Willing to Work

The days are passing very quickly now. I will be leaving Dakar on 1 October, spending two weeks in Europe before I arrive back in New York. Today, I confirmed plans to stop in London for three days for fundraising meetings. For the first time, I looked at my Heathrow-JFK ticket and saw that if all goes well, I will arrive in New York at 11:30 am on October 14, giving me the whole day to settle down and settle in: to walk in my beloved Central Park, to have a coffee with friends from the neighborhood, to go to Fairway and tussle with the old ladies, to watch the sunset over the Hudson, to sit on my rooftop if I want to do that.

Hard to imagine that six months have passed. But they have. The days are now flying by… the inverse of how the first days and weeks crawled by. Of course, the days really are shorter now. It’s 7pm and dusk is approaching rapidly. The sky looks like Raphael or Titian or one of those Italian masters decided to provide some artistic direction. The light is diffused because there are clouds developing all around…rumblings of some thunderstorm activity….I can hear our resident duck quacking away. The rooster next door seems to have forgotten that his work begins at dawn, not dusk. Daniel and Daniela, the sheep, are settling down for the evening…making little sheepish noises as they chew their way through dinner.

Today, like yesterday, has been quieter than usual. Nathalie and Seal are in back in Switzerland…yes, they were there three weeks ago on vacation. Nathalie is in her seventh month of attempting to get a valid work permit. Everything she’s been asked to do in this process, she has done, including three other trips to Switzerland to secure appropriate documentation, as counseled by lawyers. The process started in February. Now, in mid-September, we are all waiting to exhale. The process is nerve wracking for both Nathalie and Paul, because their family life could be disrupted completely by this process. Although she is a medical professional, employed by a global pharmaceutical corporation, there is always the outside chance that she will be denied a visa to return.

I can help but be aware that these challenges—which are occurring with legal counsel to a highly skilled, multi-lingual professional—would be insurmountable for someone who is working class, without resources, seeing asylum, unable to speak the language of the country where he or she wants to immigrate. And yet, every day, there are stories of families reunited, new beginnings, hope and possibility.

The hospital project represents hope. We need Nathalie here…Good luck tomorrow in Zurich!