In 2004, I traveled to South Africa to participate in a spiritual healing campaign organized by South African friends who are also meditators, teachers and healers of the Sacred Merkaba Techniques. They arranged for us to visit preschools, high schools, community centers, AIDS centers for children and a hospital in the townships in and around Jo'burg, like Soweto, Alexandria, Randfontein and north to Thabazimbi, where the Tswana tribe resides, to offer spiritual energy healing and toys to the children. AIDS is pandemic in South Africa, especially in the communities we were visiting, and we never knew whether the children we offered healing and donated stuffed animals to, hugged or held actually had the disease. Nerve racking and incredibly, expansively touching all at once.
So on this day, we went to Soweto to a preschool. The children were VERY excited because representatives from JP Morgan South Africa had just been there to give the school a donation of enough money to heat the classrooms in the winter. Even more important to the little ones, they brought soda and TWO cakes. So we skipped the spiritual healing that day. My friends had already left the room and I was talking to the teacher, who speaks 7-8 languages, as he helped a child put on his shoes after naptime on little mats.
A girl came up to me (maybe 5 years old), holding an even smaller girl's hand and a pair of tiny red shoes. I sat down on the cold concrete floor and carefully put on the baby's shoes, focused only on the two girls. Then I looked up. Seated on their knees in front of me, all the rest of the children (30 of them) sat in a V-shaped wedge, each holding their shoes out for me to put on. I wanted to put on every pair, pay attention to every child, but was called away right then to leave. We paused between the classroom and the car and the children came running out. Four stopped next to me to hold my hand and hang onto my legs. My heart melts now, just thinking of it, the hunger of those children for a touch, and the feel of those red shoes in my hand.
