Just Folks
JOHN MAHONEY
When the relatives began rubbing cow dung on the burns -- the local treatment -- the nurse had the suffering child removed from the hospital. He died shortly before Gloria returned to Canada some four months later.
"There was a lot of pain observing the cultural differences," she says, "but the people were kind and generous. People who have nothing, share."
 Tai Chi in an Ivory Coast village To help stay focused, Gloria practiced Tai Chi daily and twice on Sunday. "It was a place I could go -- she points to her chest -- and find myself." Some of the village children who had seen martial arts on television joined her while she practiced. Four years before, when personal and family stresses had made life increasingly difficult, Gloria became involved in Tai Chi, the ancient Chinese moving meditation exercises evolved from martial arts. "It saved my life," she says. In 1990, she was beset by what she calls "personal and professional burn-out." Her hospital lab job as staff cytologist ended because of cutbacks and she and her husband had gone their separate ways. Gloria is philosophical about that period now. She returned to her parents home in London, Ontario, and got involved with the Phoenix Tai Chi Centre, where they practice Yang style movements. "It was a wonderful period of growth," she says. "I learned a different way of being." Upon return from Africa in 1991 Gloria studied Kripalu massage in Lennox, Massachusetts, and became a licensed massage practitioner. By 1994 she was back in Africa, this time teaching cytology at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya. A year later she returned to Stanstead, Quebec, and reunited with her husband who has taught at Stanstead College since 1985. Gloria and Peter have lived in the Eastern Townships since 1973, when they relocated from Metis Beach -- a small village in Gaspé originally settled by Scots immigrants. Peter taught in the village school for two years and it was there, says Gloria, that they "became enamored of small-town living." They had met and married in Montreal, where Gloria did her undergraduate degree at Sir George Williams. Although they loved Metis Beach -- they still return to visit old friends -- they found it culturally isolated and the winters, says Gloria, "were eight months long." For the past two years Gloria has led the dual life of a Phoenix Centre Tai Chi instructor and a Kripalu massage therapist. "Both are very meditative, health activities," she says. "They don't provide much of a living just now, but I have a nice [massage] office and a wonderful group of Tai Chi enthusiasts. I think it's the beginning of something important. "I didn't know until I lived in here -- again, pointing to her chest -- until I started doing Tai Chi...now, I can relate to my earlier religious experiences [as a childhood Catholic]." Personal Disclosure: I have taken two eight-week Tai Chi sessions with Gloria, and have had two upper body massages for back, shoulder, and neck pain. An excellent teacher, she is grace-in-motion and has very good hands. |
Several days after Gloria Thomson arrived in a rural village on Africa's Ivory Coast as a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International, a child was rushed into the primitive hospital where she was helping out. Much of his tiny body was covered with burns. There was little the resident nurse could do for him. And there was no money to transport him for proper care in the capital, Abidjan.
