All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [65]
I decided to do myself a favor and attend Seane Corn’s late afternoon yoga class on my way to the airport. I floated through my practice, hearing nothing. I occasionally noticed I was out of sync with the class but kept on following my own breath and trying to open as much as I could, especially my heart. In my back bends, I prayed. Seane likes to walk around the room, softly speaking encouragement or instructions to her students. When I started my finishing poses, Seane sat next to me, and we whispered a little. I told her about my chaotic, weepy day and about how preparing for this trip was different from the time I’d prepared to travel to Cambodia and Thailand. Then I was willing, incredibly willing, but now I was willing and prepared, which brought a prescience of grief.
In my closing prayer, I asked to remember that I already possessed in great abundance all that I needed to make it through a trip like this and to be able to tap into the Source that would sustain me and enable me to be of service.
Bobby Shriver was in class that day, and we sat down to talk afterward. It was he who had introduced me to Seane’s yoga class back in the mid-1990s, when we first became friends.
Bobby’s life is anchored in spiritual practice. His words that day, as always, touched my soul. He reminded me that there was so much love and sweetness in life that you could hardly bear it. And when you remembered that we all die, it didn’t seem like any of it was possible: the loving, the ultimate leaving. That was where my mind was—in the dichotomy. The incredible love I had for my husband, and leaving, traveling to Africa for adventure and pain. Kate had warned me that the brothels of Africa were even a little worse than those of Southeast Asia, where at least there was liquor and music and makeup and dressing up, a veneer over the ugliness. But they say everything is more vivid in Africa: sunsets, foliage, landscapes, vistas, the human dilemma.
Certainly the HIV/AIDS pandemic was more florid and brutal than anywhere else on the planet. And in Kenya, my first stop, the virus was already entrenched in the adult population, with 1.4 million infected. The challenge was to keep it from spreading into the next generation.
It was early morning when the jet touched down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on the outskirts of Nairobi. The approach took us low over plains dotted with flat-topped acacia trees, their feathery green limbs casting long shadows on the bright orange soil. The sight moved me enormously. I had always harbored the most romantic notions of Africa: the wild golden landscapes Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham described and, even more enthralling, the idea of “Afrika”—a cauldron of liberation struggles that forged great political and moral leaders like Nkrumah, Mandela, and Tutu. But as is often the case, my idealistic visions quickly dissolved in the face of reality.
Once again, Papa Jack was waiting at the gate to whisk me through the airport. We were hitting the ground running. After a quick stop at our local PSI office in a modern, disheveled office park, we headed straight to the Huruma estate, a crowded slum of one hundred thousand souls squeezed improbably into two square miles. A blazing sun glinted off the tin roofs of shanties that flowed into the arid plains, literally as far as the eye could see. It took my breath away. The enormity of the poverty was blowing my mind while the glare was killing my eyes. I took advantage of a slowdown in traffic at a congested roundabout to buy a pair of knockoff Ray-Bans from a street vendor just before we left the pavement behind.
Our wheels kicked up clouds of hot dust as we rolled through a maze of makeshift shacks and crumbling apartment buildings. Kenya has the largest economy in Africa, but about half of the people live in poverty. The government owns the land in Huruma,