It’s an interesting time warp up on the roof. There are moments and there are years. The first 5 days were dedicated to adaptation. Adjusting. Problem-solving. New learnings. Excitement. Disappointment. Even anxiety and fear.

Will there be coffee? What if it rains? Will I be lonely? Will they remember to feed me? How will I shower? Brush my teeth? Will anyone care? What am I doing? How crazy is this? Can I go home now?

Odd. They’re the very same thoughts I experienced working in a developing country for the first time. My first solo assignment was training facilitators of strategic planning in rural village cooperatives. In French West Africa. In French! (only now do I appreciate the rigor with which Mlle Brunell made me repeat, ‘je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes’ until my head ached.) 

Ndiaw Ndiaw village Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCO), where the field training was to take place is 6 hours north into the desert outside Dakar, Senegal. I remember asking if I could plug in my computer.  I remember asking if I’d be staying in the same hotel where the workshops would be held.  I remember being confused when they said I should bring enough water to drink for 10 days because the well wasn’t working. 

It’s 38 hours to travel from the comforts of Seattle to Dakar. The door to the plane opened on a whole new world for which I was unprepared. Little did I realize the life-altering event this would be. I remember feeling at once excited and anxious. My senses on hyper alert responded to the spicy scents, breath-altering heat, lilting tones of Wolof, and the vulnerability of being in the minority.

It was the first time I saw begging children dying on the streets. And it changed me forever.

I’m hardly suffering up here on the roof mind you. At the same time, adapting to unknown environments brings up vulnerabilities no matter where you might be. And choosing to take a risk, marching to your own drummer, acting against norms, sometimes requires courage. To believe in something so strongly you’re willing to give something up to make it happen. 

Like Sister Marie McLaughlin did in South Africa.  She faced risks because she believed in the philosophy of cooperation regardless of the color of ones skin. She formed cooperative savings and credit societies in South African townships during apartheid. Sister Marie began meeting with women’s sewing circles in townships; common needs brought black women and white women side by side to improve the quality of life. Even if it was illegal.  Sister Marie believed forming cooperatives was more important than her own safety. She had 10 credit cooperatives formed and linked by computers before the apartheid government realized.

My own stand-taking can hardly be compared to that of Sister Marie McLaughlin.  The most fearful thing I face up here on the roof are the revelers after the bars close in downtown Edmonds.

You don’t have to go to Africa to take an action that makes a world of difference. You don’t have to defy a norm, or even live on a roof in a tent. (…although I highly recommend it!)  My Granddad used to say, “Do something. Even if it’s wrong. Just do something.”  I always interpreted his comment as, “get off your butt and quit being afraid”. Thank you Granddad for that philosophy.

I applaud those of you taking action for something in which you believe. No action is too small.  And thank you for sharing your actions with me. I  am hopeful about the future.