Letter Home

By Terry Reis Kennedy

My flight from Bangaluru Airport in India to Doha, the capital city of Qatar, where I am scheduled to stop and change planes for an onward journey to Madrid is smooth and relaxing until suddenly the captain announces that due to atmospheric conditions of blinding fog we have been unable to land and we are running out of fuel.  A collective groan fills the silence.  Then the captain says that we will divert from our scheduled route and go to the Kingdom of Bahrain to refuel.  We do this successfully, but by the time we reach Doha again, most of us have missed our connecting flights.

On landing, Qatar Airways staff announces that we will be given luxury accommodations during a 12-hour delay while our rescheduling is planned.  What an adventure begins. The city is a brilliant diamond encrusted topaz that pulls me right into its beauty.  For instance, it is the cleanest place I have ever visited—cleaner even than Switzerland! It is dotted with high-end European designer shops and boutiques as well as low-end ventures such as MacDonald’s and Dairy Queen.  Apparently, the one percent enjoys cheap eats just as much as the 99 percent.

Cars, all glowing and looking brand new move silently over roads as astonishingly smooth as marble floors.  Soon, I am in a nest of luxury at one of the city’s most exquisite hotels.  In the main dining room, after a long, hot soak in a bathtub big enough for two I am ready for lunch. I meet and commune with my fellow travelers who are thoroughly enjoying the magnificent spread, an entire room just for the food.  The exotic Middle Eastern cuisine is wonderful.  Bright greens on the salad table, every kind of fruit, and vegetables cooked to perfection, and my favorite dessert, a Doha confection made with rose petal essence syrup and whipped cream covered with crunchy baked grated coconut.

The coffee is robust and my body responds as if it being reborn.   I fall in love with Doha—the conviviality of the people is contagious; and soon the guests from our flight are feeling like family at a holiday feast.  We move around the dining tables introducing ourselves to each other.

Sister Rena of the Order of St. Joseph of Alisi (headquartered in France), originally from Kerala, India is on her way back to Tanzania Africa where she works as a nurse in a tiny clinic in the midst of some of the poorest people in the world. “They live on cabbages and maize, she explains with only drips of water.  They cannot even wash the clothes.”  Sister says that most of the supplies sent to the clinic from Europe disappear.  “They are robbed by corrupt politicians,” she insists. 

“The other four sisters and myself don’t sleep much at night.  We lay awake in fear that we will be shot to death.”  With a huge smile on her young and pretty face, Sister Rena says, “Men come to kill us sometimes.  They have long shot guns and hate in their eyes.”  I do not speak about the rapes they often commit, according to reports, before they gun down their victims.

“Thank you, Sister,” I whisper for I have lost my loud American voice— “Thank you for your courage, for your faith, and for your loving service to the poor.”  I am choked up with joy in my heart—here in the Paradise that is Doha.

I meet up with the ten Spaniards from Pamplona who helped me at the airport Transfer Desk when we landed.  They are exuberant and enjoying the food fit for the mighty sheiks of Arabia who look impeccable in their long white gowns and head scarves. When you are in their homeland, there is no question who rules the mundane world. Political analysts talk about the upcoming super powers like China and India, but few seem to be watching carefully the massive displays of wealth in tiny Qatar.

The Spaniards had travelled to India to work at Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity organization in Kolkata (Calcutta) and they volunteered there as bathers of dead, unclaimed bodies found on the city’s streets daily.  They said that the type of service they did there for three weeks is greatly needed and they vow to come back again to help.  They are infused with passion as they speak and it is obvious that the reward of helping others is already multiplying.  What they came to give—love, for example, has been increased a hundred fold in their own hearts.  They move about the dining room blessing us with their presence.

Before long, Michal Malinowski joins me at a table.  He is a robust, 46-year old international story teller from Warsaw, Poland.  He had been in India gathering research for an event he is producing, “The Chocolate Revolution,” he explains.  It will target a young audience, children and teenagers, but he says he hopes that it will be a consciousness raising event for people of all ages and faiths around the world. His shoulder-length curly brown hair bounces as he talks about the project. 

Meanwhile, in the middle of the desert we quench our thirst with wine glass after wine glass of pure, still water.  Alcohol is not allowed in Doha, or anywhere in Qatar, and consequently 95 percent of the problems associated with it simply do not exist.  You can walk the streets at midnight, alone, as many of us did—unafraid.  Imagine it.  It does exist—peace and more peace in the midst of a chaos all around the globe.

Michal tells us how he developed the concept for “The Chocolate Revolution”.  He explains that he had once listened to an ancient (Confuscian) story that has circled the globe.  It’s about people at huge, long tables filled with the most delicious foods who could not eat anything because they had only large and very cumbersome spoons (chop sticks) that they could not comfortably use to feed themselves.  The narrator of that ancient story had explained, “This is Hell.”

Later, he went to Heaven and there was the very same table, the very same, food, and the very same utensils.  But everyone in Heaven was content and at peace.  Michal explains, his bright eyes twinkling, “The people who lived in Heaven had learned to use the instruments to feed each other, rather than themselves.”

This message of loving others and co-operating and helping them is what Michal will share with the presentation of the productions associated with “The Chocolate Revolution”—the launch of a new way of using non-violent methods to produce world awareness that we are all “One”.

How did you develop this kind of thinking?  I ask him. 

“Through my mother, Maria,” he says.  She was an engineer in a chemical factory when I was growing up in then Russian-communist-occupied Poland.  She had become a follower of Sai Baba, an Indian guru, and she practiced his teachings on loving all and serving all.  She had always wanted to go to India but could never manage to do so and now she is not in good health.  But even at the age of 76, she still hopes to visit the ashram and resting place of the late Avatar.

Michal invites me to Warsaw for the debut of “The Chocolate Revolution”.  I had worked in Warsaw during the height of martial law there in 1982, gathering stories about the Solidarity Revolution that was going on at that time.  Lech Walesa, who later became President of Poland, got all the workers of Poland to collectively sabotage the communist projects that were keeping Poland in the grip of an out-moded thought form—slavery and subservience of the masses for the benefit of the self-anointed few—according to my personal observations.

I will be there, I promise Michal who had originally been surprised to hear me speak in Polish—learned from my immigrant Polish grandmother, Victoria Szysko, in the foothills of the Green Mountain state of Vermont.

Reconnecting with Poland and people I have met from there will be wonderful.  In fact, I will stay in Gdansk, I explain, where fellow writer Mata Dziewieka lives and teaches.  Mata has translated many of my poems into Polish and into Spanish as well.

It’s time!  This is the moment we have been working toward—global harmony.  Call it “The Chocolate Revolution” or the Second Coming, or just plain waking up and realizing we are not just instruments of God, but that we are the Divine Principle in action ourselves.

Leaving Doha, I am full of appreciation for so many new friends.  After a tranquil sail through the night skies, I watch the sun rise over Madrid as we approach Baharajas Airport.

I look forward to my work in Spain. And now, here in the cozy home of my hosts, Ana and Manolu, I am seated at a desk in a lovely office surrounded by books and windows that look out onto the red-tiled rooftops of the gentle city of Albacete.  From here I send the love I have been touched with.  May it multiply and spread joy to all.

To learn more about The Chocolate Revolution please contact Michal Malinowski at muzeumbajek@wp.pl   orwww.ted.com  or www.ted.org.

Terry Reis Kennedy is a poet, writer, editor, and publisher.  She is in Spain to work on a screenplay and to speak about the plight of the Tibetan people who lost their country when communist China, under Mao Ze Dong, invaded and occupied it.  She can be reached at treiskennedy@gmail.com