Raise Your Vision

Each time I have a sense that the hospital project is grinding along, not moving at the pace I would prefer, something happens that gives me hope. This morning, I was working at my computer and noticed that a Skype contact had popped up. This person is from Africa, someone I was introduced to by a mutual friend but know hardly at all. We had a conversation several weeks before I departed New York…we had another very brief exchange as I was checking my luggage at JFK prior to departing for Senegal…and this morning, for no particular reason, I decided to send him a message.

He answered my call immediately, sitting in his Chicago living room…no shirt…dealing with the early summer heat. We had a good laugh about the heat and humidity. Here, even though we benefit from ocean breezes, it is also almost too hot to wear clothes.

Moussa’s curiosity about the adventure here was all encompassing. He wanted to know everything: how we were managing the politics, how we were proceeding with fundraising, who we are meeting and finding helpful, what kind of support he might lend from a distance, who he can introduce us to, etc. His was an endless outpouring of wisdom and advice. He offered stories from his own experience as a trade specialist promoting relationships between American and African cities. He told about ways he had been surprised and dismayed by the African culture. He revealed that nothing ever moves forward in a straight line in Africa. He encouraged me to not take personally any of what is happening.

But the point Moussa stressed that I most desperately needed to hear was this: “Raise your vision. Look at the goal. Remember that this hospital is for the people of Bargny, for the people of Senegal. They need your help. Remember your goal always.”

And then I learned that our conversation was occurring in spite of the fact that Moussa and his family are facing a day of intense challenges: his daughter has sickle cell anemia, and this morning his son would be donating his bone marrow for her bone marrow replacement. It’s the best therapy for fighting the disease with a 90 percent or better chance of success. Inshallah, Moussa, inshallah. I just had an email from him at the hospital. All is well.

Moussa and others like him are my best therapy.