Upon turning 21 in the community, tradition dictates that the birthday-ee should receive a key to signify the transition from child to adult. The key is either an actual key to the family home, or just a symbol of the big transition.
Today I am feeling the significance of the day as I received not one, but two different keys.
The first opens the office, thereby making me an official Hands Volunteer.
And the second one, dear friends, to the VW Golf. That's right, today was my first drive-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road-over-crazy-potholed-dirt-roads day. Woooo. Exhilarating.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
On the can
Of all the places life takes me to in a day, it is routinely the room which houses a toilet that God chooses to speak. I guess this could be called evidence of his humour?
Anyway, that’s how it happened again today.
To put this lesson into context let’s begin at the beginning.
Melancholy descended before I even awoke. The night’s dreams lingered well into the morning, muddying the line between fiction and reality. The whole day was intended for melancholy. Fittingly, I feel as heavy as the clouds pregnant with rain, eager to rid myself of this burden.
Oh melodramatic! I know. So melodramatic. Why can’t you just speak like a normal person, Louise? But I am earnestly encountering a crisis of identity. And thus, I can’t muster the strength to convey it in any other words but the ones that flow so emotionally from my typing fingers.
The burden in question? “Who am I?” A question that is both elementary and self-centered in theme, and yet rests at the forefront of my contemplation.
Initially my tendency is always to explain either a) what I do or b) who I am connected to in relationships. I am a teacher. I am Brigitte Carroll’s daughter. But outside of these things, who am I, Louise, when I do nothing and know no one? I find that I am not only unable to muster a response but I am also terrified of what the truth might be.
For the first time in my life, that I recall, I am without title, position, competence, experience or use. In addition, I am neither intimately connected to nor known by the people I am in daily relationship with. This might sound too analytical, but it’s creating profound uneasiness because I am forced to question the very foundation of my faith. Can I possibly be unknown and useless and still be in God’s will, still be loved by him? Of course the theological side of my mind says, bien sur, don’t be ridiculous, that’s the point! But the part of me that has held my false identity so close for so long is rather reluctant to let these things go. I am seeking the peace to just BE, rather than the need to DO. It is quite contrary to both my culture and my upbringing. We are people of competence and action. How ironic God would bring me all the way to Africa –where there is so much to DO – to learn to do nothing. To wait. I know the adage, we do nothing but what he does through us, but I must confess, I’m not sure I’ve ever done nothing and genuinely been patient enough to wait.
This morning I read:
He will cut down the proud. That lofty tree will be made low. Isaiah 10:33
It caused me to panic; pain is inevitable in this journey away from the will of Louise and into the will of God!
Less than an hour later while sitting on the can (why always the bathroom, Lord?) I read a tiny line in a story about a tree who was excited to be turned, by the carpenter, into a treasure chest.
And herein is the riddle: the tree must be cut down, made low, chiseled and sanded and formed into new and unnatural positions. Only then can it hope to serve any noble purpose.
Ugh. As much as I wish I could tell you how excited I am to serve this purpose he’s intended me for, I must admit I am very reluctant to be chopped down.
And so I am having a melancholy day. The clouds and I are somber as we experiment with the profound consequences of our existence. But, after this full day of rain, there’s a rainbow of promise for sun tomorrow. Perhaps with the morning, the clouds and I will already be able to see how this rain has made way for a tiny green sprout that wasn’t there before, proving even a trace of growth.
Anyway, that’s how it happened again today.
To put this lesson into context let’s begin at the beginning.
Melancholy descended before I even awoke. The night’s dreams lingered well into the morning, muddying the line between fiction and reality. The whole day was intended for melancholy. Fittingly, I feel as heavy as the clouds pregnant with rain, eager to rid myself of this burden.
Oh melodramatic! I know. So melodramatic. Why can’t you just speak like a normal person, Louise? But I am earnestly encountering a crisis of identity. And thus, I can’t muster the strength to convey it in any other words but the ones that flow so emotionally from my typing fingers.
The burden in question? “Who am I?” A question that is both elementary and self-centered in theme, and yet rests at the forefront of my contemplation.
Initially my tendency is always to explain either a) what I do or b) who I am connected to in relationships. I am a teacher. I am Brigitte Carroll’s daughter. But outside of these things, who am I, Louise, when I do nothing and know no one? I find that I am not only unable to muster a response but I am also terrified of what the truth might be.
For the first time in my life, that I recall, I am without title, position, competence, experience or use. In addition, I am neither intimately connected to nor known by the people I am in daily relationship with. This might sound too analytical, but it’s creating profound uneasiness because I am forced to question the very foundation of my faith. Can I possibly be unknown and useless and still be in God’s will, still be loved by him? Of course the theological side of my mind says, bien sur, don’t be ridiculous, that’s the point! But the part of me that has held my false identity so close for so long is rather reluctant to let these things go. I am seeking the peace to just BE, rather than the need to DO. It is quite contrary to both my culture and my upbringing. We are people of competence and action. How ironic God would bring me all the way to Africa –where there is so much to DO – to learn to do nothing. To wait. I know the adage, we do nothing but what he does through us, but I must confess, I’m not sure I’ve ever done nothing and genuinely been patient enough to wait.
This morning I read:
He will cut down the proud. That lofty tree will be made low. Isaiah 10:33
It caused me to panic; pain is inevitable in this journey away from the will of Louise and into the will of God!
Less than an hour later while sitting on the can (why always the bathroom, Lord?) I read a tiny line in a story about a tree who was excited to be turned, by the carpenter, into a treasure chest.
And herein is the riddle: the tree must be cut down, made low, chiseled and sanded and formed into new and unnatural positions. Only then can it hope to serve any noble purpose.
Ugh. As much as I wish I could tell you how excited I am to serve this purpose he’s intended me for, I must admit I am very reluctant to be chopped down.
And so I am having a melancholy day. The clouds and I are somber as we experiment with the profound consequences of our existence. But, after this full day of rain, there’s a rainbow of promise for sun tomorrow. Perhaps with the morning, the clouds and I will already be able to see how this rain has made way for a tiny green sprout that wasn’t there before, proving even a trace of growth.
Monday, January 26, 2009
On a lighter note...
Oh communal living. I keep asserting myself as this hippie-esque creature able and willing to live the life of a socialist. Well my friends, time will tell. Already I am finding myself in the uncomfortable position of being surrounded by people at all times: even when I want to be alone. And, as my lovely roommate Kristie will tell you, I am very ummm what's the word, difficult? when I don't have that sacred time.
Okay, stay tuned, we'll see.
Anyway the point of this post is that there are also serious advantages. Some of these include:
1. People give me food when I run out and can't get to town to buy groceries.
2. I know what's going on.
3. There are at least 4 people who have to pretend to be my friend even if they don't like me.
4. Probably there are many more but I am just waiting to tell you the most exciting one: We started a band. Yep. It's true. I am in a band. Michelle rocks the drums, Kristal on guitar, Lize is vocals and I am also vocals pending the locating of a jambe.
If I come home a rock star, please don't be alarmed.
Okay, stay tuned, we'll see.
Anyway the point of this post is that there are also serious advantages. Some of these include:
1. People give me food when I run out and can't get to town to buy groceries.
2. I know what's going on.
3. There are at least 4 people who have to pretend to be my friend even if they don't like me.
4. Probably there are many more but I am just waiting to tell you the most exciting one: We started a band. Yep. It's true. I am in a band. Michelle rocks the drums, Kristal on guitar, Lize is vocals and I am also vocals pending the locating of a jambe.
If I come home a rock star, please don't be alarmed.
Saturday
The air was thick with moisture as Kristal navigated the combi, our 8 passenger van, through the washed out, red dirt roads of Masoyi. The community of 250,000 live with their chickens and goats huddled under tin roofs. Every hut, large or small, humbly asserts its own claim to the breathtaking view of the valley around Legogote where the voluptuous hills are punctuated with mango trees straining under the weight of their ripening fruit. The clouds hung low over the mountain tops making the sky simultaneously intimate and ominous. The beauty somehow absorbs the real state of things; somehow it blooms around the sadness of the passing funerals.
After successfully manipulating the combi around impassable corners and over roads so puckered “pothole” seems laughable, we arrive at Mxolisi’s. Following the expert example of Lacey and Kristal I make a beeline for Mxolisi’s gogo. I give her my bravest impression of SiSwati pleasantries: a South African handshake and a lame sauobona!, all the while awestruck by the easy way my other two traveling companions can move the words around their mouth without spitting or choking. We then sit down and engage this lovely babushka-clad gogo in a language free conversation: we nod and smile and point and look around, Mxolisi too shy to say much.
Before long we’re drinking tea and eating mangos (skin on!), slurping and grinning with Mxolisi’s aunt, as orange juice splashes on our skirts and sticks to our cheeks. Gradually family members drop by and the house is buzzing with aunts and babies and cousins and uncles. “Grrrrreeet them, each and every one!” the aunt says firmly to a shy cousin as she pats and rocks this brand new bundle of baby in her lap. “My first grandson!” she tells us proudly.
The smiles are easy and quick; the laughter robust and genuine. It’s hard to believe that out of the same smiling lips and jovial mannerisms we will also hear about the pain.
“AIDS is alive!” she tells us somberly.
And it’s true. In this family Mxolisi was orphaned at age 12 and now lives with his gogo (grandmother) and aunt – who has watched 4 siblings die. “We are dying!” she tells us. “I must teach these kids to cook and clean now, because who knows what happens to me.”
Never have I seen death and life woven together into the picture of what they actually are: one whole, a cycle. The first inevitable upon initiation of the latter. No one is seeking a handout or a cure. Or perhaps they are. Regardless they see clearly the correlation: Death is life.
I’m not sure what to do in a place where to die in your twenties is not considered young, in a place where cholera kills, in a place where the future is assuredly a painful place. I’m not sure what to do in a place where people find such courage and bravery in the face of such scarcity. I guess I’ll just slurp my tea, thankful for patient teachers. Teachers who will reveal the mystery of colliding worlds: mine ripe with potential, mango juice on my face; the other wise and joyful, loss etched into hers.
After successfully manipulating the combi around impassable corners and over roads so puckered “pothole” seems laughable, we arrive at Mxolisi’s. Following the expert example of Lacey and Kristal I make a beeline for Mxolisi’s gogo. I give her my bravest impression of SiSwati pleasantries: a South African handshake and a lame sauobona!, all the while awestruck by the easy way my other two traveling companions can move the words around their mouth without spitting or choking. We then sit down and engage this lovely babushka-clad gogo in a language free conversation: we nod and smile and point and look around, Mxolisi too shy to say much.
Before long we’re drinking tea and eating mangos (skin on!), slurping and grinning with Mxolisi’s aunt, as orange juice splashes on our skirts and sticks to our cheeks. Gradually family members drop by and the house is buzzing with aunts and babies and cousins and uncles. “Grrrrreeet them, each and every one!” the aunt says firmly to a shy cousin as she pats and rocks this brand new bundle of baby in her lap. “My first grandson!” she tells us proudly.
The smiles are easy and quick; the laughter robust and genuine. It’s hard to believe that out of the same smiling lips and jovial mannerisms we will also hear about the pain.
“AIDS is alive!” she tells us somberly.
And it’s true. In this family Mxolisi was orphaned at age 12 and now lives with his gogo (grandmother) and aunt – who has watched 4 siblings die. “We are dying!” she tells us. “I must teach these kids to cook and clean now, because who knows what happens to me.”
Never have I seen death and life woven together into the picture of what they actually are: one whole, a cycle. The first inevitable upon initiation of the latter. No one is seeking a handout or a cure. Or perhaps they are. Regardless they see clearly the correlation: Death is life.
I’m not sure what to do in a place where to die in your twenties is not considered young, in a place where cholera kills, in a place where the future is assuredly a painful place. I’m not sure what to do in a place where people find such courage and bravery in the face of such scarcity. I guess I’ll just slurp my tea, thankful for patient teachers. Teachers who will reveal the mystery of colliding worlds: mine ripe with potential, mango juice on my face; the other wise and joyful, loss etched into hers.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
sanibonani!
It's amazing all the ideas that have been floating around in my head about this continent. Africa is like this magical place in my imagination; a world of beauty and poverty; hope and helplessness; faith and despair. I've been dreaming about this place for quite some time.
I suppose it's those dreams that made my arrival seem both foreign and anti-climactic. Can it really be that South Africa is so much like my own home?
My first "African" experience was the last thing I could have anticipated. My arrival in Nelspruit, a mere 30 min drive from my soon to be new home, was exactly like any city I might have seen in my lifetime. Cars and shops and houses and people and normal life. Brooke and Jed, who came to fetch Kristal and I from the bus drop point, took us to a local mall for coffee before we headed home. I must say my surprise was total upon discovering I was having coffee in a place that looked exactly like the home I'd just left.
When we arrived at Hands Village, where I will be living for the next 6 months, I was again surprised to discover the comfort of my accommodation. Yes, running water (hot and cold), my own room, electricity in every room, a big kitchen, etc., etc. I'd be lying if I said I didn't go to bed with a lingering, What the hell am I doing here!?! bouncing off the inside of my brain.
But that was all before yesterday. Yesterday began with a small group meeting and like any belaboured "churchy" thing we exchanged names and pleasantries. Being the new person everyone was very nice, very Christian with me. My sentiments from the previous evening were still guiding my thoughts and so I was not expecting what came when one of the leaders asked what people had done over the holidays. But it was precisely then I discovered, I am not in Kansas anymore.
One couple had just returned (with Malaria) from a trip to Mozambique where they visited a Hands at Work center that served an enormous number of people, all starving as a result of too much rain way too late. During their stay they also visited a jail, perhaps 12x12 feet, which housed 120 men, none of whom had been fed in days. The inmates begged them to stay knowing their presence was the only chance for accountability to the guards, who were only depriving food to the inmates as they were starving themselves.
Another woman spoke of visiting her sister, a recent and illegal refugee from Zimbabwe. Her sister is living in some slum outside of Johannesburg where the whole family stands in a corner when it rains because the roof has so many holes. They must then use buckets to clear the house of the incredible amounts of water that pour in. This woman said she was learning from her sister how to be more thankful because somehow in the struggle, the sister is full of joy. (This was also the first person to pray for me in Africa.)
And that was before I got to visit Daantjie and Spelanyane. These are two communities in the mountains surrounding Hands Village (where I live). Thousands of people live in tiny shacks, some big shacks, littering the hills. We saw streets full of children in uniform walking home after school, every second one waving and calling umgulu! (white person) as we passed. Some, of course, were not wearing uniforms because they couldn't afford to go to school. We dropped off food to one of the community centers where a massive group of volunteers from the community where waiting to greet the kids after school and feed them a meal.
At the third place we visited, a huge group of the cutest kids I've ever seen gathered with the promise of new shoes. Unfortunately only 22 got shoes, the other 20 or so watched curiously and inched closer and closer to the action, all smiles and shyness.
This morning was already awesome as I got to teach one of the volunteers from the community how to use Excel (a program I first discovered an hour before teaching her!). While I was busy explaining how to make formulae, she was patiently teaching me to say Ngiyabonga - (thank-you - which turns out to be a surprisingly difficult word to pronounce). And today is hardly over! I get to visit another community, Kanyamazane, with more food parcels this afternoon.
I felt all day yesterday like at any moment I could burst into tears. Not sadness. Not joy. Just this overwhelming feeling like, Oh, so this is the face of Jesus! I got to hold Jesus on my lap yesterday. I got to see her giggle when I taught her to give me five. Buhle, beautiful. This little Jesus was at the community center called Thuthukani which means we are growing up. How fitting for little buhle, and for me. Thuthukani - we're both growing up.
I suppose it's those dreams that made my arrival seem both foreign and anti-climactic. Can it really be that South Africa is so much like my own home?
My first "African" experience was the last thing I could have anticipated. My arrival in Nelspruit, a mere 30 min drive from my soon to be new home, was exactly like any city I might have seen in my lifetime. Cars and shops and houses and people and normal life. Brooke and Jed, who came to fetch Kristal and I from the bus drop point, took us to a local mall for coffee before we headed home. I must say my surprise was total upon discovering I was having coffee in a place that looked exactly like the home I'd just left.
When we arrived at Hands Village, where I will be living for the next 6 months, I was again surprised to discover the comfort of my accommodation. Yes, running water (hot and cold), my own room, electricity in every room, a big kitchen, etc., etc. I'd be lying if I said I didn't go to bed with a lingering, What the hell am I doing here!?! bouncing off the inside of my brain.
But that was all before yesterday. Yesterday began with a small group meeting and like any belaboured "churchy" thing we exchanged names and pleasantries. Being the new person everyone was very nice, very Christian with me. My sentiments from the previous evening were still guiding my thoughts and so I was not expecting what came when one of the leaders asked what people had done over the holidays. But it was precisely then I discovered, I am not in Kansas anymore.
One couple had just returned (with Malaria) from a trip to Mozambique where they visited a Hands at Work center that served an enormous number of people, all starving as a result of too much rain way too late. During their stay they also visited a jail, perhaps 12x12 feet, which housed 120 men, none of whom had been fed in days. The inmates begged them to stay knowing their presence was the only chance for accountability to the guards, who were only depriving food to the inmates as they were starving themselves.
Another woman spoke of visiting her sister, a recent and illegal refugee from Zimbabwe. Her sister is living in some slum outside of Johannesburg where the whole family stands in a corner when it rains because the roof has so many holes. They must then use buckets to clear the house of the incredible amounts of water that pour in. This woman said she was learning from her sister how to be more thankful because somehow in the struggle, the sister is full of joy. (This was also the first person to pray for me in Africa.)
And that was before I got to visit Daantjie and Spelanyane. These are two communities in the mountains surrounding Hands Village (where I live). Thousands of people live in tiny shacks, some big shacks, littering the hills. We saw streets full of children in uniform walking home after school, every second one waving and calling umgulu! (white person) as we passed. Some, of course, were not wearing uniforms because they couldn't afford to go to school. We dropped off food to one of the community centers where a massive group of volunteers from the community where waiting to greet the kids after school and feed them a meal.
At the third place we visited, a huge group of the cutest kids I've ever seen gathered with the promise of new shoes. Unfortunately only 22 got shoes, the other 20 or so watched curiously and inched closer and closer to the action, all smiles and shyness.
This morning was already awesome as I got to teach one of the volunteers from the community how to use Excel (a program I first discovered an hour before teaching her!). While I was busy explaining how to make formulae, she was patiently teaching me to say Ngiyabonga - (thank-you - which turns out to be a surprisingly difficult word to pronounce). And today is hardly over! I get to visit another community, Kanyamazane, with more food parcels this afternoon.
I felt all day yesterday like at any moment I could burst into tears. Not sadness. Not joy. Just this overwhelming feeling like, Oh, so this is the face of Jesus! I got to hold Jesus on my lap yesterday. I got to see her giggle when I taught her to give me five. Buhle, beautiful. This little Jesus was at the community center called Thuthukani which means we are growing up. How fitting for little buhle, and for me. Thuthukani - we're both growing up.
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