I Rise
As our world community continues to experience the Coronavirus Pandemic, it feels a bit like the ultimate "Hit the Pause Button" moment in our lives. There have been so many changes in our "normal" daily routine. Our world community has an estimated 2,088,425 human beings known to have the virus. Globally, we have learned of 139,419 human beings that have died as a result of the virus. I would well imagine both numbers are underreported. One statement that has been repeated throughout these past weeks is that "we are all in this together." It is a wonderful and caring sentiment, but hopefully it is not a sentiment that we are just thinking about for the first time in our lives. Truth is, we have all been in this life together, rather we had a reason to notice one another, or not.
In the past twenty years of developing our partnerships in Africa and hosting American delegations to "meet our African cousins for the first time," I have a deep respect as to how intertwined our lives are as a world community. The African philosophy of Ubuntu most simply stated, "I am because we are."
I have been very intentional in this time of isolation to revisit some of my favorite poems and to experience them anew through the lens of the Coronavirus. Maya Angelou, an American poet and civil rights activist is one of my favorite writers. In her poem, Still I Rise, I discover a hope and an energy that gives me reason to trust in our future as one world community. As she states in the poem, "I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide. Welling and swelling, I bear the tide."
As President of Arm In Arm In Africa, I want to assure you that we have begun conversations with our partnerships in South Africa and are taking initial steps to assess how we can reach out and make a difference in their struggles with the pandemic.
Together, we can bear the tide of this pandemic. Together, we will hopefully rise to a world united in ways that we would have never had a reason to imagine.
Shalom, James Cassidy
Still I Rise - Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise again.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset by gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of the tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise?
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear the tide,
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.