Monday, August 11, 2008
Last week Monday, August 4, John, Scarlett, and I spent the day at the Community Care Center, a day care center in KwaMhlanga. The Center is run by Emma, a nurse at Nakekela and her husband, Amos (pronounced Ah-mose), who is a minister. The Center is a ministry of his church. John and I both absolutely love Emma, who is one of the sweetest women I’ve ever met. She and Amos have a real heart for kids. They have several of their own children, plus an adopted son, whose mother had died of AIDS at Nakekela. Emma had promised his mother that she would take him in if something ever happened. Mrs. Miskin explained to me that the fact that Emma and Amos stay in KwaMhlanga is also very special. Both are intelligent, educated people who could easily live a middle class life here in Pretoria. Rather than taking the easy way out, however, they stay in KwaMhlanga, caring for the people who live there. At one point, there was no church building for Amos’s congregation, so rather than live in the parsonage that had been built for them, Emma and Amos used it as a church, and were living in a tiny shack in one of the township settlements. When Mrs. Miskin found out about that, she worked to get money donated so that they could move into the parsonage, adding on so that it could still also be used as the church. It is people like Emma and Amos that give hope for the future here in South Africa. They are an incredible couple who are an amazing example of God’s grace and provision.
We arrived at the center a little after eight. The kids arrive between 7:30 and 8:30, some dropped off by family, a few walking, and many being picked up by the Center’s truck because they have no access to transportation. When we walked through the door, the kids were all lined up, waiting quietly for directions. One of the teachers told them to start singing, which they did with much enthusiasm. Since they were not singing in English, John, Scarlett and I decided that perhaps they were putting Zulu curses on us, lol. Kids kept trickling in. Scarlett must have looked especially motherly that day, because two of the little boys came up to her and handed her money, which we figured out later was for candy that the kids could buy.
When all the kids had arrived, they separated into two groups, one of five and six year olds, and one of those younger than that. There were about 40 five and sixes, maybe 10 toddlers, and two or three who could barely walk. Each classroom had two teachers, and the three of us went into the older kids’ room. I was very impressed at how well behaved the kids were. I kept trying to imagine forty five year olds in a classroom at home, and I got a headache just thinking about it. There were one or two loners, who kind of hung back, and a couple who had a bit of trouble staying on task, but by and large, they all followed directions and stayed organized extremely well. Furthermore, as I watched, I noticed that some of the kids took definite leadership roles, and that they helped out Alice, the teacher, out quite a bit. One little girl, Precious, especially stuck out to me. She led the songs, she went after wandering kids, she helped bring food, she was the one that Alice called on whenever she needed help. The whole dynamic was just different than what I would typically expect of a forty child kindergarten classroom.
After a quick breakfast of porridge, Alice had prepared a lesson on vegetables. She jabbered away to the kids, while the three of us sat in the circle, utterly bemused, except for a few words (tomato, lettuce, carrot) here and there. After that was done, I told the story of creation, complete with big pictures. The kids don’t speak English, so Alice translated for us. We mostly understood Alice, and I think she mostly understood us, but there were definitely moments of confusion, so John and I were a bit concerned about what was getting “lost in translation”, so to speak, but hopefully most of it got through. Later on, John told his story, of Zaccheus. His story went smoothly, except for when he lost his train of thought at one point, and informed the kids that, “The Pharisees couldn’t figure out why Jesus was hanging out with Zaccheus.” We all started cracking up, imagining how many ways the literal translation of “hanging out” could be taken. Scarlett’s story of Jesus and the little children also went quite well.
After my story, we went outside to play. It made me sad to see the “playground” the kids had. I couldn’t help picturing recess when I was little, the huge yellow and blue swing-set with countless varieties of swings and slides, at least three sets of monkey bars, a couple merry-go-rounds, not even to mention all the balls and jump ropes and hopscotch grids we had, plus the basketball courts and baseball diamond, and the huge field of green grass to play on. This playground consisted of two swings that were of questionable safety, an old jungle gym with a little slide, a jump rope, several inexplicable bowling pins, and a flat soccer ball. That was it for forty-something kids. The yard was mostly dirt with a few scattered patches of weeds and dead grass.
I suppose kids see things differently, though. They ran around, playing the games children everywhere play. Scarlett and I drew a hopscotch game in the dirt with a stick and tried to teach them how to play. Some of the older kids figured it out pretty well, but the younger ones…well, they got the hop part, but that was about it. Poor Alice wanted them to understand it so badly, it was almost comical watching her help the kids throw their stone and then count, one, two, one, one, one, two, and get frustrated when they skipped entire sections or just happily ran through the whole game. After hopscotch got boring, we showed them how to play duck, duck, goose. This turned out to be the highlight of the day. It took a couple rounds for them to understand who got to run, and when, but they all caught on to that part eventually. What was absolutely hysterical was the ducking part. They understood the duck, but they were a little shaky on when to say goose. For awhile there was a lot of duck, duck, duck, DUUUUUCK, with the DUUUUCK part really signifying goose. Also, Mrs. Miskin reminded us that our English is accented differently than what they are accustomed to hearing, and she turned out to be correct. Once they understood that DUUUUUCK is not equivalent to goose, somehow, goose got translated to mouse in their heads, so it became duck, duck, duck, MOUSE! It was SO funny.
We headed inside for lunch after duck, duck, goose. Lunch for the kids consisted of pap, the thick mashed potatoish stuff that we had eaten at Nakekela, and beans. They ate with their hands, which, needless to say, got pretty messy. When they were finished eating, they all carried their plates to the kitchen, and then found their backpacks, in which each had a washcloth. They brought them to one of the little girls, who washed their faces for them. It was easily one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. John, Scarlett and I had brought our own lunch, which we hungrily devoured.
After lunch, we all hung out in the classroom. Scarlett told her story, and we taught the kids to play patty cake. That was a big hit, wow. They all were arguing over who got to play with us. They also loved playing with Scarlett’s hair, and I was thankful mine was up that day. I found myself talking to them like they understood English, which must have been pretty comical. It was equally hilarious watching them talk to us, clearly asking us questions, and just nodding in agreement, with absolutely no clue as to what we were agreeing to.
Mrs. Miskin came around 1:30, and I for one, was completely exhausted. When we got home, I had every intention of taking a nap, but alas, the best laid plans, and all that. I went with Gordon to Spar, and got some much needed chocolate and some pineapple Fanta, amazingly good stuff, fyi, for myself. I also located the toy aisle, and bought a ball and some bubbles, and another jump rope for the kids at the center.
Sadly, Scarlett had to go back to school, so on Tuesday, John and I went around with Dori, which John is going to tell you about. On Wednesday, John and I split up. John went to Mukanyo, the seminary where Mr. Miskin teaches, which he will tell you about, and I went back to the center. The kids appeared to be really excited to see me, which made my day. They immediately started trying to play patty cake with me, so apparently that was the game that stuck the most in their minds. There weren’t nearly as many kids on Wednesday as there had been on Monday, because there was a strike going on, something about high food prices, so the families were at home, and kept the kids home, as well. There were still about 20 kids to hang out with, though.
I showed them the stuff I had brought them, and I thought they were going to have heart attacks they were so excited. I blew bubbles for so long that I got light headed and felt faint, at which point I decided it was probably time to put them away. We played soccer, sort of. I say sort of because the kids only wanted to kick the ball about half the time. The other half they were chasing it and picking it up whenever they saw fit, making soccer a bit difficult. We also played a whole bunch more duck duck mouse, before it was time to go inside.
Alice had the kids making paper carrots, so I helped glue shredded cardboard to the carrot shape, and take them outside to dry. The other helper, Mama, the kids called her, had written names on each carrot, so later, when we went back outside to get them, I tried to help by reading the names. The hysterical laughter that greeted my pronunciation of the words told me that I was mostly unsuccessful. We painted them orange once the glue had dried.
I hadn’t prepared a story, but instead planned on teaching them a new game, or maybe a song, depending on how the day went. While we waited for the carrots to dry, I taught them the Itsy Bitsy Spider. I sang it through about 900 times, I’m pretty sure. I wrote it out for Alice, which I think helped her understand what I was singing, because, again, my accent was weird to them. The kids figured out the hand motions quickly, and the first few lines, but I decided that it was going to take a little longer for them to learn all the words. We sat looking at books for awhile, and I discovered that some of the kids knew their colors and numbers, along with a few animals and foods. They also knew their body parts, which inspired me to start teaching them Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes. Mrs. Miskin came for me a little after 3, by which time most of the kids had left, and by which time I was completely exhausted. It made me have a lot of respect for Alice and for kindergarten teachers in general; kids tire you out!
We went to Mukanyo and Mrs. Miskin gave me the grand tour. We peaked at John and some of the students, and I took a few pictures. Mr. Miskin wasn’t done teaching until 5, so we went over to the farm to visit Dori and the Kuivenhovens for awhile. On the way, we spotted two people who Mrs. Miskin recognized, friends of Rose and Randy who were staying at the farm, so we gave them a ride home. We picked up John and Mr. Miskin right on time, and headed home. Since it was pretty late by the time we got home, we ordered pizza for supper, which was SO good. I had no idea I could miss pizza as much as I apparently had.
John and I spent the day at the Care Center again on Thursday, doing much of the same things as we had the previous times. The kids were all back again, so there were more than enough to keep us busy. At lunch time, John and I were in charge of washing faces. It turns out the water they use there is just short of BOILING. I’m pretty sure it took off a layer of skin from my hands. Mama, the teacher, had warned me that it was hot, but the look on my face must have comically displayed my surprise and pain, because she laughed pretty hard at me. By this time, I had definitely fallen in love with the kids. We played more duck, duck, goose, a little bit of catch, practiced the Itsy Bitsy Spider, and officially learned Head and Shoulders. This last turned out to be pretty funny, because the kids, for some reason, turned “knees and toes” to “knees and shows”. They said it right if we made them do it one word at a time, but as soon as we started singing, it got mixed up again. John somehow decided that the louder he bellowed it, the more quickly they would catch on, which made me laugh even harder. Later, we figured that maybe they were trying to say “knees and shoes”, but at the time we were SO confused, it was hilarious.
When we got home, we went with Gordon to pick up Scarlett from school. We stopped at the side of the road and bought sweet presents for our moms. Mrs. Sikma, let me tell you that John had no intention of getting you guys ANYTHING until Mrs. Miskin and I got on his back, so right up until then, even if I’d left extra room in my bag, there would have been nothing to put in it, haha. Back at the Miskin’s house, it had started to occur to the five of us that John and I were going to be leaving soon, and none of us liked that prospect very much. I dragged Gordon on a walk around the block. Fyi, no one assaulted us, and not once did we have to run from angry people with pitch forks or anything. It was so nice that when we got back, I made the other three come with us on another one.
On Friday, John and I finally got the chance to go with Gordon to his classes at university. As soon as we got on campus, I was struck by how similar it was to Grand Valley. Gordon had a difficult time finding parking (sound familiar?), and then we had to rush to class because we were running a bit late. His first class was packed full, so John and I just hung out and soaked up the atmosphere. Just like GV, there were all kind of people to watch, and we fit right in, in keeping with Gordon’s admonitions that we be careful not to embarrass him. His other class of the day was Accounting. We had a couple extra minutes in between, so we took the scenic route to the class. There was a commons area similar to Kirkhoff, and benches, tables, and grassy areas all over the place. The buildings were beautiful, many of them pretty old, so those were nice to see. It occurred to me that it would be SO nice if winter at GV was as nice at home as it is here in Pretoria. No snow drifts, no black ice, no panicked clutching of the arm of the person you’re walking with to keep from falling on your face…it would be awfully nice. Accounting class was in a big lecture hall and conducted by a very enthusiastic professor. While he blabbered away about selling prices and profit margins, I worked on this post. The class itself was very similar to a class at Grand Valley, just a bit bigger.
We had plans to go to the apartheid museum on Friday afternoon. I was really excited to go because of everything I had learned in my Africa class about South Africa right at the end of the year. Gordon and John weren’t quite as enthusiastic, but they were good sports. It was quite an ordeal to get there, let me tell you. First Gordon had to figure out where he was going, then we couldn’t leave the house until we had the map, which he spent a good twenty minutes looking for, until he decided it must have been with his mom in KwaMhlanga, at which point he tried to Mapquest directions, but the Internet was to slow…I thought he was going to punch someone. Once we finally made it on the road, the trip was about an hour long, but it turned into an hour and a half because we missed our exit not once, but about 5 times all told. I was trying hard to keep from laughing, but I don’t think poor Gordon, who hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, was quite as jolly about the whole experience.
Apartheid was the practice of “apartness” that was implemented in South Africa by the Afrikaaners in 1948. It separated people by race, and told them where they could live and work accordingly. It lasted until the early 1990’s, before officially being abolished in 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected in free elections. Under apartheid, the native people were severely oppressed, and are still suffering the effects from both an economical and social standpoint. The museum itself was extremely interesting. It was a lot of reading, so it took quite some time to go through. In fact, we ran out of time, because we had to leave at four to avoid traffic. They showed movies throughout the museum, including several speeches of both men who condoned apartheid and those who fought it, some of the resistance efforts, interviews of people affected by apartheid, and one of the rioting at Sharpsville.
This last moved me to tears, as I watched young black men and women being beaten by white police officers. The senselessness and unfairness of the cruel violence was extremely upsetting. I have such a hard time understanding the ideas behind apartheid. Who are we to say that we are better than anyone else? God created every single one of us in His image; no one is superior to anyone else. I hate violence; I always have, though I understand that sometimes it is necessary. I hate the fact that, despite years of attempted peaceful protest against apartheid, the people finally had to move to more extreme measures to be heard by the government. The museum was very effective in showing the events that led up to apartheid, as well as the efforts to abolish it. I learned a lot, and I think John and Gordon did, as well.
Even though we left the museum early, we still got stuck in traffic. The trip home ended up taking just as long as the trip to the museum. We took the scenic route home when Gordon took the wrong way when the highway split. I had started feeling the effects of a cold on Thursday, and by the time we headed home, I was feeling it in full force. Allow me to tell you that lotion Kleenex is one of the necessities of life, and in the past couple of days, I’ve determined that the toilet paper here, which is definitely not Quilted Northern or anything remotely soft, is NOT a viable alternative. By the end of last night, it literally brought tears to my eyes to blow my nose with that stuff.
Anyway, we got back to the Miskin’s a little before six, and picked up the girls to go out for dinner to a place called Spur. Our poor waitress was much better at speaking Afrikaans than English, and I think we succeeded in completely confusing her. Scarlett got her words mixed up, making it sound like she was ordering 400g of fries, along with her 400g of ribs, which made Morgy crack up. The waitress laughed also, though I’m not sure she fully understood what was going on. Then, when they brought our food, somehow we ended up with an extra set of ribs. We tried to explain that no, those were NOT ours, but when the bill came, we were charged for them anyway. Gordon eventually got it sorted out, and we left her a good tip to make up for all the confusion.
By the time we got back to the house, I was NOT feeling well. As I’m sure most of you know, I’m NOT a fun person to be around when I’m sick. John had given me the cold, so he was definitely in the dog house. We had rented two movies, which we watched to end the evening. I’m going to miss cramming the five of us, all cuddled up on the couch in the TV room.
On Saturday, we headed out to Gold Reef City, which, incidentally, was right across from the Apartheid Museum. Gold Reef City is an amusement park similar to Michigan Adventure. Nathan came with us. It was a beautiful day. The Miskin fear of heights was again brought front and center. John, Nathan, and I probably should have teased them a bit less, but it was hilarious. I rode next to Gordon on the Golden Loop, and could NOT stop laughing at his bellows of fear when the ride started, “Mooooooo-mmyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!” We waited for an hour and a half for the Tower of Terror, which basically takes you straight up about 6 floors, and then drops you. I was definitely terrified, I HATE that free fall (and I’m freeeeee, free faaaaaaaaallin’…) feel. On the Ferris Wheel, John and Nathan had the three Miskinvich’s completely terrified rocking the basket we were in, and John made Scarlett shriek in terror when he bellowed, “aaaaack, the BOLT!” All in all, the day was a great success, and we all had a ton of fun. It was a perfect way to spend our last weekend.
I had felt fine until around 1, at which point I was pretty sure I was going to die at any minute of acute cold-itis. We got home tired and hungry, only to hear the Drs. Miskin were going out for dinner, and we were on our own for food. Not a single one of us felt up to cooking anything, so I proposed pizza again. We were all feeling quite broke, but in the end, our laziness won out and we took up a collection and ordered pizza. John and I both noticed that the large pizzas here in Africa are maaaaaybe the size of a medium pizza at home. In fact, almost everything, right down to the shampoo bottles, is smaller here. The six of us, with Nathan, finished our two pizzas in record time, and sat down to watch Rat Race. Six of us crammed on the poor couch made it a bit cozy, but we managed. I think I’ll laugh at that movie no matter how many times I see it (“It is a race. I’m winning, I’m winning,” and, “Look, a drifter, let’s kill him.”). We stayed up for awhile longer and watched SNL. You know how when you’re sick, all you want is your mom? Well, I was pretty much crying for my mom, by that point, so I figured it was time to call it a night, and went to bed.
Sunday morning rolled around and poor Scarlett had to wake me up. I almost clobbered her for her efforts, as I had absolutely NO desire to drag my sorry butt out of bed, but, luckily for her, I restrained myself and got up. I walked in the kitchen, only to smell the strong odor of wine. John had opened the fridge too fast and broken a bottle on the floor. By the time he finished cleaning it up, we had less than 10 minutes before we had to leave, but John hit the shower and got ready in record time. Rev. Kuivenhoven, from the farm, was preaching that morning. We had everyone from the farm over for lunch, and we took a bunch of pictures that afternoon.
We all took naps, though when I say we, I actually mean they. Mrs. Miskin had given me Dayquil, and about 20 minutes into my nap, I woke up, and couldn’t fall back asleep for the longest time. Then, just as I was about to drift off, the stupid dogs started barking. This, of course, lurched me back into consciousness, until they stopped, at which point I started to drift off again, and they started barking again. This happened about five times before I decided that sleeping was futile, and started packing, instead. I also turned my phone on and found a couple voicemails, and called my house. Luke answered the phone, and it was your typically chaotic VanDyke Sunday lunch. By the time I finished talking to Linz and my mom, everyone else was finally awake. We sang a few songs, ate our last Sunday night French toast, and just hung out until bedtime.
Today was our last full day here. We had planned to go out to the Child Care Center one last time, but we had to switch to Plan B when we found out that the road to KwaMhlanga was closed for reasons that I never did actually piece together. Instead, we did most of the packing up stuff that we planned to do tomorrow. I didn’t have that much to do, so instead I spent most of the morning working on this amazing post, which I’m sure you’re all very thankful for. We went with Dori to the store to get a few groceries, and I was overjoyed to discover Kleenex. Unfortunately, my glee turned to sadness when I opened the package, only to discover that the Kleenex here is pretty much as unforgiving to the nose as the toilet paper. I nearly burst into tears right there at the end of the checkout lane, before it occurred to me that crying would only make my nose run more, a prospect that I was not willing to chance.
Since we had going to Gold Reef City on Saturday, rather than to the nature reserve that was our other option, Nathan had offered to take us to some lion breeding place today, which was what we did in the afternoon. Nathan came to get John and I around 2:30, and the three of us plus the girls and Handsome, the guy that we met our first Friday here, headed out. The place, whose name I’ve forgotten, though I know it starts with a U and it has a K or two in it, was an hour away. Handsome regaled us with stories about his days out on a lodge similar to the one we were headed two, telling us about lions and such.
We arrived and met our guide, who wasn’t much of a talker. He first showed us two little lion kittens which were 8 weeks old. They were SO cute; it’s easy to see why people would try to make pets out of them. We petted and played with them for a bit, until they got tired of us and kept wandering away. From there we walked toward the enclosures where the bigger lions are kept. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t go pet the big ones. A few of the “teenagers”, lions who were about the size of dogs but a lot stronger, were in another area, where we could go, and one of those jumped on John and tried to eat his arm off. The good news is that he was unsuccessful. The enclosures were big, and the lions all seemed happy. The lions were enormous, and I developed a healthy respect for them. Our guide informed us that they only eat about once a week, but that they eat the equivalent of Scally or Morgy each time. Handsome told us that even though the lions might seem nice, and even trained, you can never completely remove the wild streak from them, and should never trust them. Despite this, they were magnificent, and I really enjoyed seeing them up close.
After the lions, we hopped in an open air benched safari truck thingie. Handsome was our fearless tour guide. He spotted almost every animal that we saw. Our first spotting was of an ostrich. Handsome hopped out of the truck to get a good picture for me, but was hesitant to get too close. He told us about a time when he had gotten chased by a daddy ostrich, and that he wasn’t enthusiastic about repeating the experience. We also saw antelope, springbok, zebras, water buffalo, a big cow-like guy, and something that looked kind of like a llama, the latter two whose names have obviously escaped me. Scarlett spotted an antelope which was quite dead, and had been mostly eaten. We got a few good pictures of the hapless creature that I’ll have to post. I saw several birds, and couldn’t help but think of Scotty and the Bloks, lol. The sun was mostly down by the time we returned to the lodge, and we headed out shortly thereafter.
On the way home, we stopped at McDonalds, and, though this is completely insane, I think I like African fries from Micky D’s better than the ones at home. Don’t tell Ronald. I even got a sweet red balloon…they don’t give those out in Michigan, either! When we got home, Gordon was happy to see us. We took all the pictures I’ve taken this whole trip and transferred them onto Gordon’s computer. He also gave me a bunch of music, and took some of mine. Mrs. Miskin helped us figure out our paper work and all that good stuff, too. We were all pretty tired, and everyone headed to bed early. I’m finishing up this post in my bed, actually. Most of my stuff is packed, and I’ve said goodbye to most of the people I’ve met here. I can’t believe that it’s been a month already; it has flown by. Expect at least one more post when I get home.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The Most Beautiful Place on Earth: Cape Town
We arrived in Cape Town around five on Tuesday (the 29th). Poor Gordon couldn’t come because he had classes, but Scarlett and Morgy skipped school to accompany John and me. Our flight was mostly uneventful, except for the girls being scandalized by the scantily clad girls in the air magazine. We hadn’t checked any bags, so we got right off the plane and out to the pick-up place. Since our bags, and by our I mean my bags, were so insanely heavy due to the fact that I only got one bag for FOUR days, Scarlett left us in the middle of the sidewalk to look for Mike, who is Mrs. Miskin’s youngest brother. In her motherly manner, she found him, and directed him to the spot where we were waiting. She introduced us to Mike, who I liked immediately. He acted as tour guide on the way to the house, pointing out the University of Cape Town housing, a few land marks, and Table Mountain. The city was amazingly beautiful. Brown: Pretoria as green: Cape Town. The grass and the mountains were an emerald green, shocking against the clear, bright blue of the sky. It was a bit warmer there than in Pretoria, and the air seemed slightly heavier, more humid.
When we arrived at the house, we were accosted by two extremely LARGE German Shepherds named Yanick, who John promptly rechristened as Eunuch, and Mojo. Close behind them was Sera (which is the coolest spelling ever, and I might steal it someday), who is six, and an only child. Her mom, Corné, was next to come out, and she graciously welcomed us inside. She showed us girls our rooms, and told John that he could have his pick of couches. We were also greeted inside by three Scottie Terriers, Fergus, Neem, Listie. We were also overwhelmed by the smell of dogs that permeated the whole house. Aside from that, the house itself was incredible, old Victorianish, with high ceilings and large windows, and beautiful decorations.
Sarah took an immediate liking to John, demanding that he ride her ghost train around the house. He was happy to oblige, telling her that they were zombies, and that they should bite Scarlett, Morgan and I so we could be to. Corné cooked us an amazing supper of chicken pot pie and pumpkin that we devoured as if we hadn’t eaten in days. Mike is a doctor, and he had gotten a call to go set some poor sap’s arm shortly after we got home, but he returned and caught the tail end of supper.
On Wednesday, Mike and Corné both had to work, and Sera went to school, so we were on our own in the morning into the early afternoon. The beautiful weather that had greeted us when we arrived was nowhere to be found; it was rainy and FREEZING cold. The people here have this thing where they don’t CLOSE THE WINDOWS when it’s cold out, so pretty much every window in the house was wide open before I got to them. We slept in, and then Mama Scarlett made us breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.
After that, we weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves, so we decided to watch a movie. Unfortunately for us, the technology was far beyond our intellectual abilities, and after half an hour of frustration and irritation, we gave up on the DVD player. We couldn’t go outside, we couldn’t watch a movie, and reading apparently didn’t occur to us. As a result, we ended up sitting on the couch all huddled up (the ancient Inuit Eskimos used to use body heat to keep warm…) under a mountain of blankets (I literally had five over me) from 11 o’clock until about 2 in the afternoon doing absolutely nothing. It was…great bonding time, if nothing else.
Corne arrived home sometime after that, and thankfully rescued us from a certain death by boredom. She had picked Sera up from school, and the two of them entered in a whirlwind, which was made even more chaotic when Mike arrived almost right behind them. They threw around some options of activities for the rest of the afternoon, before settling on a mall, because Mrs. Miskin’s sister Michelle and her husband, Alex, were coming over for dinner. The mall was mostly uneventful, save for lunch at a gourmet burger place which was pretty good, and there was a hot waiter.
Michelle and Alex, along with their two kids, Finn and Mila, came bearing Chinese food and more noise. Another thing about Mike and Corné’s is that nothing is ever QUIET there. Music simply must be played at top volume to be appreciated, and if the cricket game on TV wasn’t as high as it would go, it was impossible to watch. John played Hey Jude for them all, and was roundly applauded. That got Mike and Alex into a huge conversation about music with John that resulted in a whole bunch of songs being played, of course at top volume, for us to appreciate. There was a lot of laughing, a few tears from the kids, and much chocolate consumed all around. Despite a major sensory overload for me, the evening was one of the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here.
Thursday was our day with Johan. Johan is Corné’s brother, and he was really nice. He picked us up around eleven, and our first stop was Long Street. It was a street with lots of little shops with schweet stuff like used book stores, a couple antique-type places, and the like. In a second hand clothes store, we found some incredibly ugly hats that Scarlett, Morgy and I took pictures in, only be to be soundly rebuked by the owner, who informed us that it was generally polite to ASK TO TAKE PICTURES. We cowered out with our tail between our legs. We were starving by then, because we didn’t eat breakfast, so we went to a really good Portuguese chicken place called Nando’s for lunch.
We wandered around Long Street for a little while longer, before heading to the water front. We bought some touristy t-shirts, among other things, and John insulted the sweaters that some poor lady who was selling, despite the fact that the model modeling them was “a model from America”. We stopped at Haagen Dasz and bought exorbitantly priced, but amazingly good, ice cream. We wandered around the pier and had another animal spotting, a seal in the channel. Since the weather was pretty lousy, we hung out in the mall conveniently located right on the water, because we haven’t been to nearly enough malls lately, lol.
On the way home, we stopped at the Cecil Rhodes Memorial, which was in the middle of a mountain and gave a beautiful view over Cape Town and the ocean. We took several amazing pictures, and ran up and down the stairs and sat on the statues and stuff. The traffic in Cape Town is dreadful, so it took us awhile to get home. The rest of the evening passed mostly uneventfully.
The plan for Friday was to head out to the farm in the afternoon. We slept in, had breakfast and such, and left for Corné’s parents farm, which is about an hour outside of Cape Town. Mike drove us and the Scotties out, stopping along the way for gas and lunch. We arrived at the farm after a lengthy detour around the flooded river just a mile from the farm. It rained on and off, but when we got there, it cleared a little. Corné’s parents, Opa and Ouma, were extremely welcoming and hospitable.
We decided to take advantage of the momentary lull in the rain to put on enormous rain boots and take a walk. I wished for my schweet red polka dot ones…Mrs. Sikma, THOSE are what I forgot. The farm was breathtakingly beautiful, lush and green, with mountains all around. The tops of some of the mountains were obscured by wisps of white clouds. There were vineyards all over the place, and a field of Clementine trees, as well. I’m having Calla Lilies at my wedding, and I was delighted to see them growing wild all over the place, along with a myriad of other beautiful wild flowers. We splashed in puddles and mud, enjoying the beauty of creation immensely. The other three accused me of walking too slowly, but I helpfully explained that I was ambling, so hurrying would ruin the amble entirely. Along the way, we saw a bunch of sheep that were afraid of us, and a goat, which wasn’t. He wore a bell and tried to eat Morgy’s scarf. The girls named him Ben-Ben. We also came upon a bunch of geese, which honked at us loudly to be fed.
We returned to the house, only to find that Sera and Corné had arrived safely, and wanted to go on another walk. John and I were a bit tired of walking, and the clouds had returned, promising much rain and storms yet to come, but the group was not the be dissuaded. Scarlett ended up being conned into riding a miniscule bike with Sera. She later informed me that it had seriously messed up her back and knees, poor girl. John and Morgy claimed the four-wheeler, which was rather entertaining, as John had never driven one before. Mike had constructed a cricket field a fifteenish minute walk away, which was where we were going, with only two umbrellas for the 8 of us.
We had just reached the field when I felt the first drops. John and I looked at each other knowingly, claimed an umbrella, and started back. Unfortunately, even with the umbrella, once the rain started, we might as well have been fully exposed. John is a bad umbrella holder, and an even worse path picker. He managed to choose the way with the most enormous puddles and mud. I did, of course, let him pick, and no matter which path he’d chosen, in all fairness, I’m sure I would have objected. None the less, by the time we reached the house, we were soaked clear through, and I was pretty sure I was never going to warm up. Scarlett and Sera rode the four-wheeler back to the house, and they were even worse off than John and I, even though they got there faster. Scarlett said Sera was making little whimpering noises the whole way home, poor thing.
Oupa had cooked us a warm, filling supper that we ate a little while later. At Mike’s house, I was thrilled with the enormous wall of books, and I had chosen A Thousand Splendid Suns, but the same author as The Kite Runner, both of which I’d highly recommend. I finished the book at the farm, so I was equally excited to be shown a large cupboard of even more books, which I went through for awhile. Mike made us a merry fire of yuletide logs that I sat about two inches away from to keep warm. He also hauled out his iPod dock, and made us listen to an entire Damian Rice CD, or “LP” as he called it, before he permitted us to go off and do what we liked for the remainder of the evening.
Unfortunately, the next morning we had to get up and leave right away. Our plane left at 10 am, and we had been planning to leave no later than 8 o’clock. We left only about 15 minutes behind schedule, but, as we were to discover, every minute was important. The drive from the farm back to Cape Town was amazing. The clouds had finally cleared, so the green of the hills was highlighted by the bright blue sky. Furthermore, since the farm was in a valley, we couldn’t see very far in front of us until we headed toward town and broke through the fog of clouds. Once we did, though, the view from the side of the mountain where we stopped for pictures was simply breathtaking. I got an amazing picture that I’ll definitely post when I get home.
We arrived at the airport at 9:40. Yes, our plane was still to leave at 10. Suffice it to say that our goodbyes to Mike were very brief and to the point, something like, “thanksforeverythingitwasreallyfunwe’llseeyoulaterbye!” We sprinted up to the check-in window, only to be told that it had closed 10 minutes before, half an hour before the plane leaves. Our panicked expressions must have swayed the heart of the ticket lady, because she gave us boarding passes despite our tardiness, and pointed us toward our gate. We flew through the airport and made it in time. I only had slight heart failure from the close call. Once on the plane, I discovered that I had been seated in the middle of Scarlett and a rather rotund man who thought it his right to take up his entire space, plus half of mine. Needless to say, I was a bit cozy with Scarlett for most of the flight.
Gordon was supposed to pick us up, but he was nowhere in sight when we emerged from our flight, and Scarlett’s efforts to reach him by phone were futile. We plopped down on a very uncomfortable pole outside to wait. A few minutes later, we got a call from Mrs. Miskin that Gordon and Nathan were, “on the way”, whatever that was supposed to mean. We waited for even longer, before we spotted them walking above us. We decided to embarrass poor Gordon by shrieking loudly and waving our arms. He and Nathan hatched the cunning plan to ignore us completely, despite the fact that they had clearly seen us. We met them eventually, and finally got to set our bags down when we reached the car.
When we reached the Miskin’s house, we discovered Dori and the Kuivenhoven’s, and we made a plan to go to some African market place. The market was 40ish minutes away, but it was mostly worth the drive. It was in a huge warehouse type area, with a million little booths in which the people sold their wares. My major issue with the place was that the people selling things had no qualms about getting in your way and coercing you into their area, with cries of “nice stuff” and “good price for you.” Also, you have to ask the price, and it is considered proper to haggle with them. I’m bad at people being in my space, at asking questions, and also at asserting myself in a haggle type situation. The stuff was really cool, lots of traditional masks and figurines and such, along with modern t-shirts and CD’s and such. We got tired of the market pretty quickly, and wandered around the area, where there were a bunch of cafés and restaurants, as well as a snake park, that Mama Scarlett wouldn’t let us go in because it cost to get in and we had to leave soon, despite the fact that there was a guy trying to break the world record for living with poisonous snakes or something. On the way home, we drove over a river and a pretty dam and stuff, and that night, we turned in after watching Saturday Night Live, our new favorite show.
On Sunday, we again went to Mr. Dr. Rev. Miskin’s church. We continued the series on the Sermon on the Mount, getting to blessed are the merciful, the pure of heart, and the peacemakers. We had only Dori for lunch, so it was pretty quiet. It was then decided that we should go to Rev. Brian DeVries’s church in the afternoon, which started at 3. We dragged ourselves back into our church clothes, and out the door. We arrived at church a bit late, and were befuddled to see that there were no cars in the parking lot. We banged on all the doors before deciding that there must not be a service. Someone called Brian, and he came out of the adjoining house to tell us that indeed, there wasn’t a service at three. We took a quick tour of his house that he shares with two students, before returning home. I took a nap, and then we had another sermon on tape and discussion, before eating French toast for supper.
After dinner, we trooped out to Gordon’s room, ostensibly to study and prepare Bible stories for the kids at the daycare center that John, Scarlett and I were going to visit the next day. Morgy had a bunch of wooden people and shapes that we decided to base our stories around, along with some big pictures from Genesis. It took us awhile to get settled and focused, but eventually I picked the story of creation, Scarlett picked Jesus and the little children, and John the story of Zaccheus. We read the story out of the Bible and rewrote it out in our own words, then practiced them for awhile. Gordon was supposed to be doing accounting or something, but I’m pretty sure he was mostly unsuccessful. We had plans to leave at seven the next morning, so we went to bed around 11.
When we arrived at the house, we were accosted by two extremely LARGE German Shepherds named Yanick, who John promptly rechristened as Eunuch, and Mojo. Close behind them was Sera (which is the coolest spelling ever, and I might steal it someday), who is six, and an only child. Her mom, Corné, was next to come out, and she graciously welcomed us inside. She showed us girls our rooms, and told John that he could have his pick of couches. We were also greeted inside by three Scottie Terriers, Fergus, Neem, Listie. We were also overwhelmed by the smell of dogs that permeated the whole house. Aside from that, the house itself was incredible, old Victorianish, with high ceilings and large windows, and beautiful decorations.
Sarah took an immediate liking to John, demanding that he ride her ghost train around the house. He was happy to oblige, telling her that they were zombies, and that they should bite Scarlett, Morgan and I so we could be to. Corné cooked us an amazing supper of chicken pot pie and pumpkin that we devoured as if we hadn’t eaten in days. Mike is a doctor, and he had gotten a call to go set some poor sap’s arm shortly after we got home, but he returned and caught the tail end of supper.
On Wednesday, Mike and Corné both had to work, and Sera went to school, so we were on our own in the morning into the early afternoon. The beautiful weather that had greeted us when we arrived was nowhere to be found; it was rainy and FREEZING cold. The people here have this thing where they don’t CLOSE THE WINDOWS when it’s cold out, so pretty much every window in the house was wide open before I got to them. We slept in, and then Mama Scarlett made us breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.
After that, we weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves, so we decided to watch a movie. Unfortunately for us, the technology was far beyond our intellectual abilities, and after half an hour of frustration and irritation, we gave up on the DVD player. We couldn’t go outside, we couldn’t watch a movie, and reading apparently didn’t occur to us. As a result, we ended up sitting on the couch all huddled up (the ancient Inuit Eskimos used to use body heat to keep warm…) under a mountain of blankets (I literally had five over me) from 11 o’clock until about 2 in the afternoon doing absolutely nothing. It was…great bonding time, if nothing else.
Corne arrived home sometime after that, and thankfully rescued us from a certain death by boredom. She had picked Sera up from school, and the two of them entered in a whirlwind, which was made even more chaotic when Mike arrived almost right behind them. They threw around some options of activities for the rest of the afternoon, before settling on a mall, because Mrs. Miskin’s sister Michelle and her husband, Alex, were coming over for dinner. The mall was mostly uneventful, save for lunch at a gourmet burger place which was pretty good, and there was a hot waiter.
Michelle and Alex, along with their two kids, Finn and Mila, came bearing Chinese food and more noise. Another thing about Mike and Corné’s is that nothing is ever QUIET there. Music simply must be played at top volume to be appreciated, and if the cricket game on TV wasn’t as high as it would go, it was impossible to watch. John played Hey Jude for them all, and was roundly applauded. That got Mike and Alex into a huge conversation about music with John that resulted in a whole bunch of songs being played, of course at top volume, for us to appreciate. There was a lot of laughing, a few tears from the kids, and much chocolate consumed all around. Despite a major sensory overload for me, the evening was one of the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here.
Thursday was our day with Johan. Johan is Corné’s brother, and he was really nice. He picked us up around eleven, and our first stop was Long Street. It was a street with lots of little shops with schweet stuff like used book stores, a couple antique-type places, and the like. In a second hand clothes store, we found some incredibly ugly hats that Scarlett, Morgy and I took pictures in, only be to be soundly rebuked by the owner, who informed us that it was generally polite to ASK TO TAKE PICTURES. We cowered out with our tail between our legs. We were starving by then, because we didn’t eat breakfast, so we went to a really good Portuguese chicken place called Nando’s for lunch.
We wandered around Long Street for a little while longer, before heading to the water front. We bought some touristy t-shirts, among other things, and John insulted the sweaters that some poor lady who was selling, despite the fact that the model modeling them was “a model from America”. We stopped at Haagen Dasz and bought exorbitantly priced, but amazingly good, ice cream. We wandered around the pier and had another animal spotting, a seal in the channel. Since the weather was pretty lousy, we hung out in the mall conveniently located right on the water, because we haven’t been to nearly enough malls lately, lol.
On the way home, we stopped at the Cecil Rhodes Memorial, which was in the middle of a mountain and gave a beautiful view over Cape Town and the ocean. We took several amazing pictures, and ran up and down the stairs and sat on the statues and stuff. The traffic in Cape Town is dreadful, so it took us awhile to get home. The rest of the evening passed mostly uneventfully.
The plan for Friday was to head out to the farm in the afternoon. We slept in, had breakfast and such, and left for Corné’s parents farm, which is about an hour outside of Cape Town. Mike drove us and the Scotties out, stopping along the way for gas and lunch. We arrived at the farm after a lengthy detour around the flooded river just a mile from the farm. It rained on and off, but when we got there, it cleared a little. Corné’s parents, Opa and Ouma, were extremely welcoming and hospitable.
We decided to take advantage of the momentary lull in the rain to put on enormous rain boots and take a walk. I wished for my schweet red polka dot ones…Mrs. Sikma, THOSE are what I forgot. The farm was breathtakingly beautiful, lush and green, with mountains all around. The tops of some of the mountains were obscured by wisps of white clouds. There were vineyards all over the place, and a field of Clementine trees, as well. I’m having Calla Lilies at my wedding, and I was delighted to see them growing wild all over the place, along with a myriad of other beautiful wild flowers. We splashed in puddles and mud, enjoying the beauty of creation immensely. The other three accused me of walking too slowly, but I helpfully explained that I was ambling, so hurrying would ruin the amble entirely. Along the way, we saw a bunch of sheep that were afraid of us, and a goat, which wasn’t. He wore a bell and tried to eat Morgy’s scarf. The girls named him Ben-Ben. We also came upon a bunch of geese, which honked at us loudly to be fed.
We returned to the house, only to find that Sera and Corné had arrived safely, and wanted to go on another walk. John and I were a bit tired of walking, and the clouds had returned, promising much rain and storms yet to come, but the group was not the be dissuaded. Scarlett ended up being conned into riding a miniscule bike with Sera. She later informed me that it had seriously messed up her back and knees, poor girl. John and Morgy claimed the four-wheeler, which was rather entertaining, as John had never driven one before. Mike had constructed a cricket field a fifteenish minute walk away, which was where we were going, with only two umbrellas for the 8 of us.
We had just reached the field when I felt the first drops. John and I looked at each other knowingly, claimed an umbrella, and started back. Unfortunately, even with the umbrella, once the rain started, we might as well have been fully exposed. John is a bad umbrella holder, and an even worse path picker. He managed to choose the way with the most enormous puddles and mud. I did, of course, let him pick, and no matter which path he’d chosen, in all fairness, I’m sure I would have objected. None the less, by the time we reached the house, we were soaked clear through, and I was pretty sure I was never going to warm up. Scarlett and Sera rode the four-wheeler back to the house, and they were even worse off than John and I, even though they got there faster. Scarlett said Sera was making little whimpering noises the whole way home, poor thing.
Oupa had cooked us a warm, filling supper that we ate a little while later. At Mike’s house, I was thrilled with the enormous wall of books, and I had chosen A Thousand Splendid Suns, but the same author as The Kite Runner, both of which I’d highly recommend. I finished the book at the farm, so I was equally excited to be shown a large cupboard of even more books, which I went through for awhile. Mike made us a merry fire of yuletide logs that I sat about two inches away from to keep warm. He also hauled out his iPod dock, and made us listen to an entire Damian Rice CD, or “LP” as he called it, before he permitted us to go off and do what we liked for the remainder of the evening.
Unfortunately, the next morning we had to get up and leave right away. Our plane left at 10 am, and we had been planning to leave no later than 8 o’clock. We left only about 15 minutes behind schedule, but, as we were to discover, every minute was important. The drive from the farm back to Cape Town was amazing. The clouds had finally cleared, so the green of the hills was highlighted by the bright blue sky. Furthermore, since the farm was in a valley, we couldn’t see very far in front of us until we headed toward town and broke through the fog of clouds. Once we did, though, the view from the side of the mountain where we stopped for pictures was simply breathtaking. I got an amazing picture that I’ll definitely post when I get home.
We arrived at the airport at 9:40. Yes, our plane was still to leave at 10. Suffice it to say that our goodbyes to Mike were very brief and to the point, something like, “thanksforeverythingitwasreallyfunwe’llseeyoulaterbye!” We sprinted up to the check-in window, only to be told that it had closed 10 minutes before, half an hour before the plane leaves. Our panicked expressions must have swayed the heart of the ticket lady, because she gave us boarding passes despite our tardiness, and pointed us toward our gate. We flew through the airport and made it in time. I only had slight heart failure from the close call. Once on the plane, I discovered that I had been seated in the middle of Scarlett and a rather rotund man who thought it his right to take up his entire space, plus half of mine. Needless to say, I was a bit cozy with Scarlett for most of the flight.
Gordon was supposed to pick us up, but he was nowhere in sight when we emerged from our flight, and Scarlett’s efforts to reach him by phone were futile. We plopped down on a very uncomfortable pole outside to wait. A few minutes later, we got a call from Mrs. Miskin that Gordon and Nathan were, “on the way”, whatever that was supposed to mean. We waited for even longer, before we spotted them walking above us. We decided to embarrass poor Gordon by shrieking loudly and waving our arms. He and Nathan hatched the cunning plan to ignore us completely, despite the fact that they had clearly seen us. We met them eventually, and finally got to set our bags down when we reached the car.
When we reached the Miskin’s house, we discovered Dori and the Kuivenhoven’s, and we made a plan to go to some African market place. The market was 40ish minutes away, but it was mostly worth the drive. It was in a huge warehouse type area, with a million little booths in which the people sold their wares. My major issue with the place was that the people selling things had no qualms about getting in your way and coercing you into their area, with cries of “nice stuff” and “good price for you.” Also, you have to ask the price, and it is considered proper to haggle with them. I’m bad at people being in my space, at asking questions, and also at asserting myself in a haggle type situation. The stuff was really cool, lots of traditional masks and figurines and such, along with modern t-shirts and CD’s and such. We got tired of the market pretty quickly, and wandered around the area, where there were a bunch of cafés and restaurants, as well as a snake park, that Mama Scarlett wouldn’t let us go in because it cost to get in and we had to leave soon, despite the fact that there was a guy trying to break the world record for living with poisonous snakes or something. On the way home, we drove over a river and a pretty dam and stuff, and that night, we turned in after watching Saturday Night Live, our new favorite show.
On Sunday, we again went to Mr. Dr. Rev. Miskin’s church. We continued the series on the Sermon on the Mount, getting to blessed are the merciful, the pure of heart, and the peacemakers. We had only Dori for lunch, so it was pretty quiet. It was then decided that we should go to Rev. Brian DeVries’s church in the afternoon, which started at 3. We dragged ourselves back into our church clothes, and out the door. We arrived at church a bit late, and were befuddled to see that there were no cars in the parking lot. We banged on all the doors before deciding that there must not be a service. Someone called Brian, and he came out of the adjoining house to tell us that indeed, there wasn’t a service at three. We took a quick tour of his house that he shares with two students, before returning home. I took a nap, and then we had another sermon on tape and discussion, before eating French toast for supper.
After dinner, we trooped out to Gordon’s room, ostensibly to study and prepare Bible stories for the kids at the daycare center that John, Scarlett and I were going to visit the next day. Morgy had a bunch of wooden people and shapes that we decided to base our stories around, along with some big pictures from Genesis. It took us awhile to get settled and focused, but eventually I picked the story of creation, Scarlett picked Jesus and the little children, and John the story of Zaccheus. We read the story out of the Bible and rewrote it out in our own words, then practiced them for awhile. Gordon was supposed to be doing accounting or something, but I’m pretty sure he was mostly unsuccessful. We had plans to leave at seven the next morning, so we went to bed around 11.
Monday, August 4, 2008
The Longest Post EVER
I know we’re still pitifully behind in our posting, but this enormously long and Erika like post will catch us up to being only ONE WEEK behind. First of all, one thing I noticed after my first week. We eat supper really late here, so when it finally comes to eat, I’m always STARVING. I like pretty much everything we’ve eaten here. The only complaint is that there is very little food with processed sugar, which is probably good, but, even though I don’t eat that much of that sort of thing, I still miss it. We drink a lot of juice and Sprite, rather than milk, which means I’m prolly gonna get osteoporosis while I’m hereJ They also don’t serve bread with every meal like we do at home, and since I’m a MAJOR bread person, I miss that even more than sugar, though not more than milk.
Next, we never talked about our first Sunday here, so here’s what I had written on that. Scarlett had warned me that church was going to be cold, and she was NOT joking. The church is held in a hall that is part of a much larger Afrikaans church, so think high ceilings, brick walls, and NO heat. I had major goose-bumps. It kind of reminded me of being at home, when the air-conditioning vent blows on Hannah and I, so I suppose it wasn’t so bad. We sat in the second row, where Mr. Miskin welcomed us by name. We even made it into the bulletin. The sermon was on the first part of the Beatitudes. The service was only about an hour long, and they had tea and snacks afterwards. Also, they don’t wear hats, but other than those things, it was very similar to our services at home.
The kids drove separate, so we left before Mr. and Mrs. Miskin did. We started dinner and just hung around until they got home, bringing two guests. Dinner was amazing, ham and mushroom risotto similar to something my Dad makes, among other things. I did still miss rolls and milk, though. After dinner we chatted for awhile, and then took Sunday naps until shortly after five. My nap was amazing. When I woke up, I was starving, so I made a piece of toast (yes, BREAD!), which helped.
Mr. and Mrs. Miskin had been out visiting someone, but they returned around 6:30. There isn’t an evening service here. We had talked about going to an Afrikaans service, but Gordon decreed it to be useless, since John and I couldn’t understand it anyway. Instead, we all sang for awhile, and then listened to a short sermon on tape, and had a discussion about both sermons of the day. This all lasted until about 8:30, by which time I was about to eat off my arm. Mrs. Miskin made us some French toast, and it turned out to be the most amazing French toast I’ve had in ages and ages. I ate two pieces, but probably could have happily had about five. We all pitched in to clean up the kitchen, and then went off to talk and hang out for awhile longer. I got on the internet again, and John and Scarlett played about 50 games of California speed. John literally lost every single one, it was hilarious.
John has already written about the first part of the next week, the week of the 21st, so I’ll start on Thursday of that week, the 24th. Since we had spent so much time out at the mission in the first part of the week, Mrs. Miskin decided that we should do some other things over the next few days. We slept in on Thursday, and worked on our blog posts that, obviously, are just now getting posted. Gordon picked us up around 2 and drove us to the mall in Pretoria. The Menlyn Mall is apparently the biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere, according to Gordon. It really was eNORmous. There were four floors, each with a center circle of stores, and then four “wings” with even MORE stores. Scarlett and Morgy cracked up at the look on my face when we walked out of Woolworth’s, our first stop, and into the big part of the mall. I’m pretty sure that it would take a WEEK to go through every single store, it was crazy.
Gordon and John separated from the girls and me, declaring our shopping to be boring, and that they would go check out the “guy stores”. Scarlett and Morgan took me to their favorite stores, most of which were similar to ones at home. I got a really cool heart-shaped rock/broken mirror/newspaper print thingie that I suppose one would have to see to understand, since “thingie” probably doesn’t really do it justice. While we were wandering, the guys were looking for black church pants for John, who needs them for his brother Ben’s wedding which is the day after we get back, but were unfortunately unsuccessful. John did, however, manage to find the candy store and bought several KitKats and Nerd Ropes to satisfy his ravenous sweet tooth. I’m not gonna lie, the KitKats were amazing. John also found a sweet brown t-shirt that reminded me of something from the Buckle.
We didn’t shop a whole lot, but instead ended up at a little coffee shop on the top level of the mall. Most of the 4th floor walls were made of glass, and they provided a gorgeous view of the city, with its red roofed residential areas and white sky-scrapers. Gordon even pointed out some University of Pretoria buildings, where he attends college. Gordon and John beat us to the café, but when we arrived, only Gordon was at the table. We kept sending our poor waiter away, telling him we were waiting for one more person. John had apparently gone in search of a bathroom, but after a good ten minutes of waiting, we sent Gordon to find him. In the mean time, about three more waiters came over to try to take our orders. John reappeared a few minutes later, without Gordon. This led to a whole new round of discussion over whether we should go find Gordon, along with at least one more offer to take our order. Gordon finally came back, and we all decided what we wanted to order, but alas, now there was no waiter to be found. You can’t win.
On Friday, we got to sleep in again, and Scarlett made us an amazing breakfast of toast and boiled eggs, except that I don’t like boiled eggs, so I helpfully ate all the toast, and John ate about 10 eggs. Scarlett, who is very motherly, was scandalized at his voracious appetite. We had initially planned to go to university with Gordon, but that ended up not working out…supposedly something about there not being parking, but in reality, I’m pretty sure Gordon just didn’t want to haul the infamous “awkward American tourists” around campus where all the hot chicks would laugh at him. Instead, we went to pick up Morgy at school, because they get out at one on Fridays (LUCKY!! I would have killed to get out early on Fridays in high school.).
We wandered around Queenswood Christian School with Scarlett acting as our tour guide. Their school is really different than our schools at home. Rather than a typical classroom setting, the kids do a more independent study, and then the teachers, who they call Auntie and Uncle, float around helping as needed. It’s quite small, about 120 students K-12. Also, they go to school year around here, with shortish breaks four times a year. Everyone was really nice, and we met several of Morgan and Scarlett’s friends.
We arrived home, ate lunch, and played some SERIOUSLY competitive badminton. When I say play, I mean they played and I cheered from the sides. Anyone who knows me and my athletic prowess knows how typical a scenario this is, lol. I’m an amazing cheerleader, though. The five of us went out for supper to a place called Brewers, where I had an AMAZING bacon cheeseburger. We decided to rent a movie to watch when we got home. Gordon warned us to pick one out before we got to the movie store, but alas, we ignored his sage counsel, assuring him we could easily find one when we got there. This did, of course, result in our spending about an hour wandering around before choosing one. We stayed up late, and it began to occur to me how much I’m going to miss being here.
On Saturday, the five of us went to the Voortrekker monument. The monument commemorates the Boers, who went trekking off northward to escape the British rule in the Cape. The monument has a museum in the basement that I found super interesting, because South Africa was the last country I learned about in my Africa class at Grand Valley, so I had learned a lot about the things I was seeing. A huge winding staircase leads up to the top, which was open and had a beautiful view of Pretoria. It turns out that the Miskin’s fear of heights was not at all exaggerated; they are terrified of them. John and I had a hard time not laughing at the fact that poor Scarlett refused to let go of the wall, and Gordon and Morgy almost had heart failure when John sat on the edge with only air between him and certain death.
We stopped at a gift shop, and I got a bunch of stuff for everyone at home. Apparently I’m a slow shopper, much to the dismay of the other four. Gordon managed to insult the size of some poor woman while they waited, and I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to use my Spanish to interpret what a family of Spanish tourists was saying. After the monument, we visited a fort nearby that was going to be used to fight off invaders, of an origin which I am unsure, but was never actually needed. We had the place to ourselves, and on the way down, we had our first wildlife sighting, ZEBRAS!! John got a couple schweet pictures of it that maybe someday I’ll post.
On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and I brought a blanket to ward of the winterish chill. We had the Kuivenhovens, a couple and their little girl, over for Sunday dinner. Mr. Kuivenhoven is doing a pastoral internship here, and they stay out at the farm where we had visited. I took an amazing nap in the afternoon, and was awoken very abruptly by Gordon, who thought it would be a good idea to come and turn off my sound machine, and scaring the crap out of me when I rolled over and saw him looming over me. We went to an Afrikaans church at night, which was quite an experience for John and me. It was really strange not to have a CLUE what was going on, but we survived in the end.
We left for Nakekela at 7:30 on Monday morning. We helped out there by making amazing peanut butter sandwhiches, and washing dishes. The thing about doing dishes at Nakekela is that its very unrewarding, due to the extreme hospitality of the kitchen ladies there. As soon as you walk in the door, they’re handing out tea and coffee. So as not to be rude, we drank it, and by we I mean Scarlett and I, since John doesn’t like coffee. We finished the dishes, and about 10 minutes later, were offered MORE coffee on the dishes we had JUST washed. Luckily, John, Scarlett and I have a very good dishwashing system that enabled us to rewash quickly.
Scarlett and I were then called on to clean the bathrooms. We did so a bit dubiously, with the nice powdery doctor gloves provided for our quest. When we had finished, surprise, it was time for more tea. We meandered out to the garden to get some onions, which Scarlett and I were put in charge of cutting up, along with peeling potatoes. John and Johann, a friend of Gordon and Scarlett’s whose family is living in GR right now while his dad studies to be a minister and who was visiting his brothers here in Pretoria, were assigned to garbage detail. For reasons that they never actually figured out, they were given the lovely job of scooping garbage from one hole to another less than a foot away. They were pretty excited when Scarlett and I called them in for sandwhiches and coffee.
We left the clinic early that day, because Mrs. Miskin had a meeting in Pretoria. Johann came home with us, and we all sat around talking about good ole Plymouth for quite awhile. Mrs. Miskin had booked our tickets to Capetown on Saturday night, and John and I owed her money for them, so she took us to an ATM machine to get the necessary cash. We were planning on going in the Condor, until we started backing out of the garage only to discover a completely flat tire. We switched to another of the Miskin’s vehicles and completed the transaction without incident.
When we got back to the house, Nathan was dropping off Morgy from school. Mrs. Miskin told him of the tire dilemma, and her worry that we wouldn’t be able to fix it. John had informed her that he was very unmechanical, and Gordon was at school, so our options were bleak. Nathan, however, gallantly stepped in and saved the day, changing the tire under Mrs. Miskin’s watchful eye. We rewarded him with a grilled cheese for lunch.
All the excitement had tired me out, so when the kids went to play some badminton, I grabbed a chair and a book and read for quite awhile in the afternoon sun. It felt AMAZING out, and I think I even got a little tan. Gordon came home awhile later, and we talked for quite awhile about life and its mysteries, and then went to Spar, the grocery store, to get stuff for supper. The rest of the evening passed quickly, with John, Scarlett, Morgy and I packing for Capetown.
We were flying out of Pretoria to Capetown at 3:30 on Tuesday, and since we had packed the night before, Scarlett, John and I went out to KwaMhlanga with Mrs. Miskin in the morning. We stopped at the clinic to pick up two careworkers who helped to translate, and then went out with Mrs. Miskin to do several home visits. We met an older couple and their son, who had AIDS. He had been sick for quite some time, and was completely bedridden. He was lying on a mattress in the corner of the cold house, and was so stiff that he couldn’t even lie flat. The family was extremely poor, and was having a hard time caring for the son. Mrs. Miskin talked with them through the care workers, and offered the services of the hospice to help stabilize him a bit. He refused to talk to her about how he was or about coming to Nakekela, and Mrs. Miskin said he seemed a bit confused. She told them all to think about what she had offered, and promised to come back in a few days with someone to at least take him to a clinic to get medicine. We made one or two more stops before heading back into Pretoria to get Morgan from school, grab some lunch, and head to the airport to catch our flight to Cape Town.
Whew, that was a lot. If you’re still reading, you deserve a medal or something. A big one. That catches us up to last week Tuesday night, and I’ll work on a Cape Town post ASAP, I promise.
Next, we never talked about our first Sunday here, so here’s what I had written on that. Scarlett had warned me that church was going to be cold, and she was NOT joking. The church is held in a hall that is part of a much larger Afrikaans church, so think high ceilings, brick walls, and NO heat. I had major goose-bumps. It kind of reminded me of being at home, when the air-conditioning vent blows on Hannah and I, so I suppose it wasn’t so bad. We sat in the second row, where Mr. Miskin welcomed us by name. We even made it into the bulletin. The sermon was on the first part of the Beatitudes. The service was only about an hour long, and they had tea and snacks afterwards. Also, they don’t wear hats, but other than those things, it was very similar to our services at home.
The kids drove separate, so we left before Mr. and Mrs. Miskin did. We started dinner and just hung around until they got home, bringing two guests. Dinner was amazing, ham and mushroom risotto similar to something my Dad makes, among other things. I did still miss rolls and milk, though. After dinner we chatted for awhile, and then took Sunday naps until shortly after five. My nap was amazing. When I woke up, I was starving, so I made a piece of toast (yes, BREAD!), which helped.
Mr. and Mrs. Miskin had been out visiting someone, but they returned around 6:30. There isn’t an evening service here. We had talked about going to an Afrikaans service, but Gordon decreed it to be useless, since John and I couldn’t understand it anyway. Instead, we all sang for awhile, and then listened to a short sermon on tape, and had a discussion about both sermons of the day. This all lasted until about 8:30, by which time I was about to eat off my arm. Mrs. Miskin made us some French toast, and it turned out to be the most amazing French toast I’ve had in ages and ages. I ate two pieces, but probably could have happily had about five. We all pitched in to clean up the kitchen, and then went off to talk and hang out for awhile longer. I got on the internet again, and John and Scarlett played about 50 games of California speed. John literally lost every single one, it was hilarious.
John has already written about the first part of the next week, the week of the 21st, so I’ll start on Thursday of that week, the 24th. Since we had spent so much time out at the mission in the first part of the week, Mrs. Miskin decided that we should do some other things over the next few days. We slept in on Thursday, and worked on our blog posts that, obviously, are just now getting posted. Gordon picked us up around 2 and drove us to the mall in Pretoria. The Menlyn Mall is apparently the biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere, according to Gordon. It really was eNORmous. There were four floors, each with a center circle of stores, and then four “wings” with even MORE stores. Scarlett and Morgy cracked up at the look on my face when we walked out of Woolworth’s, our first stop, and into the big part of the mall. I’m pretty sure that it would take a WEEK to go through every single store, it was crazy.
Gordon and John separated from the girls and me, declaring our shopping to be boring, and that they would go check out the “guy stores”. Scarlett and Morgan took me to their favorite stores, most of which were similar to ones at home. I got a really cool heart-shaped rock/broken mirror/newspaper print thingie that I suppose one would have to see to understand, since “thingie” probably doesn’t really do it justice. While we were wandering, the guys were looking for black church pants for John, who needs them for his brother Ben’s wedding which is the day after we get back, but were unfortunately unsuccessful. John did, however, manage to find the candy store and bought several KitKats and Nerd Ropes to satisfy his ravenous sweet tooth. I’m not gonna lie, the KitKats were amazing. John also found a sweet brown t-shirt that reminded me of something from the Buckle.
We didn’t shop a whole lot, but instead ended up at a little coffee shop on the top level of the mall. Most of the 4th floor walls were made of glass, and they provided a gorgeous view of the city, with its red roofed residential areas and white sky-scrapers. Gordon even pointed out some University of Pretoria buildings, where he attends college. Gordon and John beat us to the café, but when we arrived, only Gordon was at the table. We kept sending our poor waiter away, telling him we were waiting for one more person. John had apparently gone in search of a bathroom, but after a good ten minutes of waiting, we sent Gordon to find him. In the mean time, about three more waiters came over to try to take our orders. John reappeared a few minutes later, without Gordon. This led to a whole new round of discussion over whether we should go find Gordon, along with at least one more offer to take our order. Gordon finally came back, and we all decided what we wanted to order, but alas, now there was no waiter to be found. You can’t win.
On Friday, we got to sleep in again, and Scarlett made us an amazing breakfast of toast and boiled eggs, except that I don’t like boiled eggs, so I helpfully ate all the toast, and John ate about 10 eggs. Scarlett, who is very motherly, was scandalized at his voracious appetite. We had initially planned to go to university with Gordon, but that ended up not working out…supposedly something about there not being parking, but in reality, I’m pretty sure Gordon just didn’t want to haul the infamous “awkward American tourists” around campus where all the hot chicks would laugh at him. Instead, we went to pick up Morgy at school, because they get out at one on Fridays (LUCKY!! I would have killed to get out early on Fridays in high school.).
We wandered around Queenswood Christian School with Scarlett acting as our tour guide. Their school is really different than our schools at home. Rather than a typical classroom setting, the kids do a more independent study, and then the teachers, who they call Auntie and Uncle, float around helping as needed. It’s quite small, about 120 students K-12. Also, they go to school year around here, with shortish breaks four times a year. Everyone was really nice, and we met several of Morgan and Scarlett’s friends.
We arrived home, ate lunch, and played some SERIOUSLY competitive badminton. When I say play, I mean they played and I cheered from the sides. Anyone who knows me and my athletic prowess knows how typical a scenario this is, lol. I’m an amazing cheerleader, though. The five of us went out for supper to a place called Brewers, where I had an AMAZING bacon cheeseburger. We decided to rent a movie to watch when we got home. Gordon warned us to pick one out before we got to the movie store, but alas, we ignored his sage counsel, assuring him we could easily find one when we got there. This did, of course, result in our spending about an hour wandering around before choosing one. We stayed up late, and it began to occur to me how much I’m going to miss being here.
On Saturday, the five of us went to the Voortrekker monument. The monument commemorates the Boers, who went trekking off northward to escape the British rule in the Cape. The monument has a museum in the basement that I found super interesting, because South Africa was the last country I learned about in my Africa class at Grand Valley, so I had learned a lot about the things I was seeing. A huge winding staircase leads up to the top, which was open and had a beautiful view of Pretoria. It turns out that the Miskin’s fear of heights was not at all exaggerated; they are terrified of them. John and I had a hard time not laughing at the fact that poor Scarlett refused to let go of the wall, and Gordon and Morgy almost had heart failure when John sat on the edge with only air between him and certain death.
We stopped at a gift shop, and I got a bunch of stuff for everyone at home. Apparently I’m a slow shopper, much to the dismay of the other four. Gordon managed to insult the size of some poor woman while they waited, and I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to use my Spanish to interpret what a family of Spanish tourists was saying. After the monument, we visited a fort nearby that was going to be used to fight off invaders, of an origin which I am unsure, but was never actually needed. We had the place to ourselves, and on the way down, we had our first wildlife sighting, ZEBRAS!! John got a couple schweet pictures of it that maybe someday I’ll post.
On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and I brought a blanket to ward of the winterish chill. We had the Kuivenhovens, a couple and their little girl, over for Sunday dinner. Mr. Kuivenhoven is doing a pastoral internship here, and they stay out at the farm where we had visited. I took an amazing nap in the afternoon, and was awoken very abruptly by Gordon, who thought it would be a good idea to come and turn off my sound machine, and scaring the crap out of me when I rolled over and saw him looming over me. We went to an Afrikaans church at night, which was quite an experience for John and me. It was really strange not to have a CLUE what was going on, but we survived in the end.
We left for Nakekela at 7:30 on Monday morning. We helped out there by making amazing peanut butter sandwhiches, and washing dishes. The thing about doing dishes at Nakekela is that its very unrewarding, due to the extreme hospitality of the kitchen ladies there. As soon as you walk in the door, they’re handing out tea and coffee. So as not to be rude, we drank it, and by we I mean Scarlett and I, since John doesn’t like coffee. We finished the dishes, and about 10 minutes later, were offered MORE coffee on the dishes we had JUST washed. Luckily, John, Scarlett and I have a very good dishwashing system that enabled us to rewash quickly.
Scarlett and I were then called on to clean the bathrooms. We did so a bit dubiously, with the nice powdery doctor gloves provided for our quest. When we had finished, surprise, it was time for more tea. We meandered out to the garden to get some onions, which Scarlett and I were put in charge of cutting up, along with peeling potatoes. John and Johann, a friend of Gordon and Scarlett’s whose family is living in GR right now while his dad studies to be a minister and who was visiting his brothers here in Pretoria, were assigned to garbage detail. For reasons that they never actually figured out, they were given the lovely job of scooping garbage from one hole to another less than a foot away. They were pretty excited when Scarlett and I called them in for sandwhiches and coffee.
We left the clinic early that day, because Mrs. Miskin had a meeting in Pretoria. Johann came home with us, and we all sat around talking about good ole Plymouth for quite awhile. Mrs. Miskin had booked our tickets to Capetown on Saturday night, and John and I owed her money for them, so she took us to an ATM machine to get the necessary cash. We were planning on going in the Condor, until we started backing out of the garage only to discover a completely flat tire. We switched to another of the Miskin’s vehicles and completed the transaction without incident.
When we got back to the house, Nathan was dropping off Morgy from school. Mrs. Miskin told him of the tire dilemma, and her worry that we wouldn’t be able to fix it. John had informed her that he was very unmechanical, and Gordon was at school, so our options were bleak. Nathan, however, gallantly stepped in and saved the day, changing the tire under Mrs. Miskin’s watchful eye. We rewarded him with a grilled cheese for lunch.
All the excitement had tired me out, so when the kids went to play some badminton, I grabbed a chair and a book and read for quite awhile in the afternoon sun. It felt AMAZING out, and I think I even got a little tan. Gordon came home awhile later, and we talked for quite awhile about life and its mysteries, and then went to Spar, the grocery store, to get stuff for supper. The rest of the evening passed quickly, with John, Scarlett, Morgy and I packing for Capetown.
We were flying out of Pretoria to Capetown at 3:30 on Tuesday, and since we had packed the night before, Scarlett, John and I went out to KwaMhlanga with Mrs. Miskin in the morning. We stopped at the clinic to pick up two careworkers who helped to translate, and then went out with Mrs. Miskin to do several home visits. We met an older couple and their son, who had AIDS. He had been sick for quite some time, and was completely bedridden. He was lying on a mattress in the corner of the cold house, and was so stiff that he couldn’t even lie flat. The family was extremely poor, and was having a hard time caring for the son. Mrs. Miskin talked with them through the care workers, and offered the services of the hospice to help stabilize him a bit. He refused to talk to her about how he was or about coming to Nakekela, and Mrs. Miskin said he seemed a bit confused. She told them all to think about what she had offered, and promised to come back in a few days with someone to at least take him to a clinic to get medicine. We made one or two more stops before heading back into Pretoria to get Morgan from school, grab some lunch, and head to the airport to catch our flight to Cape Town.
Whew, that was a lot. If you’re still reading, you deserve a medal or something. A big one. That catches us up to last week Tuesday night, and I’ll work on a Cape Town post ASAP, I promise.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Helping Others to Help Themselves
Because of various interruptions, we apologize for this very late post. This update was meant to be posted prior to our trip to Cape Town, however it was never edited. Without further introduction, here is Wednesdays post, July 23rd.
We got a look at the Mukhanyo Theological Seminary, but only for a moment. We were only there to exchange Dr. Miskin’s car for the bakkie so that we could transport a patient from the hospice to his home. There were not enough seats in the front of the bakkie, so Erika and Scarlett sat in the back while I sat by Dr. Miskin. As we drove to Nakekela to pick up the patient, she and I talked about apartheid—a law which remained in act from the 1940s to the 1980s to keep blacks out of the white cities in South Africa. She said that many of the blacks were forced from their homes in Pretoria, Cape Town, and Johannesburg to isolated shanty towns, like KwaMhlanga. When apartheid was abolished and the blacks came to power, many of the villagers in the shanty towns believed their new political leaders in parliament would help them out of their poverty, but after fifteen years the people were finally realizing that even their own people had forgotten them. “No political leader is going to worry about some poor blacks living out in the sticks,” she said, “and so the poverty remains.”
I asked Dr. Miskin if there were no industries to help them rise out of their poverty. She said there were a few, but none of them were enough to provide jobs for the alarming number of unemployed in the community.
The subject changed to the AIDS virus. She said that the blacks had no shame in extramarital affairs, however if one were to get AIDS, one would immediately bring shame upon oneself. People with AIDS in KwaMhlanga were treated like people who carried the plague in the Bible. Shunned from the community or hidden away somewhere in a separate shack, it was no wonder people with AIDS kept their inflictions a secret until it became nearly too late for medical assistance. “That’s where we usually find the patients,” she said. “Hidden in shacks or thrown outside the city.”
We arrived at Nakekela, the MCDC AIDS hospice. Dr. Miskin told us we were going to take a patient to visit his family. He was laid on a stretcher and we lifted him into the back of the pickup truck. It seemed a primitive way of transporting a fragile patient, half of his body paralyzed by a stroke, but of course there was no other way. Erika, Scarlett and I stayed in the back with him. As we drove on the unpaved road I discovered the bakkie lacked sufficient shocks. Our heads banged against the top of the cab while the patient’s thin knees slammed against the windows. Eventually we came to the smooth highway and the ride became much more comfortable. We were dropped off at the farm, and Dr. Miskin took the patient the rest of the way.
When we came to the farm a man named Ferdie gave us a tour of the Community Development Centre in a renovated old barn. There was a computer literacy class room and a sewing room to instruct the villagers in their own trades. Ferdie explained that originally the ministry’s main purpose was to provide relief, or emergency assistance such as food provisions and medical assistance. “But relief is not enough any more,” he said. “If you continue to provide food, you’re not helping them anymore. You’re taking away their necessity to go out and find their own food. The purpose of this ministry is to help these people by showing them how to help themselves.”
Ferdie summed up by giving us words of advice in ministering to the natives of South Africa. “We have some people come and they want to change the customs of the people. You can’t do that. How would you feel if someone came into your home and said they didn’t like the way you did thing?.” He told us a story of a few volunteers who came and entered the home of a person with AIDS. They all rudely covered their mouths and noses with the collar of their shirts, as though AIDS was a disease that spread through the air. “What kind of manners are these?” Lastly he gave us a warning in our ministry to children. “Often we have young people who come and want to minister to orphans. Eventually they create a bond with a child. The child then learns to trust them and love them. But eventually the missionary’s time runs out and he or she must return to the States, or wherever they came from, and leave the child. Now here is a child who has already lost their parents at a very young age and must now go through the pain of losing a loved one a second time.”
His words were well received by Erika, Scarlett and I. He summed up, and we three took a walk. We explored the farm, ate lunch and returned to the Miskin home.
We got a look at the Mukhanyo Theological Seminary, but only for a moment. We were only there to exchange Dr. Miskin’s car for the bakkie so that we could transport a patient from the hospice to his home. There were not enough seats in the front of the bakkie, so Erika and Scarlett sat in the back while I sat by Dr. Miskin. As we drove to Nakekela to pick up the patient, she and I talked about apartheid—a law which remained in act from the 1940s to the 1980s to keep blacks out of the white cities in South Africa. She said that many of the blacks were forced from their homes in Pretoria, Cape Town, and Johannesburg to isolated shanty towns, like KwaMhlanga. When apartheid was abolished and the blacks came to power, many of the villagers in the shanty towns believed their new political leaders in parliament would help them out of their poverty, but after fifteen years the people were finally realizing that even their own people had forgotten them. “No political leader is going to worry about some poor blacks living out in the sticks,” she said, “and so the poverty remains.”
I asked Dr. Miskin if there were no industries to help them rise out of their poverty. She said there were a few, but none of them were enough to provide jobs for the alarming number of unemployed in the community.
The subject changed to the AIDS virus. She said that the blacks had no shame in extramarital affairs, however if one were to get AIDS, one would immediately bring shame upon oneself. People with AIDS in KwaMhlanga were treated like people who carried the plague in the Bible. Shunned from the community or hidden away somewhere in a separate shack, it was no wonder people with AIDS kept their inflictions a secret until it became nearly too late for medical assistance. “That’s where we usually find the patients,” she said. “Hidden in shacks or thrown outside the city.”
We arrived at Nakekela, the MCDC AIDS hospice. Dr. Miskin told us we were going to take a patient to visit his family. He was laid on a stretcher and we lifted him into the back of the pickup truck. It seemed a primitive way of transporting a fragile patient, half of his body paralyzed by a stroke, but of course there was no other way. Erika, Scarlett and I stayed in the back with him. As we drove on the unpaved road I discovered the bakkie lacked sufficient shocks. Our heads banged against the top of the cab while the patient’s thin knees slammed against the windows. Eventually we came to the smooth highway and the ride became much more comfortable. We were dropped off at the farm, and Dr. Miskin took the patient the rest of the way.
When we came to the farm a man named Ferdie gave us a tour of the Community Development Centre in a renovated old barn. There was a computer literacy class room and a sewing room to instruct the villagers in their own trades. Ferdie explained that originally the ministry’s main purpose was to provide relief, or emergency assistance such as food provisions and medical assistance. “But relief is not enough any more,” he said. “If you continue to provide food, you’re not helping them anymore. You’re taking away their necessity to go out and find their own food. The purpose of this ministry is to help these people by showing them how to help themselves.”
Ferdie summed up by giving us words of advice in ministering to the natives of South Africa. “We have some people come and they want to change the customs of the people. You can’t do that. How would you feel if someone came into your home and said they didn’t like the way you did thing?.” He told us a story of a few volunteers who came and entered the home of a person with AIDS. They all rudely covered their mouths and noses with the collar of their shirts, as though AIDS was a disease that spread through the air. “What kind of manners are these?” Lastly he gave us a warning in our ministry to children. “Often we have young people who come and want to minister to orphans. Eventually they create a bond with a child. The child then learns to trust them and love them. But eventually the missionary’s time runs out and he or she must return to the States, or wherever they came from, and leave the child. Now here is a child who has already lost their parents at a very young age and must now go through the pain of losing a loved one a second time.”
His words were well received by Erika, Scarlett and I. He summed up, and we three took a walk. We explored the farm, ate lunch and returned to the Miskin home.
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