The Rainbow is in the Clouds.

Copyright @ May 2009, Dr. Tendai Ndoro (DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC

For the last two days I have had the privilege to participate in the annual NJ Governor’s Conference on Women at Atlantic City Conversion Center. Thanks to my work with Rutgers, this is a privilege I have enjoyed since these conferences started 5 years ago. I usually use the opportunity to network and seek out women I want to come and be guest speakers at my Center’s business events. But this year for some reason I did not have the motivation to network nor did I even have a strategy of how to maximize my participation. Unbeknown to me, God had brought me to this event for a different purpose, because as it turns out this conference took the crown for several reasons – this year the conference had the biggest turn out of women, with a total of 2200 women from all walks of life and professions attending conference; but the greatest honor indeed was that Maya Angelou was our luncheon keynote speaker! WOW…..what a living experience. She is an awesome orator, story teller, a great spirit and she is witty, funny and hilarious all at once. Very few women impress me…but being there I felt the presence of a kindred ancestral spirit.

I took away a lot of lessons today. They were common sense, wise lessons that one already knows, but that still jolts you out of your mundane daily life reverie. I therefore want to share with you what I took away today.

The theme of her talk was “The Rainbow in my Clouds”. In essence she told us that the Rainbow is not in the sky with the sun and the moon, but actually its imbedded in the clouds because the clouds are much closer to us and come much frequently and that’s part of life.. She said it is such a blessing to be born a woman, but as women we have a lot of responsibilities, lots of burdens to bear. But there is also the beautiful rainbow in your clouds so “brag on the rainbow!”

She shared with us how when her parents divorced and she and her brother ended up staying with her grandmother she called Nana the biggest rainbow in her life…and she reminded us that every woman knows NANA, and we all have seen Nana, that woman who mentored you when you were growing up, that woman who loved you unconditionally, that woman who complimented you and made your day by telling you “That green surely looks great on you”; that woman who believed in you “Nana told me I would go far and all over the world as she braided my hair in the kitchen, and I have been all over the world”.

She shared how she was raped at 7 years old by her mother’s boyfriend when her father decided to take her and her brother to her mother, because her mother ‘was enjoying herself too much”, she was afraid to tell anyone because he had threatened to kill “someone” but she told her 9 year old brother who told the family then the man went to jail for one day and three days after he was released he found dead – kicked to death! She became mute and did not talk for years because she thought her voice had cause the man’s death. She and her brother were returned to their Nana who told her “They don’t know what they are talking about, don’t believe what they are saying you are stupid, I and God know you will talk when the time comes’ and she did. She told us “don’t call yourself, or others, and don’t let anyone else call you something that makes you feel less than what you are, less than a human being.

The best lesson of all she said “if you are on a road you don’t like, and you look back on that road where you have come from and you don’t like it – GET OFF THAT ROAD AND START YOURSELF A NEW PATH. Whining does nothing to the object of your displeasure, whining only let the Brute know there is a victim in the neighborhood!’

She read some of her unpublished poems (to be shared later). And she read poems by others. She introduced me to Edna St Vincent Millay. I share it with you.

Conscientious Objector

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.

What a day. Ms Angelou you inspired me today. God, you had me at the right place at the right time.
5/12/09