Unfortunately, by the end of my trip, I will have only posted twice. Fortunately, that means I'll be home in a week! Or a week and 6.5 hours with the time difference. I must say I'm looking forward to it. Not because I don't like it here. I can't even count how many times I've compared Canada and South Africa in conversations with people and in my own head (snow vs no snow, community culture vs individualistic culture, education vs unequal education, degrees of care in government hospitals, history demanding a space in EVERYONE's life vs not much life-changing recent history, violent crime vs not violent crime, structure vs little structure - I will let you figure out which goes with what country)... and have concluded that they're just different. Neither is better than the other. But I still overall prefer Canada, and idealistically, if I could bring the opportunities and people from here and meld them into Canada, it would be very nice. But also very sad because it still wouldn't be ideal. I have a bittersweet thought process about the people and culture in south africa. I've also discovered a bittersweet thought process about the people and culture in Canada. I realize those are all very generalized statements. I could make a list of all the little things I like and dislike about each place, but I'm not going to at this moment. You can ask me about it when I come home though if you're interested!
The last week was fairly quiet, but included working with some interesting, but sad, cases: hand injuries from bullet wounds to the shoulder, from being cut up with a big knife (there's a word for it here, but I don't remember it), and from protecting one's head from being struck with a telephone cable (next time you need to protect yourself from being hit with a telephone cable, please have the backs of your hands facing out. Makes functioning a little easier later on). Also, there is an unknown boy in the hospital that I am working with - his parents have not yet claimed him. I had my midterm evaluation on Friday (the paper work got lost... typical), and one of the comments was that I was able to handle the traumatic events quite well. I think I have chosen to not have my heart become too soft in dealing with these cases or else I may cry myself to sleep every night. Also, it seems to be more of a norm. Have I become insensitized? I don't think so. It's just the way of life here.
I went to Soweto today - one of the biggest Townships where there were student-led protests (that started off peaceful) about not having education done in Africaans. It sort of started off the end of apartheid process. We went to the church where 5000students fled when their peaceful protest march turned into a bloody mess of police and soldiers shooting at them. Amazing story - there were no causalties inside the church. Bullets were flying from inside and outside, and there were no causalties inside the church. The altar was broken, bullet holes in the ceilings and through windows, but no causalties. We also went to the Hector Pieterson memorial (one of the kids who died in the protests above - look it up on the internet... I never knew about him before today), and Nelson Mandela's house.
And I also went to an orphanage, and the kids are incredibly sweet. Little black kids waiting to be held. Some don't smile, and some just need some stimulation. That's the first orphanage I've ever been to. After that, we drove through the Baragwanath Hospital - a HUGE hospital serving the Soweto area. It apparently has the best burns unit and care in the southern hemisphere.
Oh - and this morning I also went on a small plane trip flying over Joburg and area. Pretty fun! Interesting to see the contrast between downtown, the suburbs where everyone has a pool, and the poorer, quite shabby neighborhoods.
This last week has been fairly quiet. I had ALOT of alone time. Which fit perfectly with the idea of having solitude (which was my spiritual discipline to do during lent... but has overflowed with little effort on my side). It has been very good and refreshing for me, I think, to have time by myself. And to curb the loneliness, God has also provided thunder storms where I can sit and watch the lightening and be comforted by the thunder (which normally makes my heart beat very fast. The girl I was hanging out with today got a spark through her finger touching a metal map outside the memorial when the lightening and thunder came). I think, too, God has been purposely waking me up early so that I can pray... especially to continually consciously remember that Jesus died for me, and that I can live because He lives. I wish He didn't have to use pigeons, doves, car alarms, house alarms, gate alarms, roosters, and dogs to do that. But it seems to do the trick.
It has been good for me to think about what I'm doing in life right now. And to think about the things I would like to do as an OT. Or even not as an OT. To remove myself from the busy-ness at home and think and pray about how I want to tackle the next few months; what kind of focus I want to have, and how I continue on with what I've learned here, but at home. It's been so nice to renew the ability to not worry about tomorrow, or even the next things happening - even in the times I'm not doing something. And instead, take that moment to pray. To talk with God about what is happening. To tell Him I don't understand, or feel inadequate, to ask for guidance in little things, to ask Him to heal the people I work with, to use me, to mould me, to just sit knowing that I am forgiven and loved and not condemned. It perhaps took me 4 weeks to settle down enough to be able to be calm, but I am thankful that I have been here where I have not had much of a choice.
I have SO much to learn. Both as an OT and as a person. I am glad that God has taught me much while being here - or maybe not very much, but still significant things. And that He still is teaching me, and that I am still able to learn and grow.
I will be back next weekend, but may also sleep all next week, so I still might not talk with many of you for another couple of weeks. Half of me is defying the possibility of jet-lag, and the other half of me doesn't care and will deal with it without being stressed about it if it comes. Also, if there's anything I've learned while being here, it is to slow down a bit, and not do things (ie be on the go all the time, hang out with people all the time) because I think people expect me to (which isn't always the case, but sometimes is). I have enjoyed being quiet, and alone. As much as I love people, I have found this quietness to be a very valuable thing, and I think that lately it's been very pleasing to God. So when I get home, I promise I'm not avoiding people. I miss you all and would like to see you all. But I may not hang out as much, or perhaps I'll hang out a bit differently, because I have learned to value space when it is just quiet - where there is just God and me for a little bit.
So, I have one more week to pour myself into, and then I'll be home! See you all soon! And I'll give you hugs! I promise!
Much love,
Candice
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
March 18th? Commune.
WE WENT TO A COMMUNE!!!! IT’S CALLED KWA SIZA BANTU WHICH MEANS A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE FIND REST (OR HELP DEPENDING ON YOUR TRANSLATION). ACTUALLY WE’RE WRITING VERY LOUD RIGHT NOW TO MAKE UP FOR THE LATENESS OF THIS POST!!!!! CAN YOU HEAR US?!?!
Okay, okay we’ll turn it down. This is Peter now, so if you don’t like reading my posts or if you have more of a crush on Gill or Krista (understandable, I may be irresistable, but I’m engaged) you can skip down a few lines. Actually it wasn’t really a commune, but it seemed like one. I think they refer to themselves as a mission. I was a bit leery about going to some hippie place nonetheless, but Gill was all for it (being a hippie) so I went along with an open mind. It’s free to stay there, and they provide free basic meals for you while you’re there, and they make it clear that you don’t have to help with anything and they want people to be able to come and rest. They stuck me in a dorm with a bunch of Europeans who mostly were there to help for a year or so, and on our first day we got a tour. He mission started with a Zulu revival where God’s spirit came down and hundreds of people came to repent of their sin and know God. It was started by these German South Africans praying in 1966, and the two main guys are still around running things. The mission grew and grew though, and there are over 100 “coworkers” (full-time missionaries) along with other full-time volunteers, hundreds of paid workers, and various other people associated with the mission. Over the years they’ve started various projects to help people or raise money, and now there’s about a million things going on there all the time. To make a short list:
-they discovered an underground spring, built a water-bottling plant, and are now south africa’s #2 producer of bottled water with a tractor-trailer full of water bottles leaving the mission every four hours around the clock.
-they had a few dairy cows which they’ve expanded into a huge dairy plant that sells milk and yoghurt all over SA
-some hydroponic expert taught them growing techniques and now they have state of the art greenhouses supplying the best peppers all over the world.
-they have planted several churches and schools throughout Europe
-they started an AIDS hospice where they pray for people to get better and it works
-they started a school for mission kids which now takes in several students from all over
-they started a college to train teachers which also now takes in students from all over.
-they started a radio station as an outreach to Zulus which now broadcasts all over SA
-they started a bakery which sells all over now
-and on and on, knitting, building, etc, they are always looking for more projects and use the money they make communally and to help people.
They have odd customs that remind you of a Mennonite colony like guys and girls don’t associate with each other, and girls wear skirts, but God really seems to be at work. Often a guy will sense that God is telling him to marry a particular girl. Often the guy doesn’t really know the girl, but he goes and tells an elder, and the elder goes and speaks to the girl, and then the girl prays about it a whole bunch until God confirms with her, and then they get married. We heard many personal testimonies of this, and it always seems to work out “wonderful!” The lovely lady who ran the coffee shop (another enterprise I forgot to mention earlier) said she hadn’t even touched her husband before they were married twenty years ago, and it’s still as lovely today as the first year they were married (which was lovely, I was told).
So, to sum up, a bunch of German guys got together and prayed for revival, and then it happened and tons of people came and became Christians, and then they set up this place for people to find rest and help them and then God gave then huge financial blessings so they could do it, and then God started setting up the marriages and everyone seems joyful and devoted to God.
I spent the week helping a couple Germans (Eddie and Marcus) building a cool octagonal kindergarten. Fun fun.
Peter out!
p.s. joel, you could come here for a year to see God working.
p.p.s. big shout-out to Josh who’s hair is dashing!! I mean seriously, have you ladies checked out that boys hair lately? Dashing.
Hello there littles, let me say something about Kwasizabantu. Pete forgot to mention that after the first day a cloud descended onto our hill and never left. My lips were blue, I wore sneakers with my skirt, the sweater I washed reeks like mold. Poor thing couldn’t dry, hanging out there for days in the cloud.
For all who wondered, I’m not staying at the ‘commune’ forever, not even longer than a week. I’m coming home, coming back to the World with all its confusing, convoluted splendor. Unlike Peter with his happy-go-lucky, all is well personality, I seem to think most things kind of suck. So, Kwasizabantu with its happy marriages, fantastically successful business ventures and people who so willingly gave up everything of ‘themselves’ to serve God and submit to the authority of the Mission was a little much for me. Too much sweetness, or simplicity, or purity. I don’t know fully but I suppose most of it has to do with something rotten inside of me. I felt if I stayed I’d have to be entirely different than I am – which was particularly sad for me to realize. For people to live together, so many of them, it seems to necessitate identification with the group self and goals, rather than those of the individual. I did see how the individual thoughts, perspective, etc lost significance in light of the whole, in light of authority, which was taken to be set-up by God. I think perhaps this pattern is indeed beautiful but it is a beauty I’m not quite able to recognize. I was unprepared for how much that bothered me in reality, because I’m pretty sure I’ve gone on about wanting it before. It seems for so many people to live together in peace and harmony they have to become almost un-human.
I came away thinking I needed to pray more, understanding that I do. Fearful – for it seems once you try to pray it brings shame – some sort of litmus test of faith. I never want to stick the paper in for I’m afraid it will come out the wrong color. Not sure what you’d want to be though, Acid or Base and which one does God want more?
I spent time alone this week, for the first time really in months. Normally I’m addicted to being alone but, being lately out of practice, found my own company unsettling, equally unsettling the company of others once you realize you’re not comfortable on your own. Being on this trip and trying to learn and make the most of my chance to change, serve people, etc, I sort of forget how to be at rest in my own skin. Forget the significance of sitting and thinking, forget about your own self as it is, apart from its growth.
I think I did find help at Kwasizabantu and for that, as well as for the many small and unforgettable examples of self-sacrifice, I say thank you and recommend their hospitality to any of you traveling through South Africa.
Now…
o Leah and kajsa, I’m glad you found the cream. Left it for you guys to fight over, thought if we were going to be away we shouldn’t take Everything good with us. Who knows but you girls maybe in need of a little ‘pick-me-up’ one of these slushy march evenings…
o I made Cream puffs in the Bakery.
o I’m addicted to Peanut Butter
o Janess, I hope your eyes have stopped exploding
That is all, sorry for the low-quality post, there was something about my week at Kwasizabantu that sits oddly with me. I find it difficult to post.
Love,
Gillian
p.s. Josh Wilson is my favorite person to make Ginger Tea for (next to Janay Newton I suppose who introduced it to me… Janay is, for the record, one of the best people to be next to). I wish you well in Vancouver Joshie, I feel a kindredness for your time there and my time there and hope you don’t get really sad. And if you do it goes away eventually.
Welcome, dear wonderers, wanderers, wisemen and wives.
According to Peter, my task now is to “endeavor to temper Gil and Peter’s opposing steel into a double-edged sword.” He seems to believe that I always fall exactly in the middle of any contrasting points of view that he and Gil muster up, and because of that I must always be a forceful advocate for peace and understanding. On the other hand, Gil brings up that she hopes I don’t feel as though I need to play the balancing, peacemaker role. Such contrast.
It’s lovely that I mostly enjoy falling in the middle, and I really don’t feel as though I must translate (I try to do it only when it seems absolutely necessary).
I have wonderful traveling companions.
KwaSizabantu feels like a long time ago. It’s a good thing those other two filled you in on the basic details of the operation, I don’t think I’d be very up for such niceties. (Writing last in our posts has its definite upsides.)
In this case, I believe Peter’s over-glossing life at the “mission”, I definitely understand Gil’s unsettled feelings about the place. (Pete really is pretty happy-go-lucky.) But I found a lot of comfort there, despite the constant (twice a day, everyday) sermons on sin and rottenness and the sometimes eerie, Pleasantville atmosphere. I drank a lot of tea, read pieces of multiple books, wrote some, drew some, walked around the beautiful gardens, and had numerous valuable conversations with people who were either visiting or living at the mission. Since you basically get to make your own “program”, there was a lot of leeway regarding my everyday routine, and I was very pleased to have a downtime week. I feel bad for poor Gil, forgetting how to be alone with herself. She’s been doing such a great job socializing with everyone since we’ve been here that it’s understandable how she could forget. But since I’ve been incredibly introverted, and a little bit of a mute at times I had a grand time in the slowness and solitude. (I hated the damn cloud though. One day I was wearing a tank top, a T-shirt, a sweater, a zip-up, and a wind-resistant raincoat. Too bad I had to wear my dang skirt, so I managed to remain freezing.)
I still don’t know how I feel about the apparent losing of individuality for the sake of a smoother community. It seems like it’s a little bland. It may be Pride, or some other warped part of my ideas talking, but it seems like God made you and I unique, and I like it when there’s a little more room to express that than there seems to be at KwaSizabantu.
The people there were really hospitable to us though. We had invites to tea dates, lunch dates, supper dates, all sorts of dates –and the people we interacted with were quite open to expressing their interpretations of the mission’s ideas. We asked a lot of questions, trying to figure out how things worked, and got a lot of biblical-based answers. People really felt called to be there, and God is obviously using the place to changes lives.
So, there are many things to ponder and perhaps integrate into my own life, and a few fixations I’d rather not spend any more energy on putting into practice.
Peter asked me numerous times, “What if God tells you to go back there?”
Well, if God tells me, then I guess I’d have to go back. (God’s track record of specific demands regarding the direction of my everyday life is comforting here.)
“What if God tells you to marry some guy there?”
Marry someone I have probably never even had the chance to talk to one-on-one? Probably one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard of, and one that I’d have some serious issues following through on. It’s not happening anytime soon.
In any case, I’m glad that I don’t live in that commune. But I’m glad that some people do. There was a lot of beauty there, even if I was a little disappointed that I didn’t find a bunch of Amish people churning butter and making yoghurt in large crates.
I echo Gil’s recommendation to check it out. (Joel, I wouldn’t say that you should come for a year, but I did think that you would find it interesting.)
I love a lot.
Sometimes I’m not very good at showing it.
Krista
P.S. I helped out in a Kindergarten class where the children spoke German, Afrikaans, Romanian, and Zulu… anything but English, really.
P.P.S. Big shout-out to Josh, who we really like.
Okay, okay we’ll turn it down. This is Peter now, so if you don’t like reading my posts or if you have more of a crush on Gill or Krista (understandable, I may be irresistable, but I’m engaged) you can skip down a few lines. Actually it wasn’t really a commune, but it seemed like one. I think they refer to themselves as a mission. I was a bit leery about going to some hippie place nonetheless, but Gill was all for it (being a hippie) so I went along with an open mind. It’s free to stay there, and they provide free basic meals for you while you’re there, and they make it clear that you don’t have to help with anything and they want people to be able to come and rest. They stuck me in a dorm with a bunch of Europeans who mostly were there to help for a year or so, and on our first day we got a tour. He mission started with a Zulu revival where God’s spirit came down and hundreds of people came to repent of their sin and know God. It was started by these German South Africans praying in 1966, and the two main guys are still around running things. The mission grew and grew though, and there are over 100 “coworkers” (full-time missionaries) along with other full-time volunteers, hundreds of paid workers, and various other people associated with the mission. Over the years they’ve started various projects to help people or raise money, and now there’s about a million things going on there all the time. To make a short list:
-they discovered an underground spring, built a water-bottling plant, and are now south africa’s #2 producer of bottled water with a tractor-trailer full of water bottles leaving the mission every four hours around the clock.
-they had a few dairy cows which they’ve expanded into a huge dairy plant that sells milk and yoghurt all over SA
-some hydroponic expert taught them growing techniques and now they have state of the art greenhouses supplying the best peppers all over the world.
-they have planted several churches and schools throughout Europe
-they started an AIDS hospice where they pray for people to get better and it works
-they started a school for mission kids which now takes in several students from all over
-they started a college to train teachers which also now takes in students from all over.
-they started a radio station as an outreach to Zulus which now broadcasts all over SA
-they started a bakery which sells all over now
-and on and on, knitting, building, etc, they are always looking for more projects and use the money they make communally and to help people.
They have odd customs that remind you of a Mennonite colony like guys and girls don’t associate with each other, and girls wear skirts, but God really seems to be at work. Often a guy will sense that God is telling him to marry a particular girl. Often the guy doesn’t really know the girl, but he goes and tells an elder, and the elder goes and speaks to the girl, and then the girl prays about it a whole bunch until God confirms with her, and then they get married. We heard many personal testimonies of this, and it always seems to work out “wonderful!” The lovely lady who ran the coffee shop (another enterprise I forgot to mention earlier) said she hadn’t even touched her husband before they were married twenty years ago, and it’s still as lovely today as the first year they were married (which was lovely, I was told).
So, to sum up, a bunch of German guys got together and prayed for revival, and then it happened and tons of people came and became Christians, and then they set up this place for people to find rest and help them and then God gave then huge financial blessings so they could do it, and then God started setting up the marriages and everyone seems joyful and devoted to God.
I spent the week helping a couple Germans (Eddie and Marcus) building a cool octagonal kindergarten. Fun fun.
Peter out!
p.s. joel, you could come here for a year to see God working.
p.p.s. big shout-out to Josh who’s hair is dashing!! I mean seriously, have you ladies checked out that boys hair lately? Dashing.
Hello there littles, let me say something about Kwasizabantu. Pete forgot to mention that after the first day a cloud descended onto our hill and never left. My lips were blue, I wore sneakers with my skirt, the sweater I washed reeks like mold. Poor thing couldn’t dry, hanging out there for days in the cloud.
For all who wondered, I’m not staying at the ‘commune’ forever, not even longer than a week. I’m coming home, coming back to the World with all its confusing, convoluted splendor. Unlike Peter with his happy-go-lucky, all is well personality, I seem to think most things kind of suck. So, Kwasizabantu with its happy marriages, fantastically successful business ventures and people who so willingly gave up everything of ‘themselves’ to serve God and submit to the authority of the Mission was a little much for me. Too much sweetness, or simplicity, or purity. I don’t know fully but I suppose most of it has to do with something rotten inside of me. I felt if I stayed I’d have to be entirely different than I am – which was particularly sad for me to realize. For people to live together, so many of them, it seems to necessitate identification with the group self and goals, rather than those of the individual. I did see how the individual thoughts, perspective, etc lost significance in light of the whole, in light of authority, which was taken to be set-up by God. I think perhaps this pattern is indeed beautiful but it is a beauty I’m not quite able to recognize. I was unprepared for how much that bothered me in reality, because I’m pretty sure I’ve gone on about wanting it before. It seems for so many people to live together in peace and harmony they have to become almost un-human.
I came away thinking I needed to pray more, understanding that I do. Fearful – for it seems once you try to pray it brings shame – some sort of litmus test of faith. I never want to stick the paper in for I’m afraid it will come out the wrong color. Not sure what you’d want to be though, Acid or Base and which one does God want more?
I spent time alone this week, for the first time really in months. Normally I’m addicted to being alone but, being lately out of practice, found my own company unsettling, equally unsettling the company of others once you realize you’re not comfortable on your own. Being on this trip and trying to learn and make the most of my chance to change, serve people, etc, I sort of forget how to be at rest in my own skin. Forget the significance of sitting and thinking, forget about your own self as it is, apart from its growth.
I think I did find help at Kwasizabantu and for that, as well as for the many small and unforgettable examples of self-sacrifice, I say thank you and recommend their hospitality to any of you traveling through South Africa.
Now…
o Leah and kajsa, I’m glad you found the cream. Left it for you guys to fight over, thought if we were going to be away we shouldn’t take Everything good with us. Who knows but you girls maybe in need of a little ‘pick-me-up’ one of these slushy march evenings…
o I made Cream puffs in the Bakery.
o I’m addicted to Peanut Butter
o Janess, I hope your eyes have stopped exploding
That is all, sorry for the low-quality post, there was something about my week at Kwasizabantu that sits oddly with me. I find it difficult to post.
Love,
Gillian
p.s. Josh Wilson is my favorite person to make Ginger Tea for (next to Janay Newton I suppose who introduced it to me… Janay is, for the record, one of the best people to be next to). I wish you well in Vancouver Joshie, I feel a kindredness for your time there and my time there and hope you don’t get really sad. And if you do it goes away eventually.
Welcome, dear wonderers, wanderers, wisemen and wives.
According to Peter, my task now is to “endeavor to temper Gil and Peter’s opposing steel into a double-edged sword.” He seems to believe that I always fall exactly in the middle of any contrasting points of view that he and Gil muster up, and because of that I must always be a forceful advocate for peace and understanding. On the other hand, Gil brings up that she hopes I don’t feel as though I need to play the balancing, peacemaker role. Such contrast.
It’s lovely that I mostly enjoy falling in the middle, and I really don’t feel as though I must translate (I try to do it only when it seems absolutely necessary).
I have wonderful traveling companions.
KwaSizabantu feels like a long time ago. It’s a good thing those other two filled you in on the basic details of the operation, I don’t think I’d be very up for such niceties. (Writing last in our posts has its definite upsides.)
In this case, I believe Peter’s over-glossing life at the “mission”, I definitely understand Gil’s unsettled feelings about the place. (Pete really is pretty happy-go-lucky.) But I found a lot of comfort there, despite the constant (twice a day, everyday) sermons on sin and rottenness and the sometimes eerie, Pleasantville atmosphere. I drank a lot of tea, read pieces of multiple books, wrote some, drew some, walked around the beautiful gardens, and had numerous valuable conversations with people who were either visiting or living at the mission. Since you basically get to make your own “program”, there was a lot of leeway regarding my everyday routine, and I was very pleased to have a downtime week. I feel bad for poor Gil, forgetting how to be alone with herself. She’s been doing such a great job socializing with everyone since we’ve been here that it’s understandable how she could forget. But since I’ve been incredibly introverted, and a little bit of a mute at times I had a grand time in the slowness and solitude. (I hated the damn cloud though. One day I was wearing a tank top, a T-shirt, a sweater, a zip-up, and a wind-resistant raincoat. Too bad I had to wear my dang skirt, so I managed to remain freezing.)
I still don’t know how I feel about the apparent losing of individuality for the sake of a smoother community. It seems like it’s a little bland. It may be Pride, or some other warped part of my ideas talking, but it seems like God made you and I unique, and I like it when there’s a little more room to express that than there seems to be at KwaSizabantu.
The people there were really hospitable to us though. We had invites to tea dates, lunch dates, supper dates, all sorts of dates –and the people we interacted with were quite open to expressing their interpretations of the mission’s ideas. We asked a lot of questions, trying to figure out how things worked, and got a lot of biblical-based answers. People really felt called to be there, and God is obviously using the place to changes lives.
So, there are many things to ponder and perhaps integrate into my own life, and a few fixations I’d rather not spend any more energy on putting into practice.
Peter asked me numerous times, “What if God tells you to go back there?”
Well, if God tells me, then I guess I’d have to go back. (God’s track record of specific demands regarding the direction of my everyday life is comforting here.)
“What if God tells you to marry some guy there?”
Marry someone I have probably never even had the chance to talk to one-on-one? Probably one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard of, and one that I’d have some serious issues following through on. It’s not happening anytime soon.
In any case, I’m glad that I don’t live in that commune. But I’m glad that some people do. There was a lot of beauty there, even if I was a little disappointed that I didn’t find a bunch of Amish people churning butter and making yoghurt in large crates.
I echo Gil’s recommendation to check it out. (Joel, I wouldn’t say that you should come for a year, but I did think that you would find it interesting.)
I love a lot.
Sometimes I’m not very good at showing it.
Krista
P.S. I helped out in a Kindergarten class where the children spoke German, Afrikaans, Romanian, and Zulu… anything but English, really.
P.P.S. Big shout-out to Josh, who we really like.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Hi from Candice!
Hello everyone!
Here I am, at the backpackers place in Pietermaritzburg for Easter weekend! It’s really nice to be with Peter and Krista and Gillian again. I’m very thankful it worked out!
Saturday I visited the house that they are building. We ended up not building but watching Michael Jackson music videos and playing with the kids. They are really cute! Yesterday we went to a small Baptist congregation (10 people – including 4 of us and a baby) which was…small, but nice, and then to Durban for a day at the beach.
The last week of work went well, I think mostly because I got over my “I-really-want-to-be-somewhere-familiar” desire and was willing to enjoy each moment of what I was doing. Working in a government hospital here is SO different than working in a hospital in Canada (or a private one here). I have gotten used to calling everyone patients rather than clients; most of the patients are black and don’t speak a language close to mine; it’s not the most sanitary place although is sanitary enough (cats running into the wards???); smiles work wonders. I have seen cerebral palsy kids, wee babies in the neonatal ward, people with visible aids, burns, amputations gone horribly bad, broken arms, strokes (many people with strokes are quite young), developmental disabilities, spinal cord injuries (paraplegics and quadriplegics), hand injuries, club feet, patients who are comatose, a 3 year old walk for the first time, and the one with which I have the most experience: a child who is hyperactive. It’s quite interesting to experience so many kids with cerebral palsy here when in Edmonton you mostly see kids for autism or developmental disabilities. The turn-over in the hospital is also quite fast here, and there have been a couple times where I’ve finally figured out what the most effective intervention will be and go to do it, only to find out the person is leaving the next day.
And it’s not that common here for an OT to ask someone what he or she likes to do. People don’t understand the question. Rather, it’s how they are managing at home or at work. It’s about finding out things like if they have electricity or have to walk to get water and what transportation they have access to. In Canada, the more common questions center around work and other activities people like to do (the things they do that bring meaning – a bit more of addressing the leisure side). I’m sure it’s the same here with a different class of people, but just not so much the ones that I get to see. Another huge difference is the knowledge people have of basic medical issues. One nurse pulled me aside to ask some questions about her niece and said that the biggest problem is that people don’t have the knowledge. An extreme example is a mother not knowing that if her child stays in a curled position for years, it is not normal and she should be checked out. It shows as neglect in a huge way, although not necessarily because of purposeful maltreatment. Unfortunately, that child is now 10 years old and has extreme spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. I’ve NEVER seen a smaller 10 year old in my life. She easily fits in a small crib; partly because her legs and arms are so incredibly bent. Thankfully, though, that one has a relatively happy ending because the doctor recognized the need for the mom to have a social network and the child to have medical care so they are now booked to come in multiple times a week.
There are other things that I’ve gotten used to like living in a grimy apartment with ants, having the water or the power shut of randomly, that when it rains it feels SUPER cold and I need an extra blanket because there’s no inside heating (while having comments made to me about how the cold must be nothing to me), minimal internet time, no phone line and not being able to go out after 6:30 by myself (I have two friends who work at the hospital who are male and also black, and that was quite a blessing last week when the power shut off, it was really cold outside, it was really cold inside all day at the hospital and then at home and I just wanted something warm to eat and drink… I could walk outside with them after dark!). There are many people who have offered me rides, laundry, hang-out time, and have sent me text messages to see how I’m doing… I have not been stranded (although the first week really felt like it). I’m getting used to being on my own more. Sometimes that’s detrimental because I’m so used to telling people about my day and being able to think by talking, but at the same time it’s quite nice because I don’t have a choice but to be still (unless I want to read my textbook – which inevitably makes me want to fall asleep). I have more opportunities to just BE, and to pray and read my Bible. It’s good to be away from the mayhem of this last semester, to see Peter, and to experience something new.
I’m also looking forward to coming home. I’m pretty sure that if I planned to be here for longer I would be able to continue on. But since I know I’m coming home in 2 weeks, I’m really looking forward to it! I know there are many things here that I will miss though and want to bring along even though I can’t. Some things like the people (especially some of the rehab staff and patients that I really like), some of the culture (like sleeping on the ground wherever just because you’re tired and can), and the beach in Durban (minus the fear of someone stealing our stuff), and Peter (who will be home 3 weeks after me, so that’s not so bad). But, for now, I am still here and get to experience all the things God still has in store for me. He has protected me so far – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and I’m pretty sure He will continue. I have more people to meet, more things to see, more to learn, more to pray about, more to learn… and I think it will be very good.
Here I am, at the backpackers place in Pietermaritzburg for Easter weekend! It’s really nice to be with Peter and Krista and Gillian again. I’m very thankful it worked out!
Saturday I visited the house that they are building. We ended up not building but watching Michael Jackson music videos and playing with the kids. They are really cute! Yesterday we went to a small Baptist congregation (10 people – including 4 of us and a baby) which was…small, but nice, and then to Durban for a day at the beach.
The last week of work went well, I think mostly because I got over my “I-really-want-to-be-somewhere-familiar” desire and was willing to enjoy each moment of what I was doing. Working in a government hospital here is SO different than working in a hospital in Canada (or a private one here). I have gotten used to calling everyone patients rather than clients; most of the patients are black and don’t speak a language close to mine; it’s not the most sanitary place although is sanitary enough (cats running into the wards???); smiles work wonders. I have seen cerebral palsy kids, wee babies in the neonatal ward, people with visible aids, burns, amputations gone horribly bad, broken arms, strokes (many people with strokes are quite young), developmental disabilities, spinal cord injuries (paraplegics and quadriplegics), hand injuries, club feet, patients who are comatose, a 3 year old walk for the first time, and the one with which I have the most experience: a child who is hyperactive. It’s quite interesting to experience so many kids with cerebral palsy here when in Edmonton you mostly see kids for autism or developmental disabilities. The turn-over in the hospital is also quite fast here, and there have been a couple times where I’ve finally figured out what the most effective intervention will be and go to do it, only to find out the person is leaving the next day.
And it’s not that common here for an OT to ask someone what he or she likes to do. People don’t understand the question. Rather, it’s how they are managing at home or at work. It’s about finding out things like if they have electricity or have to walk to get water and what transportation they have access to. In Canada, the more common questions center around work and other activities people like to do (the things they do that bring meaning – a bit more of addressing the leisure side). I’m sure it’s the same here with a different class of people, but just not so much the ones that I get to see. Another huge difference is the knowledge people have of basic medical issues. One nurse pulled me aside to ask some questions about her niece and said that the biggest problem is that people don’t have the knowledge. An extreme example is a mother not knowing that if her child stays in a curled position for years, it is not normal and she should be checked out. It shows as neglect in a huge way, although not necessarily because of purposeful maltreatment. Unfortunately, that child is now 10 years old and has extreme spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. I’ve NEVER seen a smaller 10 year old in my life. She easily fits in a small crib; partly because her legs and arms are so incredibly bent. Thankfully, though, that one has a relatively happy ending because the doctor recognized the need for the mom to have a social network and the child to have medical care so they are now booked to come in multiple times a week.
There are other things that I’ve gotten used to like living in a grimy apartment with ants, having the water or the power shut of randomly, that when it rains it feels SUPER cold and I need an extra blanket because there’s no inside heating (while having comments made to me about how the cold must be nothing to me), minimal internet time, no phone line and not being able to go out after 6:30 by myself (I have two friends who work at the hospital who are male and also black, and that was quite a blessing last week when the power shut off, it was really cold outside, it was really cold inside all day at the hospital and then at home and I just wanted something warm to eat and drink… I could walk outside with them after dark!). There are many people who have offered me rides, laundry, hang-out time, and have sent me text messages to see how I’m doing… I have not been stranded (although the first week really felt like it). I’m getting used to being on my own more. Sometimes that’s detrimental because I’m so used to telling people about my day and being able to think by talking, but at the same time it’s quite nice because I don’t have a choice but to be still (unless I want to read my textbook – which inevitably makes me want to fall asleep). I have more opportunities to just BE, and to pray and read my Bible. It’s good to be away from the mayhem of this last semester, to see Peter, and to experience something new.
I’m also looking forward to coming home. I’m pretty sure that if I planned to be here for longer I would be able to continue on. But since I know I’m coming home in 2 weeks, I’m really looking forward to it! I know there are many things here that I will miss though and want to bring along even though I can’t. Some things like the people (especially some of the rehab staff and patients that I really like), some of the culture (like sleeping on the ground wherever just because you’re tired and can), and the beach in Durban (minus the fear of someone stealing our stuff), and Peter (who will be home 3 weeks after me, so that’s not so bad). But, for now, I am still here and get to experience all the things God still has in store for me. He has protected me so far – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and I’m pretty sure He will continue. I have more people to meet, more things to see, more to learn, more to pray about, more to learn… and I think it will be very good.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
How Embarrassing.
So, that "last phone number" was wrong.
Hopefully this is actually the last one.
07 3535 45 86
Country code still 0027.
Happy Easter, from a happy Candice, Gillian, Krista and Peter.
Hopefully this is actually the last one.
07 3535 45 86
Country code still 0027.
Happy Easter, from a happy Candice, Gillian, Krista and Peter.
Not Good-An Observation and Confession
I just finished an interesting book by A. J. Jacobs called, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. This documentary of A. J.’s spiritual experiment was very interesting in an “I didn’t know that about The Old Testament/ The Bible in general/ Jewish culture and practices/ the beliefs of the (fill in any number of specific denominations here). But in addition to the enjoyment of reading Jacobs’ fascinating and quite often hilarious journey that evolved during his mission “to obey the entire Bible, without picking and choosing,” I found the state of my own spiritual journey being challenged. (Hmm… this sounds like a biased report, or sappy book-praise…)
I don’t often do this sort of detailed written explanation of the position my soul is in. I usually feel much too shy, ashamed, inadequate, etc. (in short, “non-committal”) to claim a series of revelations, or a certain type of idea as my own. I’m terrified of taking authority of something I’ve written, because it’s important to me that words are used properly, or that if I do take a leap and decide to portray a thought in a non-abstract way, that my ideas will be understood. And by trying to make my thoughts clear for the public to read it becomes obvious that I have spent a considerable amount of time arranging the words, making things “just so”, (which implies that I must be satisfied with the piece, since I’ve eventually gotten around to posting it). So, there you have it, I’m a scared-y-cat. I just wrote an entire paragraph (Look, I’m still going!) to explain that I’m not actually satisfied with these words. I’m nervous about who will read them, what feelings will be attached to my person afterwards because of them, and how my future self will be held accountable to their meanings. Now, I realize that some (if not most) people don’t attach as much weight to words as I do, and so I really have nothing to be anxious over in consideration of the public, (and this paragraph has become more like a musician covering his ass by claiming, “I haven’t practiced in a while,” before he plays his piece,) but I’m too obsessed with covering my ass to erase this whole thing and expose myself without the preamble. I’m not even going to apologize.
Vulnerability is a fear of mine. I’m working on it.
So, here’s the gist: A. J. Jacobs, a New Yorker and a secular writer, who tends to lean towards the quirky and the obscure when choosing his writing projects, (his other novel is devoted to The Encyclopedia Britannica,) decides to see what will happen when he tries to live the “ultimate biblical life”. His interest in his own Jewish ancestors leads him to decide to break up his year into eight months of strictly Old Testament laws, rules, practices, and suggestions and four months studying the same in the New Testament.
Seriously, this guy is dedicated. He really does his homework: reading through the Bible, studying in different translations, sifting through commentaries and self-help books, setting up for himself a “spiritual advisory board” consisting of many people sitting in various positions on the spiritual spectrum. I was pretty impressed with how far he went to make his experience valuable, how far he went in order to write a good book. His dedication is especially bizarre since he’s a self-proclaimed agnostic. He’s not really sure if he believes that God exists at all, and he’s constantly revisiting three specific states of spirituality: denial of God’s existence, a vitalism of sorts (his reverence for a “divine spark” in life’s molecular reactions), and suddenly coming to conclusion that existence seems much too random without a God who cares, but quickly dismissing that conclusion when he realizes that he’s not ready to let loose control of his life. This is sad.
But I loved the book, especially the first eight chapters.
It’s really easy for me to pull up alongside Jacobs. I love the quest. I love the knowledge he attains, and the setting of that knowledge into practice in his life. He’s practical, and literal. I love the dedicated, slightly obsessive way he performs his new spiritual rituals. All of his progress, and even his doubts and cyclic ideas about God seem comfortingly familiar to me. We’re different in the fact that I believe that God is, this belief is very rarely removed from me, but the vitalist in me often delights more in the wonder of life than the creator of life Himself.
A. J. reminded me of my own fixations. His search to become a “better person”, to become “good” is not unlike my own. Perhaps he was fueled by a slightly different source to begin with, I’m certainly not writing a book on my progress, but after some months of changing his appearance, his speech and his actions, among other things, Jacobs mind has naturally drifted to assessing life from a moral, more biblical standpoint. His reactions are gentler, he’s learning to forgive, he’s slowly conquering the urge to lie, etc. – a form of cognitive dissonance that seems to be working. This is so exciting for me. I romanticize the act of self-bettering. I obsess over it.
I love the idea of being better, of being aware of my faults in order that I can replace them, so that I can improve myself, fix myself. My mind is often consumed with achieving a higher level of goodness –it seems like it’s worth my time.
When he reached month number nine, the first month of his New Testament observance, Jacobs could no longer ignore Jesus, and I could no longer ignore the disappointing realization that I had been ignoring Jesus. Going about the motions, praying, resting for the Sabbath, tithing, the taming of the tongue, the cleansing the mind of greed and other impurities, even the strict observance of obscure laws all made sense to me, they were all filled with exciting possibilities. Somehow I had managed to ignore the fact that Jesus wasn’t in the picture.
So, you can read the book for yourself if you so desire –the ending’s a little disappointing, not because it’s poorly written, but because Jacobs still can’t submit himself to Christ. I certainly understand the logistics of it –to continue in his spiritual search with the same fervor after his project was over would be an obvious personal commitment above and beyond mere research for a book. That’s a big lifestyle change, especially coming from a mainstream New York writer with Jewish heritage. I was raised in a Christ-focused home by (wonderful) Christ-seeking parents, and have been blessed with many dedicated Christian friends, yet I still find it difficult to claim Christ. I want to do it myself. I want to fix myself. I want to be loving, to be just and merciful, to be generous and gentle, and most importantly to be good. The strangest thing is that a lot of the time I do this in the knowledge of God, I do it for Him.
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered, “No one is good – except God alone.”
Luke 18:19
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:5-8
I don’t know how I always come to the idea that I can obtain goodness for myself. God is good. Jesus didn’t even consider himself equal.
It was so obvious to me the Jacobs was missing the point when he skirted around Jesus in the New Testament, still trying to hold onto to goodness for himself. Without Christ, all the transformations that I was so excited for in A. J. seemed pointless. It’s Christ who transforms us, who makes our transformations worthwhile, and it’s God who is good, not me.
I’m not sure what this post is supposed to say, or how it’s supposed to end. I know I felt responsible to be a little more obvious and vulnerable in my claim to Christ. He is what makes me worthwhile; His death makes my transformation and redemption possible. I do believe that, I shouldn’t be too proud to declare it.
Usually this is where I’d write something ridiculously off-topic or whimsical to take away from the heavy fact that I am being serious, and the embarrassing reality that I just laid bare that I’ve “discovered” something so obvious. But that’s probably Pride talking, so I’ll leave it. (Even this disclaimer is probably pushing the boundaries.)
I pray that God would make me able give up my ideals of self-transformation, and to allow Him to be the one to mold me, ripen me, make me less obsessed with my own state and more concerned with His way.
These are my reflections.
Love, Krista
P.S. A. J. Jacobs, you still doing the self-Google?
I don’t often do this sort of detailed written explanation of the position my soul is in. I usually feel much too shy, ashamed, inadequate, etc. (in short, “non-committal”) to claim a series of revelations, or a certain type of idea as my own. I’m terrified of taking authority of something I’ve written, because it’s important to me that words are used properly, or that if I do take a leap and decide to portray a thought in a non-abstract way, that my ideas will be understood. And by trying to make my thoughts clear for the public to read it becomes obvious that I have spent a considerable amount of time arranging the words, making things “just so”, (which implies that I must be satisfied with the piece, since I’ve eventually gotten around to posting it). So, there you have it, I’m a scared-y-cat. I just wrote an entire paragraph (Look, I’m still going!) to explain that I’m not actually satisfied with these words. I’m nervous about who will read them, what feelings will be attached to my person afterwards because of them, and how my future self will be held accountable to their meanings. Now, I realize that some (if not most) people don’t attach as much weight to words as I do, and so I really have nothing to be anxious over in consideration of the public, (and this paragraph has become more like a musician covering his ass by claiming, “I haven’t practiced in a while,” before he plays his piece,) but I’m too obsessed with covering my ass to erase this whole thing and expose myself without the preamble. I’m not even going to apologize.
Vulnerability is a fear of mine. I’m working on it.
So, here’s the gist: A. J. Jacobs, a New Yorker and a secular writer, who tends to lean towards the quirky and the obscure when choosing his writing projects, (his other novel is devoted to The Encyclopedia Britannica,) decides to see what will happen when he tries to live the “ultimate biblical life”. His interest in his own Jewish ancestors leads him to decide to break up his year into eight months of strictly Old Testament laws, rules, practices, and suggestions and four months studying the same in the New Testament.
Seriously, this guy is dedicated. He really does his homework: reading through the Bible, studying in different translations, sifting through commentaries and self-help books, setting up for himself a “spiritual advisory board” consisting of many people sitting in various positions on the spiritual spectrum. I was pretty impressed with how far he went to make his experience valuable, how far he went in order to write a good book. His dedication is especially bizarre since he’s a self-proclaimed agnostic. He’s not really sure if he believes that God exists at all, and he’s constantly revisiting three specific states of spirituality: denial of God’s existence, a vitalism of sorts (his reverence for a “divine spark” in life’s molecular reactions), and suddenly coming to conclusion that existence seems much too random without a God who cares, but quickly dismissing that conclusion when he realizes that he’s not ready to let loose control of his life. This is sad.
But I loved the book, especially the first eight chapters.
It’s really easy for me to pull up alongside Jacobs. I love the quest. I love the knowledge he attains, and the setting of that knowledge into practice in his life. He’s practical, and literal. I love the dedicated, slightly obsessive way he performs his new spiritual rituals. All of his progress, and even his doubts and cyclic ideas about God seem comfortingly familiar to me. We’re different in the fact that I believe that God is, this belief is very rarely removed from me, but the vitalist in me often delights more in the wonder of life than the creator of life Himself.
A. J. reminded me of my own fixations. His search to become a “better person”, to become “good” is not unlike my own. Perhaps he was fueled by a slightly different source to begin with, I’m certainly not writing a book on my progress, but after some months of changing his appearance, his speech and his actions, among other things, Jacobs mind has naturally drifted to assessing life from a moral, more biblical standpoint. His reactions are gentler, he’s learning to forgive, he’s slowly conquering the urge to lie, etc. – a form of cognitive dissonance that seems to be working. This is so exciting for me. I romanticize the act of self-bettering. I obsess over it.
I love the idea of being better, of being aware of my faults in order that I can replace them, so that I can improve myself, fix myself. My mind is often consumed with achieving a higher level of goodness –it seems like it’s worth my time.
When he reached month number nine, the first month of his New Testament observance, Jacobs could no longer ignore Jesus, and I could no longer ignore the disappointing realization that I had been ignoring Jesus. Going about the motions, praying, resting for the Sabbath, tithing, the taming of the tongue, the cleansing the mind of greed and other impurities, even the strict observance of obscure laws all made sense to me, they were all filled with exciting possibilities. Somehow I had managed to ignore the fact that Jesus wasn’t in the picture.
So, you can read the book for yourself if you so desire –the ending’s a little disappointing, not because it’s poorly written, but because Jacobs still can’t submit himself to Christ. I certainly understand the logistics of it –to continue in his spiritual search with the same fervor after his project was over would be an obvious personal commitment above and beyond mere research for a book. That’s a big lifestyle change, especially coming from a mainstream New York writer with Jewish heritage. I was raised in a Christ-focused home by (wonderful) Christ-seeking parents, and have been blessed with many dedicated Christian friends, yet I still find it difficult to claim Christ. I want to do it myself. I want to fix myself. I want to be loving, to be just and merciful, to be generous and gentle, and most importantly to be good. The strangest thing is that a lot of the time I do this in the knowledge of God, I do it for Him.
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered, “No one is good – except God alone.”
Luke 18:19
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:5-8
I don’t know how I always come to the idea that I can obtain goodness for myself. God is good. Jesus didn’t even consider himself equal.
It was so obvious to me the Jacobs was missing the point when he skirted around Jesus in the New Testament, still trying to hold onto to goodness for himself. Without Christ, all the transformations that I was so excited for in A. J. seemed pointless. It’s Christ who transforms us, who makes our transformations worthwhile, and it’s God who is good, not me.
I’m not sure what this post is supposed to say, or how it’s supposed to end. I know I felt responsible to be a little more obvious and vulnerable in my claim to Christ. He is what makes me worthwhile; His death makes my transformation and redemption possible. I do believe that, I shouldn’t be too proud to declare it.
Usually this is where I’d write something ridiculously off-topic or whimsical to take away from the heavy fact that I am being serious, and the embarrassing reality that I just laid bare that I’ve “discovered” something so obvious. But that’s probably Pride talking, so I’ll leave it. (Even this disclaimer is probably pushing the boundaries.)
I pray that God would make me able give up my ideals of self-transformation, and to allow Him to be the one to mold me, ripen me, make me less obsessed with my own state and more concerned with His way.
These are my reflections.
Love, Krista
P.S. A. J. Jacobs, you still doing the self-Google?
Monday, March 17, 2008
March 10 post - Botswana Adventure
Good morning, Dears.
Lovely day for drive -the sun shines, the coal dust settles to reveal fields of wild flowers and rows of maize-corn. Some of the trees are wild and mysterious -foreign to my western-Canada trained eye; some are familiar -sitting there, among long yellow grasses, normalizing this country and returning me to Alberta.
Here we are in our little, white rental locker: the music’s loud, the windows cracked –the first half of our trip behind us. We just spent a lovely weekend with a lovely, little lady named Candice in Witbank/Jo’burg, and now we head towards Durban area, to an self-sufficient communal living place where we’ll spend a week wearing floor length skirts, attending two sermons a day, working in a yoghurt factory and learning about living in a (successful) commune. I suppose Peter’s off the hook with the skirts, but he’ll most likely be sporting his collared shirts for a while. We’re hoping that Gil won’t be seduced by the romance of the community, (her dream world,) and abandon Pete and I. There’s so much to come.
We finished off our time in Ontario on Friday, and opted for an hour-long flight from Maun to Jo’Burg instead of a sketchy two-day bus trip. The older couple I sat beside were odd enough to keep me quite entertained. She played Sudoku the entire trip while complaining about the flight delay, the “uncomfortable seats”, and the fact that Gil got a whole can of Sprite. He wrote, crossed out, and circled strange, coded combinations of consonants on a pad of paper –probably a spy, almost sure of it.
Spent Friday night at Candice’s in Witbank, and set off the next morning for the big city. Walked around in a market and Africa’s largest mall Saturday afternoon, and out for a sushi dinner before we settled in to our backpacker’s hostel for the night. I’ll let Gil describe the scene and Peter describe the host; they’ve already got it down.
Sunday morning we went to my favourite church service. I felt unbelievably blessed to join that group of God’s children in worship. I know Gil has some to share on this, don’t want to steal it… I’ll just say that I was very encouraged by their Christ-focused mentality, and their understanding of whole-church responsibility for community. That was an awkward sentence. Sorry.
After church we managed to maneuver our way through the mass of concrete that makes up the “heart of South Africa” with only two maps, four navigators and a few minor detours. It turns out that neither of our fairly recent maps were quite recent enough for the ever-changing street names in Johannesburg. We wandered around the Apartheid museum, where I’m sure Pete memorized every fact he read to recite to many of you at a later time, when it’s convenient to show off his history skills. It’s strange to learn about “history” that happened within your lifetime and is still so responsible for affecting everyday life here.
South Africa is samesame, but different. Our time in the cities here felt like we were somehow dropped off in Vancouver, or in some random American city where the earth was dyed red.
I sometimes become quite overwhelmed with how all that I am learning here is supposed to fit into my life. Or how I am to articulate exactly what I’m learning while it’s all so fresh in my mind. I feel as though I cannot properly relay my thoughts on my experiences, because I have yet to discover all of their significance, or all sides of their truth.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t remember how I interact back home, not that I’m entirely different –but right now it’s hard to imagine being anywhere but here, living any life but this transient one. I suppose I’m quite used to being away now.
Life is very large.
Will you take me as I am?
Lovvve,
Krista
Post Script: Dear Southview members -I thoroughly enjoyed reading your cards and letters. It’s encouraging to be reminded that though there are only three of us traveling here, many more at home are joining us in prayer. Thanks!
Peter In
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “yes, these narratives and expositions are lovely, but what are the concrete things you’ve accomplished? If you could make a list titled, ‘I have served God in these physical ways’ then what would the list say? Very well, I hear you shouting for the list and I am happy to oblige. In Maun we accomplished the following:
-Sealed and installed flashing and painted around the steeple of the church.
-Helped paint interior doors for the church.
-Installed 13 interior doors (actually only 11 but we had to do 2 twice because of poor cuts).
-Crashed one of the missionaries’ vehicles into the other.
-Replaced lightbulbs and adjusted the hanging lights in the church.
-Paid for damage caused by Peter crashing one of the missionaries’ vehicles into the other.
-Paid for doors damaged by poor cuts.
-Help ramjam some errands to pick up church stuff (Gill and I spent over an hour in Cashbuild while the clerks figured out how to scan our purchases – and I later spent an hour convincing the manager that he’d sold us two faulty doors that they needed to replace)
-Dusted 24 pews and swept the sanctuary and washed 9 of the 11 aforementioned interior doors.
-Installed 9 interior door handles and one lock.
-Upholstered 8 church pews.
-Pushed 8 wheelbarrows full of dirt from a pile on one side of the church to a dip on the other.
-Accidentally scraped the paint on the back of the church when the ladder fell.
-Painted over the scrape-marks on the back of the church.
-Picked up 12 large used tires for the sewage soakaway from a bush hotshot company.
-Hauled 11 pickup truckloads full of dirt from a pile on one side of the church to a dip on the other.
-Set up and took down our tents that we stayed in for the end of our stay.
-Set up a huge canvas tent for a week of gospel meetings in town.
Now I know at this point some of you are thinking to me (since I’m not there and you can’t speak to me), you’re thinking, “but Peter shouldn’t missionary-type work be more about building relationships than just seeming busy and accomplishing tasks?”
“Well, not to worry.” I think back to you, “along the way we are also meeting many people, both Native Africans and Missionaries, both Christians and non, and we didn’t accomplish the tasks above entirely on our own, we received much help from our new Botswana friends. The work, in fact, even facilitates the building of those very relationships often, rather than detracting from it.”
“So don’t think we’re just mindlessly trying to keep ourselves busy,” I think to you at last, “God appears to be at work in much of what we are doing, whether through helping people, learning things, or ramjamming dirt into a dip, He is here.”
After Botswana we had the lovely good fortune of being able to meet up with the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. By coincidence she is also my fiancé. We drove out in our white Volkswagen rental car (that was upgraded to air con and remote locks for free – although still no power steering) from the Jo’Burg airport to where Candice was working at the hospital in Witbank. She seemed much smaller at first, than I remembered. (Has anyone else noticed that Candice seems much larger once she’s talking to you than say, when she’s still walking at a distance? – She uses this power to such an effect that Gill herself thought Candice was taller than little Ruthey Calder.) After I got over the initial appearance of Candice’s shrinking stature, we all had a lovely reunion and spent a nice holiday weekend in Jo’Burg. Krista left the description of the hostel-owner to me, and I will now oblige:
We got out of the Air Botswana transport and right into both the hustle and the bustle of the Jo’Burg Airport. In Jo’Burg everything goes much faster than in many other parts of Africa and you can feel it immediately. People actually seemed to be walking twice as fast off the plane in Jo’Burg as they had been when they walked onto in Maun. There were about a million shops, which appeared all around us as we walked on, and I suggested the Girls get us a SIM card for our cell-phone while I sorted out our rental car. Having left the ladies behind at MTN Cellular I strode on in the direction of rentalcar. There was a line of people shouting at the new arrivals that they had taxis, hostels, etc to offer, and one woman in particular looked right at me as I passed and inquired if I needed a hostel in Jo’Burg. My natural inclination obviously would be to say, “Oh, no thank-you.” But since we actually were looking for a hostel in Jo’Burg, I was caught with a momentary loss for words. What do you say to someone trying to sell you something that you need when you’re so used to brushing aside a constant barrage of salespeople offering products and services of dubious usefulness? Well I said, “well…” and then I regarded this woman. She was shorter than me by several inches, but she stood in a way that made it seem like she didn’t know how short she was. She seemed to be able to look at me eye-to-eye, perhaps by some trick of bending the light reflecting off her through some sort of refraction technique created by affecting the atmospheric densities in her immediate surroundings. However she did it, as I was walking I was now looking directly into her sternly confident off-coloured eyes (one was light blue and the other was an unnatural-seeming cloudy grey blue) as she launched into an uninterrupted monologue on everything I would want to know about Jo’Burg, her hostel, and specifically the area of Jo’Burg surrounding her Hostel and why it was the superior area of Jo’Burg to hostel in. Her hair was curly but pulled back into a tight medium-length ponytail with a short wisp of straightened curl shooting across the top of her forehead. Her skin looked like it had been very white at one time but now looked like it had been simultaneously tanned darker and burned redder with freckles added underneath. She spoke with an English accent that had been influenced by South African dialects for many years. She seemed sturdy in stature, although very slight in build, without anything but that consisting of sinuous muscle and bone in her body. To put it simply she looked like a British rock band groupie from the 60s who had managed to kick the drugs, move to South Africa, and become a business woman all while staying young and growing old in just the way that all British rock band groupies from the 60s had wished they could though few succeeded.
“Well, I guess we are looking for a place..” was all I could think of responding with, and with her card in my pocket I continued towards my rentalcar destination wondering if the woman was awesome or crazy or both. It turned out she was both, and we enjoyed a pleasant stay at her place – to be described by Gill…
I better leave it here, before I develop blisters on my fingers, and the girls seem to want to induce me to participate in another round of their reading a book out loud sessions. Try not to picture it, and you’re face might not get scrunched up into the same contorted look that mine now has.
Peter out.
Julieen….
Hi lovettes,
Not feeling it today dudes. Sorry. I want to tell you about the Methodists but not at the same time. Sometimes relaying experiences makes me feel like I’m making them up. So I’ll show you what I learned when I come home!
Gillian
p.s: description of the hostel.
Go to the video store. Rent He died with a Falafel in his hand. Watch enough so as to appreciate the atmosphere. Turn it off before you waste too much of your evening. Sit for a moment and recall the spirit of the rooms, etc. What you are left with, a slightly sandy taste in your mouth – there. You’ve found the Hostel we stayed at in Jo-burg.
*Tattooed, SA man with a bruised eye and a rat-tail looking like a wound. Free-range Parrot. Seedy-looking white man with colorless hair (in someway attached to Peter’s rocker lady?) Sinewy Asian with tasty food. An unfortunate dog who ate the pool chemicals, causing his tongue to swell so much it stuck to the carpet over night. Something which was described in detail by our frentic host, poor Mr. Paddle-Tongue*
Lovely day for drive -the sun shines, the coal dust settles to reveal fields of wild flowers and rows of maize-corn. Some of the trees are wild and mysterious -foreign to my western-Canada trained eye; some are familiar -sitting there, among long yellow grasses, normalizing this country and returning me to Alberta.
Here we are in our little, white rental locker: the music’s loud, the windows cracked –the first half of our trip behind us. We just spent a lovely weekend with a lovely, little lady named Candice in Witbank/Jo’burg, and now we head towards Durban area, to an self-sufficient communal living place where we’ll spend a week wearing floor length skirts, attending two sermons a day, working in a yoghurt factory and learning about living in a (successful) commune. I suppose Peter’s off the hook with the skirts, but he’ll most likely be sporting his collared shirts for a while. We’re hoping that Gil won’t be seduced by the romance of the community, (her dream world,) and abandon Pete and I. There’s so much to come.
We finished off our time in Ontario on Friday, and opted for an hour-long flight from Maun to Jo’Burg instead of a sketchy two-day bus trip. The older couple I sat beside were odd enough to keep me quite entertained. She played Sudoku the entire trip while complaining about the flight delay, the “uncomfortable seats”, and the fact that Gil got a whole can of Sprite. He wrote, crossed out, and circled strange, coded combinations of consonants on a pad of paper –probably a spy, almost sure of it.
Spent Friday night at Candice’s in Witbank, and set off the next morning for the big city. Walked around in a market and Africa’s largest mall Saturday afternoon, and out for a sushi dinner before we settled in to our backpacker’s hostel for the night. I’ll let Gil describe the scene and Peter describe the host; they’ve already got it down.
Sunday morning we went to my favourite church service. I felt unbelievably blessed to join that group of God’s children in worship. I know Gil has some to share on this, don’t want to steal it… I’ll just say that I was very encouraged by their Christ-focused mentality, and their understanding of whole-church responsibility for community. That was an awkward sentence. Sorry.
After church we managed to maneuver our way through the mass of concrete that makes up the “heart of South Africa” with only two maps, four navigators and a few minor detours. It turns out that neither of our fairly recent maps were quite recent enough for the ever-changing street names in Johannesburg. We wandered around the Apartheid museum, where I’m sure Pete memorized every fact he read to recite to many of you at a later time, when it’s convenient to show off his history skills. It’s strange to learn about “history” that happened within your lifetime and is still so responsible for affecting everyday life here.
South Africa is samesame, but different. Our time in the cities here felt like we were somehow dropped off in Vancouver, or in some random American city where the earth was dyed red.
I sometimes become quite overwhelmed with how all that I am learning here is supposed to fit into my life. Or how I am to articulate exactly what I’m learning while it’s all so fresh in my mind. I feel as though I cannot properly relay my thoughts on my experiences, because I have yet to discover all of their significance, or all sides of their truth.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t remember how I interact back home, not that I’m entirely different –but right now it’s hard to imagine being anywhere but here, living any life but this transient one. I suppose I’m quite used to being away now.
Life is very large.
Will you take me as I am?
Lovvve,
Krista
Post Script: Dear Southview members -I thoroughly enjoyed reading your cards and letters. It’s encouraging to be reminded that though there are only three of us traveling here, many more at home are joining us in prayer. Thanks!
Peter In
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “yes, these narratives and expositions are lovely, but what are the concrete things you’ve accomplished? If you could make a list titled, ‘I have served God in these physical ways’ then what would the list say? Very well, I hear you shouting for the list and I am happy to oblige. In Maun we accomplished the following:
-Sealed and installed flashing and painted around the steeple of the church.
-Helped paint interior doors for the church.
-Installed 13 interior doors (actually only 11 but we had to do 2 twice because of poor cuts).
-Crashed one of the missionaries’ vehicles into the other.
-Replaced lightbulbs and adjusted the hanging lights in the church.
-Paid for damage caused by Peter crashing one of the missionaries’ vehicles into the other.
-Paid for doors damaged by poor cuts.
-Help ramjam some errands to pick up church stuff (Gill and I spent over an hour in Cashbuild while the clerks figured out how to scan our purchases – and I later spent an hour convincing the manager that he’d sold us two faulty doors that they needed to replace)
-Dusted 24 pews and swept the sanctuary and washed 9 of the 11 aforementioned interior doors.
-Installed 9 interior door handles and one lock.
-Upholstered 8 church pews.
-Pushed 8 wheelbarrows full of dirt from a pile on one side of the church to a dip on the other.
-Accidentally scraped the paint on the back of the church when the ladder fell.
-Painted over the scrape-marks on the back of the church.
-Picked up 12 large used tires for the sewage soakaway from a bush hotshot company.
-Hauled 11 pickup truckloads full of dirt from a pile on one side of the church to a dip on the other.
-Set up and took down our tents that we stayed in for the end of our stay.
-Set up a huge canvas tent for a week of gospel meetings in town.
Now I know at this point some of you are thinking to me (since I’m not there and you can’t speak to me), you’re thinking, “but Peter shouldn’t missionary-type work be more about building relationships than just seeming busy and accomplishing tasks?”
“Well, not to worry.” I think back to you, “along the way we are also meeting many people, both Native Africans and Missionaries, both Christians and non, and we didn’t accomplish the tasks above entirely on our own, we received much help from our new Botswana friends. The work, in fact, even facilitates the building of those very relationships often, rather than detracting from it.”
“So don’t think we’re just mindlessly trying to keep ourselves busy,” I think to you at last, “God appears to be at work in much of what we are doing, whether through helping people, learning things, or ramjamming dirt into a dip, He is here.”
After Botswana we had the lovely good fortune of being able to meet up with the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. By coincidence she is also my fiancé. We drove out in our white Volkswagen rental car (that was upgraded to air con and remote locks for free – although still no power steering) from the Jo’Burg airport to where Candice was working at the hospital in Witbank. She seemed much smaller at first, than I remembered. (Has anyone else noticed that Candice seems much larger once she’s talking to you than say, when she’s still walking at a distance? – She uses this power to such an effect that Gill herself thought Candice was taller than little Ruthey Calder.) After I got over the initial appearance of Candice’s shrinking stature, we all had a lovely reunion and spent a nice holiday weekend in Jo’Burg. Krista left the description of the hostel-owner to me, and I will now oblige:
We got out of the Air Botswana transport and right into both the hustle and the bustle of the Jo’Burg Airport. In Jo’Burg everything goes much faster than in many other parts of Africa and you can feel it immediately. People actually seemed to be walking twice as fast off the plane in Jo’Burg as they had been when they walked onto in Maun. There were about a million shops, which appeared all around us as we walked on, and I suggested the Girls get us a SIM card for our cell-phone while I sorted out our rental car. Having left the ladies behind at MTN Cellular I strode on in the direction of rentalcar. There was a line of people shouting at the new arrivals that they had taxis, hostels, etc to offer, and one woman in particular looked right at me as I passed and inquired if I needed a hostel in Jo’Burg. My natural inclination obviously would be to say, “Oh, no thank-you.” But since we actually were looking for a hostel in Jo’Burg, I was caught with a momentary loss for words. What do you say to someone trying to sell you something that you need when you’re so used to brushing aside a constant barrage of salespeople offering products and services of dubious usefulness? Well I said, “well…” and then I regarded this woman. She was shorter than me by several inches, but she stood in a way that made it seem like she didn’t know how short she was. She seemed to be able to look at me eye-to-eye, perhaps by some trick of bending the light reflecting off her through some sort of refraction technique created by affecting the atmospheric densities in her immediate surroundings. However she did it, as I was walking I was now looking directly into her sternly confident off-coloured eyes (one was light blue and the other was an unnatural-seeming cloudy grey blue) as she launched into an uninterrupted monologue on everything I would want to know about Jo’Burg, her hostel, and specifically the area of Jo’Burg surrounding her Hostel and why it was the superior area of Jo’Burg to hostel in. Her hair was curly but pulled back into a tight medium-length ponytail with a short wisp of straightened curl shooting across the top of her forehead. Her skin looked like it had been very white at one time but now looked like it had been simultaneously tanned darker and burned redder with freckles added underneath. She spoke with an English accent that had been influenced by South African dialects for many years. She seemed sturdy in stature, although very slight in build, without anything but that consisting of sinuous muscle and bone in her body. To put it simply she looked like a British rock band groupie from the 60s who had managed to kick the drugs, move to South Africa, and become a business woman all while staying young and growing old in just the way that all British rock band groupies from the 60s had wished they could though few succeeded.
“Well, I guess we are looking for a place..” was all I could think of responding with, and with her card in my pocket I continued towards my rentalcar destination wondering if the woman was awesome or crazy or both. It turned out she was both, and we enjoyed a pleasant stay at her place – to be described by Gill…
I better leave it here, before I develop blisters on my fingers, and the girls seem to want to induce me to participate in another round of their reading a book out loud sessions. Try not to picture it, and you’re face might not get scrunched up into the same contorted look that mine now has.
Peter out.
Julieen….
Hi lovettes,
Not feeling it today dudes. Sorry. I want to tell you about the Methodists but not at the same time. Sometimes relaying experiences makes me feel like I’m making them up. So I’ll show you what I learned when I come home!
Gillian
p.s: description of the hostel.
Go to the video store. Rent He died with a Falafel in his hand. Watch enough so as to appreciate the atmosphere. Turn it off before you waste too much of your evening. Sit for a moment and recall the spirit of the rooms, etc. What you are left with, a slightly sandy taste in your mouth – there. You’ve found the Hostel we stayed at in Jo-burg.
*Tattooed, SA man with a bruised eye and a rat-tail looking like a wound. Free-range Parrot. Seedy-looking white man with colorless hair (in someway attached to Peter’s rocker lady?) Sinewy Asian with tasty food. An unfortunate dog who ate the pool chemicals, causing his tongue to swell so much it stuck to the carpet over night. Something which was described in detail by our frentic host, poor Mr. Paddle-Tongue*
Monday, March 10, 2008
Newbie Number
This is it, our final phone number. You can reach us here for the next two months.
0027 0735 343586
(0027 is probably the country code, but as usual we have no idea how to call ourselves.)
Talk soon, Mother.
0027 0735 343586
(0027 is probably the country code, but as usual we have no idea how to call ourselves.)
Talk soon, Mother.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
yellow-tailed, horn-toed, three-clawed, woop-woop-bird.
choose your own adventure. to be friends with Peter, turn to page two. to be roommates with gillian and krista, turn to pages 3 through 19
Page 2.
Hello Friends. Peter here, with as you might have guessed, yet another riveting weekly update. you may want to go ahead and glue your eyeballs - in advance - to your monitor, just to save yourself the trouble later. now where did we leave off friends...
oh right, Victoria Falls. Krista had pulled up lame (pun intended and currently true) and Gillian was wandering aimlessly, soaked with water and squinting through her wet eyeballs. unfortunately for the purposes of metaphor she is only metaphorically lame.
Well, we stayed at the dealie for a bit longer and then began our arduous trek from the falls through Botswana down to Maun, its tourist capital. pronounced ma-uuun. Gill, quit reading everything i'm typing. you to krista. I'm trying to concentrate on being witty.
So we crossed the border on a sort of ramshackle pontoon type whatnot, with a lady - whatwhat - who delivered the amazing line, "My baby was pointing at you. Whenever she sees a white man she points and says, 'look mama look' because once a white man gave her ten dollars. he said, 'it's not for you, it's for the baby." so I made sure to buy food and clothing for her with it." She actually seemed subtle and funny, but I laughed with her and then gave neither her nor her baby any money at all. She was making money transporting stuff across the border because she was less likely to get held up being searched.. I don't really understand how that works, but she was quite open about it, and there seemed to be a few people doing it. The line-up of trucks waiting to cross from botswana into zambia stretched for up to seven days wait. amazing. After we crossed we hitched a ride in the back of some government workers truck to a safari place and rented a tent for the night. the arrival into botswana also brought the arival of many new african novelties including, herds of elephants on the road, 3 million wild donkeys, toilet paper in the bathrooms, toilets in the bathrooms, people with money, swimming pools everywhere, etc. We were told that busses left for Maun in the morning at 6, 7, 8, and 9am, and so we figured schedules would be similar to how they were in Zambia and showed up at the bus station promptly at 10 o'clock. Alarmingly the busses had all gotten away somehow on time, and there were to be no more until the morning. On the advice on of a stranger we wandered to the gas station and parked ourselves in front of the store to wait for a ride. the attendants were eager to help and before long had found us a ride halfway to Nata with a used car saleswoman and her pentacostal/baptist pastor friend. they gave us a lovely ride and we even stoped to see the wild elephants wandering over the highway. We arrived in Nata just in time to catch the last bus to maun - standing room only, and when the driver saw us get on he said, "no room, sorry!" I replied with, "your helper has already thrown our bags in the luggage compartment." to which he retorted, "well you must pull them out again because there is no room!" granted, the aisle was already crammed with so many people that we couldn't even reach the bar that you were supposed to hold if you had to stand, and the lady who seemed to be in charge of the bus told me, "there's no room, you can't come on!" I simply looked at the ramjam of extra people who had already squeezed on and shrugged my shoulders saying, "we have to go to Maun." I seemed to be speaking the language she understood because she stopped objecting as i pushed my way past her. the girls followed and the bus driver yelled, "i want everyone to be able to hold that yellow bar!" unfortunately this was impossible because there were too many people and i could barely reach the yellow bar let alone find a place on it to squeeze my hand, but the bus driver lost interest in enforcing this rule as he became impatient to get underway. We made friend among the passengers even though we didn't know any jokes, and even managed to find a seat now and then as passengers got on and off over the four-hour journey. We arrived just in time to call our missionary firends Sid and Karen to let them know we'd managed to barely make it on time to hear Sid say into the phone, "but Peter, didn't you say you were coming tomorrow? we're not back in maun until tomorrow." ahhahahahaha. anyways, their son picked us up and we ended up spending 2 days alone in the missionaries house since their car broke down on the way anyways. We had a lovely time exploring the village, but I guess I'll let someone else tell the rest of the stories. Right now we are ramjamming away at finishing the church, and despite minor mishaps are continuing progress, as always, slightly slower than expected.
Don't worry africa fans, i'll be back to post again soon. in the meantime don't forget to drive with both hands on the wheel and with the steering wheel on the right side and crashing into expensive things with expensive things as little as possible.
until then,
Peter out.
Pages 3 through 11: Narrated by Krista Lee Takkinen.
Thanks for being my roommate, or friend, or family, or for reading my portion of the blog even though you actually only know Pete and/or Gil. I'm sure you're all very special to someone.
Sometimes Peter doesn't capitalize the beginnings of his sentences or the names of people or places, but I'm learning to let that go. There are even some spelling errors that I didn't say anything about (or fix behind Peter's back). I know you're all very proud of me.
After pointing out all of the problems with Pete's post, I'd also like to commend him for doing such a great job of telling you about our hilarious lives here in Botswana. He's a very good story teller. I have a tendency to be quite verbose and a little dull - so I'll show you all how much I care by keeping my entry short.
My favourite things are watching the sawdust dance across the plane of the door as the skill-saw vibrates the wood, and the familiar smell of freshly cut lumber.
The best time of the day is breakfast. I'm thoroughly enjoying my orange juice, granola, yoghurt, and non-instant-coffee that come from a press.
I like to tread water.
Maun is the hottest inhabited place on the earth. (Although, at times this fact is contested with one other place -somewhere else on the earth.) It's a good thing it's "rainy season".
I don't read as much since being reunited with Pete's computer, so facebook's being cut back to once a week.
The house we're staying in right now is like being in Canada. There's maple syrup in the fridge and all sorts of Canadian snacks in the cupboards -not to mention all of the Canadian people wandering around. It's a bizarre little island. I'm not sure how much of Botswana I'll feel like I've experienced when we leave on Friday.
Time doesn't haunt me anymore. It's even growing difficult to keep track of what day it is.
I hope you know I love you.
Krista out.
Pages 12 through 19: Ms. Higgins.
* First day - waterproofing the steeple with Pete, high-high in the lovely sun feeling like a monkey.. barefoot on tin. (sorry, sorry broken-toe Krista)
* Second day - hunch, hunched too close to the sun, all alone on the roof top to paint over the mess of waterproofing sealant we dripped Everywhere. Nice black cons not so nice, slip, slip, balance the paint can. Did I mention all alone? I guess clean-up is for the unimportant labourers, (read female) Peter got sent to do some more 'important things.' Ah yes, continuing on, head downstairs to spend hours scraping sealent off the floor by the pulpit... somehow (?) managed to drip down from the steeple.
Did you know that in the Military you don't say sorry and always accept responsibility for whatever goes wrong, even if it isn't your fault? Wierd. So, when duder got annoyed at me for using the wrong paint I tried not to say sorry and to just say I'd do it again with the right paint. Bit back the "but that was the paint they gave me to use" (upward lilt on "gave" to communicate my complete lack of responsibility for the mistake)... Remembered. Military. Shut up. Used the right paint. I think it was a good lesson.
* Third day - hunting for old tires in a junk yard, rolling them around trying to avoid nasty water, flat spiders, thistles and snakes. Continue to be impressed by Peter as he does what he is asked despite being used to asking others to do things. Think this must be something learned as a new framer, or in the military. Thinking about doing both those things as they seem to be good for the soul.
* Tomorrow - trying to look important and busy. Two things that are hard to do at this job site. First of all because I'm a woman, second of all because I don't know what I'm doing. Perhaps the order should be reversed but it is hard to tell around here. I seem to be extraordinarily sensitive towards sexist, or apparently sexist, things. Don't know when that happened... I must have always joked about being really mad and somehow, over the years, it's become true. I don't want to assume before trying something that I can't do it, sexist attitudes seem to contribute to that mentality.
It is really nice to be here and I'm happy to be working, learning how to measure things and what it is like to fetch and carry. I would like to applaud all who have passed through the rigours of newbie at Monarch Framing... you must all be humble, willing to serve and generous from dealing with not knowing how to do things. It is difficult to not know what objects words refer to.. particularly when you are meant to be fetching that object very efficiently. I'm learning about humility, how to accept hospitality without trying to make up for it, how to blend in, and how important it is to try to respect people.
Thank you Leah. You are lovely and I miss seeing you baking treats for other people.
Happy Birthday Stevey-weavey. I'd make you a treasure if I was home.
Love Gillian
Candy-bandy... see you soon.
Page 2.
Hello Friends. Peter here, with as you might have guessed, yet another riveting weekly update. you may want to go ahead and glue your eyeballs - in advance - to your monitor, just to save yourself the trouble later. now where did we leave off friends...
oh right, Victoria Falls. Krista had pulled up lame (pun intended and currently true) and Gillian was wandering aimlessly, soaked with water and squinting through her wet eyeballs. unfortunately for the purposes of metaphor she is only metaphorically lame.
Well, we stayed at the dealie for a bit longer and then began our arduous trek from the falls through Botswana down to Maun, its tourist capital. pronounced ma-uuun. Gill, quit reading everything i'm typing. you to krista. I'm trying to concentrate on being witty.
So we crossed the border on a sort of ramshackle pontoon type whatnot, with a lady - whatwhat - who delivered the amazing line, "My baby was pointing at you. Whenever she sees a white man she points and says, 'look mama look' because once a white man gave her ten dollars. he said, 'it's not for you, it's for the baby." so I made sure to buy food and clothing for her with it." She actually seemed subtle and funny, but I laughed with her and then gave neither her nor her baby any money at all. She was making money transporting stuff across the border because she was less likely to get held up being searched.. I don't really understand how that works, but she was quite open about it, and there seemed to be a few people doing it. The line-up of trucks waiting to cross from botswana into zambia stretched for up to seven days wait. amazing. After we crossed we hitched a ride in the back of some government workers truck to a safari place and rented a tent for the night. the arrival into botswana also brought the arival of many new african novelties including, herds of elephants on the road, 3 million wild donkeys, toilet paper in the bathrooms, toilets in the bathrooms, people with money, swimming pools everywhere, etc. We were told that busses left for Maun in the morning at 6, 7, 8, and 9am, and so we figured schedules would be similar to how they were in Zambia and showed up at the bus station promptly at 10 o'clock. Alarmingly the busses had all gotten away somehow on time, and there were to be no more until the morning. On the advice on of a stranger we wandered to the gas station and parked ourselves in front of the store to wait for a ride. the attendants were eager to help and before long had found us a ride halfway to Nata with a used car saleswoman and her pentacostal/baptist pastor friend. they gave us a lovely ride and we even stoped to see the wild elephants wandering over the highway. We arrived in Nata just in time to catch the last bus to maun - standing room only, and when the driver saw us get on he said, "no room, sorry!" I replied with, "your helper has already thrown our bags in the luggage compartment." to which he retorted, "well you must pull them out again because there is no room!" granted, the aisle was already crammed with so many people that we couldn't even reach the bar that you were supposed to hold if you had to stand, and the lady who seemed to be in charge of the bus told me, "there's no room, you can't come on!" I simply looked at the ramjam of extra people who had already squeezed on and shrugged my shoulders saying, "we have to go to Maun." I seemed to be speaking the language she understood because she stopped objecting as i pushed my way past her. the girls followed and the bus driver yelled, "i want everyone to be able to hold that yellow bar!" unfortunately this was impossible because there were too many people and i could barely reach the yellow bar let alone find a place on it to squeeze my hand, but the bus driver lost interest in enforcing this rule as he became impatient to get underway. We made friend among the passengers even though we didn't know any jokes, and even managed to find a seat now and then as passengers got on and off over the four-hour journey. We arrived just in time to call our missionary firends Sid and Karen to let them know we'd managed to barely make it on time to hear Sid say into the phone, "but Peter, didn't you say you were coming tomorrow? we're not back in maun until tomorrow." ahhahahahaha. anyways, their son picked us up and we ended up spending 2 days alone in the missionaries house since their car broke down on the way anyways. We had a lovely time exploring the village, but I guess I'll let someone else tell the rest of the stories. Right now we are ramjamming away at finishing the church, and despite minor mishaps are continuing progress, as always, slightly slower than expected.
Don't worry africa fans, i'll be back to post again soon. in the meantime don't forget to drive with both hands on the wheel and with the steering wheel on the right side and crashing into expensive things with expensive things as little as possible.
until then,
Peter out.
Pages 3 through 11: Narrated by Krista Lee Takkinen.
Thanks for being my roommate, or friend, or family, or for reading my portion of the blog even though you actually only know Pete and/or Gil. I'm sure you're all very special to someone.
Sometimes Peter doesn't capitalize the beginnings of his sentences or the names of people or places, but I'm learning to let that go. There are even some spelling errors that I didn't say anything about (or fix behind Peter's back). I know you're all very proud of me.
After pointing out all of the problems with Pete's post, I'd also like to commend him for doing such a great job of telling you about our hilarious lives here in Botswana. He's a very good story teller. I have a tendency to be quite verbose and a little dull - so I'll show you all how much I care by keeping my entry short.
My favourite things are watching the sawdust dance across the plane of the door as the skill-saw vibrates the wood, and the familiar smell of freshly cut lumber.
The best time of the day is breakfast. I'm thoroughly enjoying my orange juice, granola, yoghurt, and non-instant-coffee that come from a press.
I like to tread water.
Maun is the hottest inhabited place on the earth. (Although, at times this fact is contested with one other place -somewhere else on the earth.) It's a good thing it's "rainy season".
I don't read as much since being reunited with Pete's computer, so facebook's being cut back to once a week.
The house we're staying in right now is like being in Canada. There's maple syrup in the fridge and all sorts of Canadian snacks in the cupboards -not to mention all of the Canadian people wandering around. It's a bizarre little island. I'm not sure how much of Botswana I'll feel like I've experienced when we leave on Friday.
Time doesn't haunt me anymore. It's even growing difficult to keep track of what day it is.
I hope you know I love you.
Krista out.
Pages 12 through 19: Ms. Higgins.
* First day - waterproofing the steeple with Pete, high-high in the lovely sun feeling like a monkey.. barefoot on tin. (sorry, sorry broken-toe Krista)
* Second day - hunch, hunched too close to the sun, all alone on the roof top to paint over the mess of waterproofing sealant we dripped Everywhere. Nice black cons not so nice, slip, slip, balance the paint can. Did I mention all alone? I guess clean-up is for the unimportant labourers, (read female) Peter got sent to do some more 'important things.' Ah yes, continuing on, head downstairs to spend hours scraping sealent off the floor by the pulpit... somehow (?) managed to drip down from the steeple.
Did you know that in the Military you don't say sorry and always accept responsibility for whatever goes wrong, even if it isn't your fault? Wierd. So, when duder got annoyed at me for using the wrong paint I tried not to say sorry and to just say I'd do it again with the right paint. Bit back the "but that was the paint they gave me to use" (upward lilt on "gave" to communicate my complete lack of responsibility for the mistake)... Remembered. Military. Shut up. Used the right paint. I think it was a good lesson.
* Third day - hunting for old tires in a junk yard, rolling them around trying to avoid nasty water, flat spiders, thistles and snakes. Continue to be impressed by Peter as he does what he is asked despite being used to asking others to do things. Think this must be something learned as a new framer, or in the military. Thinking about doing both those things as they seem to be good for the soul.
* Tomorrow - trying to look important and busy. Two things that are hard to do at this job site. First of all because I'm a woman, second of all because I don't know what I'm doing. Perhaps the order should be reversed but it is hard to tell around here. I seem to be extraordinarily sensitive towards sexist, or apparently sexist, things. Don't know when that happened... I must have always joked about being really mad and somehow, over the years, it's become true. I don't want to assume before trying something that I can't do it, sexist attitudes seem to contribute to that mentality.
It is really nice to be here and I'm happy to be working, learning how to measure things and what it is like to fetch and carry. I would like to applaud all who have passed through the rigours of newbie at Monarch Framing... you must all be humble, willing to serve and generous from dealing with not knowing how to do things. It is difficult to not know what objects words refer to.. particularly when you are meant to be fetching that object very efficiently. I'm learning about humility, how to accept hospitality without trying to make up for it, how to blend in, and how important it is to try to respect people.
Thank you Leah. You are lovely and I miss seeing you baking treats for other people.
Happy Birthday Stevey-weavey. I'd make you a treasure if I was home.
Love Gillian
Candy-bandy... see you soon.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Calling Botti-wana
Dearest Mother and other concerned parties,
We have a new phone number now:
7431 9233
Unfortunately we aren't sure if the country code is 0027, 027 or neither option. Just check Botswana on the dealie...
Hope you all have recovered from the last post.
Sincerely,
Bonanzers
We have a new phone number now:
7431 9233
Unfortunately we aren't sure if the country code is 0027, 027 or neither option. Just check Botswana on the dealie...
Hope you all have recovered from the last post.
Sincerely,
Bonanzers
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