A thread from the refugee camp
[Today's blog is by Monitor correspondent Lee Lawrence, who will be covering ICS while Mary is gone for the next two weeks.]
Tropical storm Fay had turned the air into a hot soup one evening last week as Mary and I zig-zagged through the complex of apartments in Indian Creek to introduce me to Bill Clinton's family.
We parked amid rows of brick buildings and climbed an outdoor stairway. On the landing, we slipped out of our shoes and stepped into a good-sized living room with a couch along the right wall and a television on the left. It was getting dark outside, and the only light in the room came from the kitchen straight ahead and the television, where a Michael Jackson of thes oval face and smiling eyes. She was wearing an African dress with matching turban in what she later told us was a Congolese material - the same print pattern in tan and blue hues that you might find in her native Tanzania, except that the fabric itself, she said, was different.
On the walls hung lozenge-shaped decorations made up of circles with royal blue centers and pink rims. They reminded me of the geometric fretwork used in tropical climates to let through air and provide glimpses of cloudless skies. Dawami crocheted these in the Tanzanian refugee camp, she said, smiling. She likes to crochet, but, here, she has no "this," she added, fingering the yarn.
