marketing articles during the month of November and submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles.

Our relationship progressed to exchanging guestposts on each other’s blogs and emailing. Meeting Damaria, and now going to visit her and her family on her home turf is the best thing that happened to me as a result of my on-line life.

Click here to read Part I (of two) of my guestpost on Damaria’s STORYPOT blog…on the culture of African story.

3) Alan Brody…(married to Ghanaian Mary Brody)…and I met in Ghana in the 1970s when we were both in Peace Corps together. Alan and Mary went on to live an expatriate life of service in the UN…serving in China, Afganistan, and Swaziland, for instance. They retreated to Iowa, City, Iowa a couple of years ago.

Last winter, watching one of these dreadful movies about Africa, I got to wondering what had happened to them, and did manage to locate them through some internet and telephone directory assistance information. We refreshed and progressed our friendship via phone and email. I was to visit them in June, boarding with them and enjoying Mary’s gourmet Ghanaian cooking during an Iowa writing workshop, when the floods intervened.

Thus it was that I discovered Alan would be in Gaborone, Botswana, on a short UN consultancy in August…and, in keeping with my father’s preference for not just visiting a place, but a person, felt like that made it safe to go. At least one person I knew, would be there, alive, to greet me.

Alan reviewed “Charlie Wilson’s War” for Riehlife here.

He discussed a hair raising interview in Afganistan here.

Read Brody’s 1789 Obama contribution campaign idea on Riehlife by clicking here.

4) I’ve also written to several folks in Gabane, Botswana, in hopes of meeting old friends and co-workers there when we established Tshwaragano Craft and Sewing Centre there. Reports seem to indicate that it may have been taken over by the Botswana Brigade system, which was always my dream to carry it forward.

5) Through Damaria, we’ve met Jacob, and through Jacob, we’ve met some folks in Maun, Botswana who will help us on that part of our trip.

6) Through the power of the internet we’ve been able to act as our own travel agents…working out of my study and Annette’s…she’s become the de facto travel agent this week, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

To have a buddy makes it all easier. I could work on the ticket while she found out about the immunizations and so forth. Yesterday, Annette led me to the travel store, in true African style, showing me a piece of versatile luggage, a twin to her own.

We’ll be traveling in style. This style will be a far cry from the style of 1975 when I traveled on my own from Ghana to Botswana, overland with an air hop.

On that trip, I carried only the green canvas rucksack Peace Corps issued me in 1972 (and that I adapted with hand-sewn straps and pockets). I hitch-hiked rides and depended on the kindness of strangers, mostly with success.

In my 60th year, I set out for Africa, the continent that transformed my life when I first sojourned there thirty years before. I’d waited half a lifetime to return, and could scarcely believe that the waiting…the exile…was finally over.

Yes! It’s true. I’ll be 60 at the end of December.

Yes! It’s true. Africa did transform and shape my life.

Yes! It’s true. I lived and worked in Africa for five years in the 1970s, in Ghana and Botswana, and left in 1977.

I’ve traveled to the East, to the West, to the South…but never to the North…of Africa. I traveled alone.

But, one is never truly alone in Africa, place of home, family of friendly hearts, and a culture of connection.

Yes! It’s true. I have waited over 30 years (31, if you’ve done the math) to return…and that works out to roughly half a lifetime. Now there is the time, the money, the traveling companion, and the portable village to support this “Return and fetch it”…this SANKOFA.

Click here to read an earlier Riehlife entry on the meaning of Sankofa, a Ghanaian Adinkra symbol, working in my life.

Yes! It’s true. I have felt a sense of exile. My parents, on their third visit to see me in Africa (once in Ghana and twice in Botswana) asked me to come home. After five years, they missed me. They understood and valued the work I was doing. They understood and valued my strong connection to the place, the people, the culture. But, they felt I was sabotaging my future…that I needed to look to my future.

I heeded my parents plea, and I did move the project the villagers and I were working on to a place of sustainable independence so I could transfer my role. I heeded my parents plea, and I did come home.

I came home to a life of exile…and I have made the deepest and richest use of these thirty years that I know how. But in all the places I have been since: the Midwest, the Southwest, California…I have never belonged as fully, never felt so fully accepted and enjoyed, never felt loved so completely, as in my time in Africa. It is a strong heart home.

And now, it is my time to return and fetch it, weaving the old threads into a new tapestry.

I talked to a 6-year old girl after watching TV. She said, “TV sucks my brains out.”

I talked to parents who grew up in the country and small towns. They told me:

1) They’d identified core values they received through their country and small town childhoods.

2)They committed to transferring those values

3) They’d updated these values to the current context and time.

Raising this generation to have a solid foundation is worthwhile work, indeed.

My mother’s father farmed pigs. Courtney Johnston loved his grandkids. As we ran to him, he’d welcome us in his arms with the endearment: “My little runts!”

You have to know that “the runt” is the littlest pig of the litter. And the youngest grandchild was ever his “runt.”

What we do shapes our language.

As descendents of pig farmers, we still find pig-sayings creeping into our language.

My father, asked if we should wait dinner for a late arrival, answered, clearly hungry, “We’ll wait for them just like one hog waits for another.” That is to say, with our snouts in the trough, eating!

My Aunt Grace (my mother’s sister and Courtney’s daughter) just turned 82 and came to visit me in St. Louis with her daughter, my Cousin Cynthia. Aunt Grace told the family story that it was said: “A doctor counts his patients just like we count hogs to send to market.”

This was a cautionary tale not to submit automatically to everything a doctor suggested, but to realize there was a business aspect to the doctor’s care, no matter how well intended the doctor might be.

We kept pigs at home when I was growing up. My father and I tended a ruptured mother pig after her birth once. I was so scared, and young, but stepped forward and helped anyway, instead of running away. My father, in rare praise, said then, and still says, how brave I was.

Family reunions were especially big for my father’s father, J. Arthur Thompson.

My brother Gary has taken up the family reunion mantle. He and his wife Patty host an annual family get-together at their lakeside home outside Jacksonville.

Besides the ample good food from the garden, joking around, hearing about the crops, the haying, the bullriding, the sawmills and such…one of the biggest highlights of these gatherings is when Gary takes the kids fishing.

My brother is not only an avid fisherman, he’s good with kids, and kids love him right back. To see them all out there on the dock—sometimes 10 at a time—reeling in their small fish with such great pride—is a sight to behold.

Janet Riehl with “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary”

Marcy Burns has been a “friend of the book” since Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” came out in 2006. She found it through Dan Poynter’s list, reviewed it, and set about becoming a friend of the book, my work, and me. On my trip to Riverside last winter [click here for audio of talk and music], I met Marcy for the first time in her lovely home in Oxnard, California. This morning she sent me this heartening note:

The Ventura UU Book Group begins each session with chalice lighting and an opening reading. Yesterday, just as I was ready to leave home to go to the session, the group leader telephoned to say she couldn’t be there, and she asked if I would be the leader for the day.

Marcy