Welcome Xi!

Last week we welcomed the newest member of the Kanhai clan, Xi Blu Kanhai-Amman, the daughter of tamara and Bill and sister of Krishna, Omar and Myriah. Xi was born on 07/08/09 at 10:11 a.m. She makes a beautiful addition to our family and we are all very proud of her. Here are a few photos (some of them a bit out of focus, unfortunately) so you can get the picture.

African Update 8/10/2005

Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 07:46:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Nadia R. Kanhai"
Subject: Greetings from Kenya
To: WSFPC@yahoogroups.com
Hello from Kenya, or as they say, "Jambo."

Yes, we finally arrived safely early Sunday morning and have settled in to working with our new friends. It's hard to believe we only have 2 days left here in Maua before we move on to Meru. If you haven't had a chance, you can still check out our blog. You can reach it by going to <> and clicking on the link on the bottom right corner. That has more details about the people we're meeting and how we're experiencing Kenya.

You would not believe it, but it's cold here. We're right on the equator, but we have to wear our coats a lot of the time, and they aren't warm enough. The mountains are beautiful, and so are the people, though they don't have much money to buy beautiful clothes.

I'm sending this message from an Internet cafe. They close soon, so I'll make this short. I just wanted to let you know that we have arrived safely and are having a wonderful time, but we are also working hard. Every night we go to bed exhausted. I'm taking photos and notes, so I can tell and show you more when I get home.

I apologize to those of you who have aol. My first message didn't go through to you.

Thanks again for your continued support and prayers. Please know that the Kenyan people are very grateful for all you have done and continue to do. They wanted me to pass that message on to you.

God Bless!



Peace,
Nadia

Dare to dream: We are the ones we've been waiting for!

Update from Nadia

Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 15:30:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Nadia R. Kanhai" View Contact Details
Subject: Thanks for sponsoring my trip to "Africa"

Hi friends,

Thanks for helping to make our trip to Kenya possible. We are really excited about what we will be doing. I say will be, because we're not in Nairobi yet.

Our plane from London was almost to the Africa coast when we were forced to turn back to London due to technical and weather problems. We are overnighting here, and won't be able to leave for Kenya until tomorrow evening. We are disappointed, of course, but we're hoping we'll see the bigger picture. This was a the safest possibility for us all.

To find out our about our trip, Please check out our blogspot at . We will be updating every day. I believe my day to blog is Friday, Aug. 12.

We're very tired from a whole day of flying, and not getting anywhere, but at least we get to sleep in a bed tonight, instead of on the plane. We appreciate your prayers.


Peace,
Nadia

Dare to dream: We are the ones we've been waiting for!

From a soldier's blog

Just finished reading the blogspot of a soldier in Iraq. It is very painful. I guess I know that the soldiers there are human and have their hopes and fears, their loves and lives, but the terrible war grinds on and tarnishes and destroys everything in its path. Here is a poem from the blogspot. I don't know if it is the soldier's, or someone else's work. Incidentally, if you would like to read the blogspot you can find it at: http://www.misoldierthoughts.blogspot.com/ or click "A Soldier's Thoughts" under "Links".


A Soldier's Thoughts
Cry for me, for my eyes have gone dry.
My tears tread no path through the dust on my cheeks
Life means so little to many back home
But let your son go, just let your son go

Tell him you promise to come back with Godspeed
Kiss your daughter in the dead of the night
Tell them goodbye with no tears in your eye
You must be a better man than me

Pick up your bag and walk out that door
It's the hardest walk you will ever make
To leave all you love for your honor and pride
Praying that you won't be lied to this time

Get on that plane and try not to look back
Now try to do it all over again
This time knowing what you have seen
With blood on your hands that will never come clean.


My thoughts about going to war, my family, and the back door draft...

Faraway Places

Remember the song: "Those faraway places with strange sounding names are calling, calling me"? Who would have thought it? Certainly not the little boy who first heard that song a long time a go in the village. "I start getting restless whenever I hear the whistle of the train; I pray for the day when I get on my way to see all those castles in Spain."

Spain, here we come. I can't believe it. We are heading for Spain for two weeks. This our treat for our 40th wedding anniversary. Accompanied by our guide and interpreter, Tasha, we should be there in a couple of days. Wow! Sure, lots of people travel to Southern Spain. But I never thought that I would be one of those people. Actually, for the past two years I have been promising myself and Ruth that we would go to Greece on this banner year. When I couldn't arrange for Greece, Spain came up. Disappointed? You're kidding? Who knows, depending how Spain works out it may be Greece next year, and Italy the next or vice-versa.

Someone noted to me the other day, "you sure do get around!" I guess we do. We love travel. But after my episode of "sudden death" last year, we have learned we can't count on tomorrow. Waiting for that "someday" is not an option. This is the moment. As my friend Dr. Burns often mentions, "carpe diem!" "Sieze the day." For who knows the day or the hour?

In any case, this is a wonderful adventure for us. All those castles! Wow! And the flamenco dancers, the historic architecture left by Islamic culture, and Roman culture. The beautiful Sierra Nevadas! Tasha is even more excited than we are. In her Junior Year abroad she spent six months at the University of Granada. She has contacted the house mother with whom she stayed back then and we will be spending a day or two in Granada. But I am rambling.

A long way from Syne Village? Maybe not quite as long as it seems. The dreams that are born in us when we are young often become reality when we are older, if we dare and care to make them come true. And for this villager, this is a dream come true!

On Aging

I recently received an invitation to a surprise birthday party for a relative who just turned 65 (It's for her 65th birthday, which is a milestone - firmly past middle age and into old age). Needless to say, it got my attention, as I am now past that ripe old age. On the same day I received a forwarded message which was a more comforting note on aging. I share it with you below.

George Carlin's Views on Aging

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.
"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five!
That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life…you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony…YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40.

Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"

May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!


HOW TO STAY YOUNG

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them".

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. " An idle mind is the devil's workshop."
And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9 Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

And if you don't send this to at least 8 people - who cares? But do share this with someone. We all need to live life to its fullest each day

Birthdays and Age

How old would you be if you did not know how old you were? Silly question? Maybe not as silly as it sounds. Why would one feel down and depressed as one approaches one birthday, or after one has turned 40 for 50 when a few weeks before and after they are just fine? If we had no calendars and did not know when our birthday was supposed to be would it bother us that we are older?

Sure we are older. Everyone gets older all the time. But we don't seem to focus on it on a daily basis. Which is certainly a good thing, since we would all be tied up in knots all the time if we did. Instead we worry about the price of gasoline, or property taxes, or the pain in our back, or our children who are struggling in the jobs or whatever currently occupies our thinking at any given time. We may feel our age when we can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, or climb the stairs two steps at a time, but that has nothing to do with a date on the calendar. It has to do with our physical condition and the state of our health.

On the lower part of the scale, we know that children mature at different rates, and that turning five or six does not automatically mean that a child is ready to start school. I say that we know that, although I am aware that you can't say that to a parent of a young child. By the same token it used to be that 21 was the magical age when a person became an adult. Yet we know of 30 year-olds who are not able to make it on their own and remain dependent on the their parents. And while that magic age was 21 for a long time, in recent years 18 became the age of majority.

Even though there is a correspondence between age and maturity, relationship between them is not an absolute. And even though the calendar gives us an approximation of what a person's physical, and sometimes mental and emotional maturity, might be, it is not an absolute measure. I read in the newspapers of men and women who can do physical activities at 90 or more than I am dare not even consider. In which case the calendar gives me a false sense of my age or youthfulness, at least compared to those folk.

I believe that a large part of our concern about age has to do with our mortality. The older we get the closer we are to the grave. No one lives forever, at least not so far. Obviously we care about our physical appearance, but that is because we think if we can appear to be younger we can somehow trick others and ourselves into thinking we are actually younger, and, by extension, have longer to live. Of course, in our society, we think of women as being the ones who are hung up on looks. Yet there are as many products for men to make themselves look and feel younger as there are for women, from clothing, to cosmetics, to styling, to media.

Freud would point out that all of that has to do with being sexually attractive, which I admit it is. But that is not unrelated to mortality and immortality. Remaining a youthful and sexually attractive body has to do with being sexually functional and productive, or should we say reproductive. And although we have managed to separate sexual fuction from reproduction in our society, we are able to make the dissociation absolute. Reproduction, or more exactly the ability to reproduce, has to do with youthfulness, whereas when we have lost our reproductive capacity we are older and therefore nearer the grave.

Of course, all of this would be true whether we had calendars and knew our chronological ages or not. Our bodies age, our functions diminish, we die. But the calendar adds a continual reminder at regular intervals. Of course, as time passes, we begin to look forward to birthdays as a matter of accomplishment. So when someone older asks me my age and I tell them, "O, your're just a kid!" they would tell me. Their greater age is now something of which they are proud. Each new birthday means that we have survived another year. Second childhood? In a sense, yes. Children look forward to birthdays because it is a celebration of themselves. As we get older a birthday should be something to which we look forward with even greater pride and joy. By George, we're still alive!

So, how old would you be if you did not know how old you were? Obviously, in one sense, you would be no older than the calendar says you are. But the concern and depression increases with our feeling that we are not as attractive, not as desirable, not as alive as when the calendar said we had fewer years. If it is any consolation, no one is getting younger by the calendar. But, even more consolation, we can keep young in our mind, in our attitudes, in our relationships, and if we are lucky, and if we take care of ourselves, yes, in our bodies, too.