Joy playing inigo montoya

I remember the night before leaving Madagascar in 2002.  I was exhausted from illness and also all the work of getting sorted and packed and organised and my colleague moved to another house.  Our dear Malagasy friends came to visit and little Joy, who is a boy, was three then.  He had a stick and was playing on the stairs outside, the role of inigo montoya from The Princess Bride... one of his favourite movies.  It was great to watch him.  This isn't him, but it reminds me of him.

That night his father, a very dear friend, asked me the question... "Is it harder to be the one who leaves, or the one who is left?"  They knew I wasn't coming back there to work.  I think I answered that it can be harder to be the one who is left, knowing that I was going on to something new.... hopefully a journey to better health, and they were going to miss me deeply.  10 years later, we still keep in touch, but mostly through my colleague who is still working there.

"My name is inigo montoya, prepare to die"  Go joy... you are 13 now and I still see you in every 3 year old boy I meet!

The ant lions

It was 10th grade biology, I'm sure... our teacher was a bit radical for a fundamental evangelical missionary kids school... and sent us out into the bush to find a place within ear shot, but where we couldn't see anyone else in the group.  He asked us to spend the next 15 to 20 minutes in quiet observation of the things we could see within a metre of the space we were sitting.

I remember that close to my foot, was an ant lion trap.  An ant lion is a small bug (pictured below), which digs a cone shaped hole with soft sandy soil loosely building up the edges.  An ant crawls on the cone and slips down the soft sand and behold, the ant lion has lunch.

I watched this ant lion trap intently for most of the 15 or so minutes we were given.  I don't remember any ants falling in... but it is something I remember... as my first experience of meditation - in retrospect... what a brilliant teacher....  He gave me an opportunity to look at a metre of my world and just breathe and see what there was to see - and in the process to come into myself and capture an image that remains with me until today. 35 years later...  Thank you biology teacher... and I don't even remember your name.