The Face of Recession, Then and Now

Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Dorthea Lange , a taste of the powerful names and images for sale this month as the Polaroid Collection hits the auction block.

The face or the burdened migrant mother in this Dorthea Lange photo left an indelible mark on my young life. Awakening me to the power of story hanging in a moment and the pull of wanderlust to find today's irrefutable story waiting around the bend, to find it, feel it and share it. I've never been gifted with the lens but I love and respect it's power.

Today, the demise of Polaroid, brought down partially by technology and partially by a Madoff like Ponzi scheme give this haunting image of financial hardship a whole new story. Either it will be a sad story of financial ruin or one of giant reinvention. Who knows? Polaroid hired Lady Gaga in January to be a Creative Director.

The World According to My Four Year Old

Overheard at my house:

"Mommy, I'm making a chore list for us to do in the morning!" Can you tell what we've been up to lately?

Making breakfast. "Mommy, did the toaster sneeze?"

In the mall, VERY loudly. "Mommy that boy is wearing earrings like I do!"

Getting ready for the morning. "Mommy, this shirt is too big it shows my nibbles."

Walking through Target, Sophia spotted a staff member carrying an armload of register tape. "Mommy, that's awful tiny toilet paper!"

Life Lessons

Our family has always had a lot of maps and globes around the house. We even tried the multiple clocks from multiple time zones in the kitchen, but the ticking (OH THE TICKING!) drove me crazy. (On that note I have half a dozen white matching clocks if anyone needs one!)

We've had a lot of geography lessons the past couple of years keeping up with daddy and Kaga (grandpa) It's like a global 'Where's Waldo?'

Last night Daddy explained to Sophia why he couldn't play another game of Cootie because he needed to talk to people on the other side of the world. Getting out a little globe he demonstrated it was night time for us and Daddy doesn't like to work at night, but it was morning on the other side of the world in Asia.

Trying to be a good teacher I went hunting for a flashlight to play the part of a sun in our little object lesson. Mommy was in for an object lesson too. I learned that in case of emergency NONE of our flash lights work! Strangely enough all of them are missing random pieces or batteries but the most telling sign is that all of them are covered in tiny finger prints and slightly sticky. Hmm??

With or without a flashlight this was better than my failed American geography lesson. Our vintage US puzzle was missing a piece, one state that I seriously couldn't identify. So who did I ask? My foreign born, green-card-holding husband--immediately he got it. Wyoming! How embarrassing!

Saturday Morning Inspiration

Change is in the air for the Ndjerareou's. Friday ended Nate's second week working for a new job! (Praise the Lord) He'd resigned at the end of February desperately in need of a rest and work that he could be passionate about (if it helped the third world even better!)

We're very thankful that he found all three so that the accompanying move to Dallas is just the next step on our journey. Don't get me wrong I HATE to say goodbye but our family is a little desperate to settle down. Especially since we'll be adding another member to our little clan this December! (One more thing to be thankful for!)

I guess you could say the nesting phase has begun or the thought of moving our family into an apartment while we get to know our new city has got the creative desperation flowing. Along the way I have to share a couple of great ventures and ideas:

Apartment Therapy

Little Dresses for Africa

Tutorial: Hanging Book Display

Food & Memories

Our family enjoys travel especially when we get to explore the local cuisine. My favorite memories with Sophia include exploring local markets and trying our hand at the exotic dishes at home. It brings back memories of my fearless mother, plunging into African markets with a boisterous laugh and a fierce love of haggling.

She's a great cook with a huge repertoire of Americana recipes in her head. Somehow I really never learned how to make anything traditional from her. Instead she impressed on me a love for trying our hand a something different that comes out of one big pot and takes an assortment of indigenous spices.

Asian, African, Mexican. Especially if it's got cilantro in it! Sophia and I put these two recipes together last week and all the elements took us back to Mexico. It was so good I had to share. Even that vivacious mother of mine who doesn't really appreciate cilantro LOVED it! Let me know what you think or even better share a recipe you've fallen for!

Better Homes and Gardens Sweet Potato Hash

Cilantro Chicken

"We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties. " ~Oswald Chambers

In the past few months I've been distracted by the difficulties and frustrated by God's silence. Life's handed me enough experience know that God uses the silence to teach us to listen deeper. This time through the valley it was my husband's journey. The past few months have been about Nate & God, that's a new experience for me. Now that it's over I can say it's been a privilege to walk this road with him.

But I didn't come here to whine, that's partly why I've been so quiet. I believe in authenticity and sincerity in faith, but this was Nate's journey. The last thing he needed was my public venting. Thank you for your patience and your prayers. I promise more details soon.

I'm just starting to see how many prayers God has answered. My sweet grandfather came through surgery wonderfully and that only added to the list of prayer requests God has smiled on recently. In His own way He waited until we were at the end of our spiritual, emotional and financial resources. Perhaps that's why I got angry? But now these answered prayers feel like tangible expressions of our faith and everything seems sweeter. Thank you Lord for being bigger than our difficulties!

Thank you for your prayers

Wednesday morning, my maternal grandfather will be having a somewhat risky surgery. Thanks you for remembering us in your prayers.

Happy 5th Anniversary Darling!

"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved." Victor Hugo

Dallas Recap

Abigail in her Easter clothes, everyone was having a melt-down before church but this one managed a great smile!

Monkey See Monkey Doo! The girls decided they were going to exercise! They did most of the video too!

Hannah showing off her dance moves!

Lovely Edna the baby whisperer!

Easter dancing! Why else would you wear a pretty dress and frilly sock if not to dance?
The girls want to get in on Eric & Banga's push up contest!

Yes it is Hannah!

Let The Little Children Come Unto Me. . .

Recently, I got grumpy with Sassy. Simply being kid she delights in EVERY little bit of life around her. Flowers, bugs, her toes, it doesn't really matter these days. She LOVES life and can't wait to inspect it thoroughly! I was running late as usual so my patience was wearing thin. Innocently, she started singing.

"And Jesus grew, in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men." (Luke 2:52)

The little ditty stopped me in my tracks. Without saying anything, Sophia , and the Lord, (by way of this little scripture verse) reminded me she's barely four! She deserves my patience and grace. After all, even Jesus was a little kid once!

Auntie Minga, blessed us with these Bible verse cd's on our trip to Dallas and they've melted my heart almost everyday. Sophia LOVES music and quickly puts things to memory. But hearing her BELT Bible verses makes me smile and thank God almost every morning. I've even caught Nate and I singing them! Thanks Minga! We just had to share!

Back To the Drawing Board

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorn

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make. ~Truman Capote, McCall's, November 1967

A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. ~John K. Hutchens, New York Herald Tribune, 10 September 1961

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~Mark Twain

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ~E.L. Doctorow

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's time for my bi-annual rant on writing!! When I ask why I'm so committed to calling myself a writer? I love the feeling of words flowing from my hands, whether it's the scratch of a pen on a lined journal page or the click clack of the keyboard. Something in my mind clears when I map out my thoughts on paper. So writing should be simple? Then why does it seem like a psycho wandering into socially acceptable madness? Down the rabbit hole into creativity, peeling back the layers of the soul. That's just for a first draft!

Traveling Times

Audio books will always be my first love. They instantly take me back to story time as a kid, or hearing my mother read The Chronicles of Narnia. A story is a magical experience especially with a human voice giving it life.

When Pieces of Glass came out in a Kindle edition I decided to educate myself on the trend. I'm especially pleased by the work of Worldreader who's experimenting with Kindle's in the developing world! Brilliant!

I'll always be an avid collector of paper copy, the touch, the feel. Surrounding yourself in a library is like sitting with old friends with new adventure a page turn away.

As a traveler though, e-readers solve the classic dilemma of how many books can I fit in one suitcase? I'm all for anything that gets more people reading more books and that makes me pro e-reader in whatever version you prefer. Don't take my word for it. Here's a few trends you might find interesting:

The E-book and the Future of Reading: Christian Science Monitor

Kindle Comes to a Classroom in Ghana:Wired Magazine

Kindle Books Outsell Real Books this Christmas

For the true tech family--check these out too!

Iphone apps to get kids reading!

Something Old. . Something New. . Something Borrowed

The Philanthropist This is a great show-- I wish I'd been able to support and lobby for! Plus note the beautiful bi-racial couple, they're smart and globally minded!

The Marriage Ref This is a current show to rally around, just like its tag line. "Keep fighting it's worth it!" I know their referring to marriage, but after the critics panned it--I'm fighting for it. After all if you can't laugh in you're marriage it's over.

Remington Steele I don't know why I watch TV anymore? With schedules and commercials? How inconvenient? Only because Big Bang Theory isn't on Hulu yet! Now that I can watch every old eighties show I don't think I'll ever watch it again! Plus that's classic fashion!

A Place of Our Own

Is is time to stop living like this?

I simply wish I had the answer to this question--

and so many others.

'When I go from here


let this be my parting word:


That what I have seen


is unsurpassable'

Rabindranath Tagore

Hope in the Eyes of Child

Tonight, Linda and I were praying with the girls (Sophia & her cousins.) Sophia asked if we could sing "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands?" Singing out the names of their Aunties, Uncles, Grandparents and Cousins spread across the nations with the pure belief that they were safely in His hands really got to me. Their child like faith in God's supremacy makes my doubt stick like a lump in my throat.

My first instinct is fear, the shear fragility of life. I HOPE he does, baby! My heart wanted to say. Yet, while they sang my own battered faith grew ever so slightly until the refrain came up through my heart and out of my mouth. Please join me in prayer that God's hand will be evident in Jos, Nigeria.

Headlines Hit Home

It's hard to imagine that we could be celebrating so much life only hours before death and hatred rumble into Jos, Nigeria and the surrounding areas. As news of the horrors being committed have started flowing over the airwaves, Linda (our host here in Dallas) and her siblings have been scrambling to get news of loved ones in their home town.

Nate & I have been grateful for the relationships we've been able to renew in the past year. We've been able to overcome distance and live alongside friends and family sharing stories, joy, humor and even heartache and burdens. Today in Texas though it's been a hard pill to swallow. Hard to be here and yet so powerless to help. Hard to be close and yet so far away. Thank you for your prayers for the Asake family and the people of Nigeria.

Princess Power!

Sophia's birthday breakfast a treat from Auntie Linda!

Princess Tianna dress straight from Nana!


These two sleepy heads sure look alike! And yes she slept with a hairbow in! When in Texas!

Birthday Surprise!

When Sassy first asked to have her ears pierced I smiled! Spending six weeks with our African cousins was rubbing off. Since it's very traditional for little African girls and Nate's sisters got their ears pierced in the first year of their lives, he was on board.

Personally, I'd begged to get mine when I was 12 living at Rift Valley Academy (a boarding school) in Kenya. My mother was positive my roommate would botch the job and conceded if I'd only let her take me to a professional. Point of fact--said roommate is now Harvard graduate and a doctor but who knew?!

Ultimately it was the fact that Sophia's present was the perfect gift for a junior traveler that cracked me up! Think about it--earrings take up no space, she won't loose 'em, and they don't require batteries. I guess our lifestyle is rubbing off in more ways than I could imagine!

Happy Birthday Dear Sophia!

Sophia turned 4 this Saturday and made her own birthday cupcakes to celebrate!

Sophia's cousin Hannah!

Let the Sugar Rush Begin!

Birthday girls! Sophia Ndjerareou & her cousin Simone Ashiya Asake born March 5, 2010

Pack Lightly, Carry a Big. . . Heart

A month on the road and I notice I'm sending my daughter to school in the same few outfits. Not a big problem, more like a personal hang-up. It really doesn't matter when you're on the road meeting new people constantly. But now we're in a new environment with limited closet space, sending Sophia to school every other day.

Realizing it truly doesn't matter has been the best part. Call it-minimalism, anti-consumerism, or simply life on the road. No one else seems to notice. Nate & Sophia love wearing their favorite clothes often. Personally, I have enough scarves (necessity of cold weather) jewelry (necessity of being a girl) and jackets to really make it an art project. Honestly, it's the way the rest of the world lives. Less stuff more personality.

Recent inspiration helps to develop this as an intention rather than a consequence.

Simplify Saturday

Uniform Project February Inspiration

Got any tips for me?