Building Community

It's early Sunday morning at the Outreach Centre (a.k.a "the farm"), and I'm enjoying a cup of real coffee.  Strangely, real filter coffee is a rare pleasure in this sub-tropical area...most grocery stores don't even sell it, as everyone seems to think instant is just fine! 

 

For the first time, we are experiencing our off-duty weekend on-site.  As you may have guessed from the frequency of our blog entries, the 12 days in a row that we work are generally packed full.  When we lived at the main GGA site, we were always in the middle of the fray, so we needed to escape during our two days off.  But things are much quieter here at the farm, and our bank account was telling us that perhaps we should stay close to home for a change.  

 

I'm currently at the office, a building on the farm property which is about a 3 minute walk from our accommodations.  It's where Cathy works each day, and is now the place where we can check emails and blog.  Unfortunately, our laptop problems are irreparable (at least for the near future), but we are grateful that we now have access to this office computer in the evenings and early mornings.  Other than the use of this computer at the office, our lives have been incredibly "unplugged":  we have no radio or stereo, no TV, no laptop, no MP3 player, no newspapers, and no opportunity to surf the net.  When we do hear news of the outside world, it is typically second-hand and a week old.  There are times when I crave news (almost like an ex-smoker craves nicotine), but generally I love being outside of the media frenzy.  At home, I would listen to a media update every 15 minutes while in my car, plus get news updates via TV and internet.  I would check sports scores religiously, something that is now completely absent from my life.  And yet I know that 99% of  "news" isn't...it's someone's opinion on what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow.  And those opinions are usually false, if not in content, then at least in perspective. 

 

Speaking of "unplugged", yesterday evening our electricity flickered for awhile, and then went out completely . When we looked around, we realized that it was not just our farm; the power was out in the entire valley.  As it was a Saturday evening, we began to prepare for the fact that the municipality might not repair the problem until Monday, and we enjoyed an evening of candlelight.  Surprisingly, before we went to bed, the power was back on again!  During the blackout, we heard repeated gunfire in our neighbourhood, and could see and hear police sirens converge on an area couple of km away.  Maybe I'll have to buy a newspaper today to find out what was going on! ;-)

 

The weather this past week has been warm and sunny...the first time we have had a long stretch of such weather since we arrived.  Yesterday, in fact, it was downright HOT, and Micayla had fun hosing me down in the afternoon.  Of course, I have no idea what the actual temperature was.

 

My work this past week has largely revolved around the fact that this was the first week of training for the Zulu preschool teachers that I work with.  They are working towards full certification, and will attend training courses many times this year.  Last Sunday, I drove them to their training in Greytown, a small city less than 2 hours drive from here.  I imagined this to be a 4.5 hour round trip, but things don't work that way here.  In the end, it was an 8.5 hour adventure, full of windy dirt roads, memorable detours, fascinating people, and the most beautiful scenery I have seen since coming to Africa.  The rural valleys in this "Valley of a Thousand Hills" region are breath-taking, and we often wish we could get out there more (although we live on a farm, we are close to the freeway and to commercial areas).   The valleys are FULL of children...there must be 6 or more for every tiny house we see.  When I brought the teachers back on Friday afternoon, the kids had must been let out from various schools along our route, and I weaved my way among thousands of them, all walking home in their crisp clean uniforms.  People here take much pride in the neatness and cleanliness of their clothing, and it is remarkable to consider that most of these rural children are returning to their rondavel homes with mud walls, corrugated or thatched roofs, and dirt floors (often mixed with cow dung or ant hill heap to keep it hard and smooth).

 

The training also meant that we volunteers kept classes at the preschool going without our Zulu teachers, and so I was a full-time teacher this week.  I had the youngest class of eleven 3 and 4 year olds who speak as little English as I speak Zulu, but we had a great time together, and I really got to know the kids better.  Jessica and Micayla both did double-duty at the pre-school this week as well, and their help was truly invaluable.  I'm so proud of how they both rose to the challenges and responsibilities!  In fact, on Friday, when I was driving to Greytown, Micayla basically taught my class for me.  She had an adult volunteer in the room with her, but it the adult's first day at the school, so Micayla was the one who knew the kids, knew the routine, and knew the lesson plan. As you can imagine, Micayla loved it!

 

One last note about preschool...please pray for "Z", our youngest teacher.  She is 21 years old, with a 5 year old daughter in the school.  She is trying to escape an abusive relationship with the father of her daughter.  I won't get into all the details, but because of tight-knit families & communities, economic inequity, cultural traditions (money and cows have been exchanged), drugs, guns, and police corruption, extricating her from this relationship is much more complicated than we would think. 

 

The highlight of this week has certainly been the opportunities to build relationships and community in our new home here at the farm.  Last weekend, we had a surprisingly frank conversation with three of the Afrikaner (white South African) men who work during the day here on the farm.  Then on Tuesday night, we helped to host an impromptu braii (BBQ) for those who are now living here:  our family; Lilith & Bram, the Dutch volunteers who have become good friends; Claudia, the new volunteer who arrived from Germany this week; Baba Elliot & Gogo Regina, the Zulu couple who have lived here for years; Wesley, the young Zulu man who does Agriculture Outreach; Sipho, the farmhand; and Mkhonta & Ndundizi, our night security guards.  We all sat around the table together on our patio and enjoyed a warm evening together.  As Cathy remarked later, this may have been the first time that some of our Zulu friends have been served by a white person.

 

On Thursday night, we hosted our small group here again.  I can't recall if we told you about them yet, but we have have met a few times with a group of 7 or 8 volunteers from GGA who share our sense of purpose about being here.  One of them is a talented musician, and we've enjoyed singing & praying together.  Amazingly, we know many of the same songs even though our group includes Australians, Germans, Dutch, British, and Canadians!

 

Well, I better wrap up and go find my family! 

 

Dan