3/15/10

There is so much going on that writing about it all seems very intimidating, but I’ve got to document this all some time. First of all, hello loved ones. I’ve learned after traveling abroad so many times that there is a pattern that happens within your loved ones in your absence. At first, everyone is so desperate to contact you and nervous about your well being. But after about three weeks everyone seems to calm down and trust that you are doing just fine. Then after a few more weeks pass everyone just wants to know how things are going and what you are doing because they are curious. But once you pass the two month mark you being abroad is just part of life and everyone accepts it and the nervous emails and emails in general cease. Luckily, I have skated through the first few stages this time around and it seems as if everyone is comfortable with me being here and not freaking out which is great. Because really, I am absolutely fine. In fact, I feel more alive and useful and active here than I ever do at home. It’s like this is my real life and I just take extended vacations to the States on a regular basis.
So, I have officially been here for one week as of yesterday. I can’t believe that. It feels like I’ve been here for much longer. I’m living in a house in Observatory which is very close to Mowbray (the suburb I lived in during 2008). I’m very familiar with area so I feel very comfortable. I’m living in a guest house owned by a woman named Hazel. I only ended up staying at that other place for one night before moving into my room here. The house can hold up to about 12 people but there are only 6 of us at the time. Hazel lives in a little house behind the guest house, so not counting her I am the only female. There are all guys in the house plus me…. That’s definitely a new experience. I’m getting along well with all the guys. There is a Turkish guy named Levante who is really nice. He’s lived here the longest- about 3 or 4 months. He’s actually illegal right now, but works under the table at a bar down the road. There’s also a guy named Mark who’s a doctor from Sweden and a guy named John who is from some country in Central Africa that he care not name because he is very deep and feels that the phrase “I am from this country” or “I am from that country” is irrelevant because we are all “from the world”. Naming a specific country when asked where you are from, according to him, is very stifling. I like John a lot. He’s very long winded when he speaks which of course to me, coming from a country where actual human contact and intimate conversation and connection is very rare can be a bit frustrating, but I realize that it’s because of a flaw in me and has nothing to do with him. John lived in the wild for two years before coming to this house. He lives in a tent in the back of our house. He has very little material belongings and believes in spending life searching and growing spiritually and intellectually. He keeps life as simple as possible and really values time to sit and think about humanity and to meditate… his father passed away this weekend which is probably why he’s on my mind so much and I am taking up this much of my blog talking about him. But ever since his father passed whenever I see John he goes into a deep conversation that lasts at least half an hour or so, even if I just came out of my room to pee or something. So, before I started blogging I was in the kitchen listening to him talk and all I could think about was how he kept going on and on. It made me sad because its like because of my life style at home I am incapable of sitting for an hour and listening to a hurting grieving man talk some of his pain away without itching to get up and go… and go… and go do nothing. That’s the thing, I’m not even rushing to do anything. I just haven’t exercised my humanity muscle in so long. Usually during conversation (when it actually does happen at home) someone always receives a text or the TV is on in the background or just anything to interrupt the pure human connection. That’s not the way it is in my house or my life right now for that matter. My life is all about pure uninterrupted human to human connection and its uncomfortable. Even while riding home today, my friend Natalie talked for the entire 30 minute ride non-stop lol. I’m thinking “Oh my gosh! She’s never going to stop”, but then I realized its because in their culture you actually care about how people are doing and how they are feeling. So when I ask her how she’s doing today it takes an entire 30 minute taxi ride to tell me, and when she asks me she expects the same in return. So, for the past few days there have been many situations where I feel like a robot thrown into a sea of living people and I’m just trying to get my humanity back. I’m trying to be able to sit in the kitchen for an hour and listen to a pained man grieve over his dead father without my mind wandering off and trying to find the least awkward time for me to leap for the door. I know that makes me out to be insensitive and selfish, but you know, that probably means that I am, which is exactly why I’m working on it. I hate admitting that it exists almost as much as I hate the fact that it exists. But, thank God, we have the ability to change the things that we don’t like about ourselves and that’s exactly what I’m working on doing.
Coming to South Africa is always a very spiritual experience for me. I always feel closer to God here than I ever do at home and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I am isolated here. I mean, yes I’m around people all the time, but I don’t have my safety blanket of family and best friends like I do at home. I have Mpho, but even when I am with her she is always challenging me spiritually (I mean ‘challenging’ in a good way) and causing me to look deeper inside myself. The work that I am doing here also causes me to grow spiritually because it causes me to ask a lot of questions and face a lot of realities in the world such as no matter how hard I pray for the children in the orphanage to have clean water and proper food to eat everyday, they may not get it. No matter how hard I pray and ask our great big all encompassing God to please heal this country and not let another child go hungry or die from a preventable disease He just may not answer and that’s hard for me to accept. Being in the township among such deep poverty every single day makes me question God. Not His existence, but the way He works. Like, my entire childhood and into my adult life I’ve heard that phrase over and over “God answers prayers”. I’ve even said it myself. But, what about when He doesn’t? What about when good people live good Godly lives and pray for their entire lifetimes for God to provide for them and get them out of these slums, but they die hungry and sick in their shacks? What about them? What about all the prayers our generation and the generation before and before and before have prayed over these children dying motherless and fatherless from AIDS because they have no money to pay for transportation to the hospitals to get medicine? What do you do when God doesn’t answer prayers? What do you say to children when you try to teach them about Jesus but they’ve seen their parents pray to a Jesus that never showed up? Family, I know you are reading this and cringing and I’m very sorry, but I’m just being honest. What do you do then? Well, I’ve come to an understanding that that’s just another one of those things that I cant agree with the bible 100% on. If you ask, even if you are a poor mother asking God for money to feed your children, you will not always receive. God answers prayers sometimes. Impoverished people are reaping the consequences of a lot of man made evil and for some reason God has chosen to allow them to reap it. Poverty, hunger, disease, those things are not of God. I don’t know why He will not stop it and I don’t know why I continue to pray for it to be eradicated when I know if a prayer was all it took poverty would have been gone centuries ago, but for some reason I keep praying, I keep believing. And that’s why I say this experience has made me grow spiritually- because even in all that I do not understand about God and amidst all the unanswered questions and prayers I still know that He is real. I still feel something deep inside me that won’t let me loose the faith.
I visited both of the schools for the first time today. This is going to be so much hard work. What I’m most nervous about is the fact that I have no curriculum. I have to create this whole program on my own… well not really on my own because I plan to just allow the spirit to guide me and remember that I am only a vessel. I must remember that. I can’t get caught up in trying to do God’s work; I must let him work through me. That’s the only way that this will be a success. I was under the impression that I was only going to be working at one school, a primary school. But Pastor Vusi has also arranged for me to work at Mandela High School. So, from Monday to Thursday every week I will be teaching a ‘Life Skills Through Theatre’ course at two different schools in the township of Crossroads. The primary school program will be a lot like YEA workshop. The high school program will be geared toward putting together a big performance at the end of their term focused on what it’s like to be an HIV positive teen in a high school in South Africa today. We have chosen that topic because lots of the students that will be involved in the piece are positive and very sick which poses many challenges in school.
I didn’t know that so many children would be interested in the programs, but we got an overwhelming response. I am not sure how I am going to teach a drama class of 60 kids alone. Luckily I have two people coming tomorrow to help me translate and keep discipline. I’m hoping they continue to come help me everyday… All the school teachers were asking who is paying me for doing this and how much I am getting paid. Everyone is always so shocked when I tell them that I’m doing this for free. But it’s just something that I have to do. It’s not about money. It’s about making a difference in a child’s life. I feel so strongly that I have to give back, and until I can find someone to pay me to do it I’ll just do it for free. If I go through like sacrificing brightening children’s futures for pay checks I know that I will never be happy (family, I’m sorry I know that you are cringing again). But I really believe that one day this is all going to come back to me and I will actually have a paid career doing this and it will all be worth it. Someone once said to me, “Do the thing you love to do then find a way to get paid for it”. That’s exactly what I’m doing now and in the meantime I am being so blessed. It’s so funny how whenever you go volunteer to help people you end up being helped just as much. I am gaining from this country and these children just as much if not more than they are gaining from me. I am really living and growing and interacting and it feels amazing! That is all such a huge blessing. If you asked me where I’d be 10 years from now 10 years ago I never would have thought this would be my life, but this is my life, and I’d have it no other way.