T.I.A. "This Is Africa"

How I spent my 22nd birthday

2011-12-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

First off I just want to say thanks again to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. It was just another reminder of the overwhelming support that I have enjoyed even from over thousands of miles away. If you communicated via Facebook, I apologize that I didn’t open up my wall. It’s just that while I’m on this internship that I like to keep it pretty empty on purpose so that my professors can easily find my links to my blog. But most people just sent me a message, something I expected a few people to do. I had no idea that so many people would go ahead and send me a message, it meant a lot to me so thank you very much!

So I must say I was pretty successful at keeping my birthday a secret, I didn’t want to cause a big fuss or anything. After all, being in Africa was enough of a present for me. Kevin and I went to the township around 1 pm or so to see the kids. Because large portions of the Imizamo Yethu community are Xhosa originally from the Eastern Cape, most of them are gone over the holidays to spend it with the rest of their family. In other words, the township was pretty quiet and boring, more boring than normal. We did some odds and ends stuff, picked up Nickey, Gwennie and Abby and let them tag along while we went to see some of the other kids. I had in mind that for my birthday I wanted to take those three girls out to eat. I haven’t talked about Abby much but she is sponsored by a young guy, from London I believe, to go to Camps Bay (a good but unaffordable school for township kids) and 14 years old. She is Coloured just like Nickey and Gwennie so they hang out often at each other’s’ houses. Well we went to Cape Town and first stopped by to rent a movie, I figured we’d watch something and then go out to eat. Of course they picked some dance movie that I figured would be super lame, but I didn’t say anything other than the fact they were lucky I was watching this with them because I wouldn’t be caught dead back home watching something like this. In October they got me to watch Step-Up 3, I’m turning into a softie. This movie was “Honey 2,” I’d never even heard of “Honey 1.” At first when they said Honey I thought they meant the old “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” movies. I feel old school just saying that but those movies rocked. After the movie I took them to Camps Bay to an Italian place, Primi Piatti. This was all on my actual birthday, Monday the 19^th, so I figured this would be the last time I would see them as Tuesday I would enjoy my last day in Cape Town and leave on Wednesday. That was not to be as I soon found out. I figured we were on the same page with the whole “goodbye dinner thing” but when they found out I intended this to be the last time I saw them, until I come back of course, they weren’t happy to say the least. Turns out they were able to sucker me into coming to see them on Tuesday because they had “something” they wanted to give me. I never considered telling them no. I’m telling you that back home I would consider myself somewhat of a Scrooge in the sense that I would never let 3 14 year old girls tell me what to do and when to do it, but I told you I’m getting to where I’m a big softie.

So the 20^th isn’t my birthday, of course, but it was in the year of 2011. In fact in that year it was more my birthday than the 19^th, if that doesn’t make sense yet it will soon enough. Right now you’re probably wondering what the point of this post is. Well I can’t guarantee there is one. But you’ve come this far so you might as well keep going. I took an African Taxi to Hout Bay (that’s a story for another time) outside of Cape Town, which is where Imizamo Yethu, or Mandela Park, is located. I went by myself for the first time into the township and found the kids sitting on a step in front of their house doing nothing. I sat there for a while doing nothing and I must say that it was pretty boring, even with the kids there. The soccer “pitch” is actually a tarmac with painted lines on it. Half of the tarmac was littered with broken glass bottles. I asked Gwennie about it and she said that kids get bored and dig glass bottles out of the trash and throw them onto the tarmac which is situated at the bottom of a steep hill just so they can watch them break. So now no one gets to play on it because of course no one cleans it up. I asked her why she didn’t get a bunch of kids with brooms and clean it up; it would take maybe 15 minutes if they all worked at it. “It’s not my mess, I didn’t do that,” she replied. That’s just another example of the “me-first” attitude in the township.

So here’s what I really wanted to share in this post, sorry it took so long to get here. The “something” the girls had for me was really just a bag full of things they had made. I’ve gotten some pretty cool gifts for Christmas and my birthday, but this was the one time I was truly at a loss for what to say. Abby, Gwennie and Nickey had each put some of their own stuff in the bag. Gwennie gave me her favorite stuffed animal, a tiger named Suga. “Yo Seth I want you to have Suga so that you won’t forget me.” “Gwennie I would never forget you.” “Yeah but Suga is a lot like me. Suga is fierce and doesn’t like to do what it’s told.” I laughed out loud and this because if there ever was a stuffed animal like Gwennie, it would be a fierce Tiger named Suga. I find a lot of humor in that. But it has been her favorite stuffed animal for like, ever so for her to give it to me really meant a lot. Nickey hand-made me a necklace out of beads. It’s not just some silly girl necklace either, it’s pretty cool and you’ll probably see me wearing it seeing as the only time I’ve taken it off is to shower and sleep. There are patterns in it so I know she put some thought into it, it’s not just something she threw together at the last minute. From Abby I received something like a stuffed heart/rose and a flower. I asked why she chose that and she pointed to an “I Love You” on the back of the heart. I know I might lose man points for saying that, but I really don’t care. Also in the bag was some stuff that Nickey’s mom made, a coaster and a bookmark made out of teabags. Side note: There is a shop that sells lots of cool things made exclusively out of teabags; all of the proceeds from the sales go directly to the township. So it was pretty cool to get one of those. The last things that I found in the bag were about 4 or 5 pieces of paper, I’m not really sure. Gwennie told me that I couldn’t read them right then. Each of the girls had written me their own letter and I think there were also a couple pictures in there that they drew, that or some of the letters are longer than two pages. I struggled trying to get these kids to do their homework, let alone write English which is a second language to them, so it means a lot they would take the time to sit down and write something. Like I said Gwennie told me not to read their letters in front of them. Abby told me that when I read them that I would probably cry, to which I responded that I don’t cry. And that’s true; I can’t remember the last time I cried over something.

After they thoroughly destroyed me at football, they walked me to the taxi rank where I would wait for the taxi that would take me back. Of course then the inevitable happened, they started to get sad. Can’t believe you’re going… Can’t believe it’s three months… When are you coming back… etc. Gwennie was telling me how she wasn’t going to cry and I told her she better not, only girls cry. If you know Gwennie you know that’s probably the best thing you could say to her if you didn’t want her to cry. Well the taxi came after we waited for a while and then it was time to say goodbye for the last time. That was tough. I hate goodbyes, even more when they are drawn out. I like to make it quick and get it over with. I gave them a couple quick hugs, Gwennie got a little longer one of course, and then I was off. I got in the taxi and looked straight ahead but by the time it started moving I looked back and saw Gwennie still standing there looking at me. I waved really big to her and she waved back, we went around a corner and that was it. Only then did I actually have to force myself to not get emotional. I succeeded, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Wow, even writing about it makes it tough! I love those kids. About as much as I love anything else in this world, that’s for dang sure. Hopefully by now you have picked it up by now, if not that’s OK because too often I like to hide how I feel. In fact, I still haven’t read their letters; I’m kind of scared too. I can’t really say why, maybe it’s because that will bring some sort of finality to this chapter of my life. Or maybe it is because I want to hang on to that last shred of how I thought a man was supposed to act, you know not crying and what not. Well I can tell you that if just writing about this is hard for me that actually reading them will probably put me over the edge. I have told several people about this but I’m not sure if I’ve put it on my blog but one of the coolest things I’ve learned is that I believe I’ve caught what’s it’s like to love a child. I immediately relate it to the love the Father has for us, and then to the love that my parents always told me they have had for me. Growing up it was always hard for me to relate, I heard there was nothing like the love of a parent for their child. I think I caught a glimpse of that here. And they aren’t even my kids! I can only imagine what it will be like when I have kids of my own, or how about the love that the Father has for us? Wow. After I got back, I got a text from Abby, “Dnt tel gweny i tld u bt shes very emotional ryt nw nd she cnt stp cryng..ABBY” If you ever thought I wasn’t serious when I said that I was going to come back, look no further than that text – it explains it better than I can. Eventually she’ll get over it, kids do, but I made a promise and I intend to make good on my word.

Well I kind of just left that open ended. I guess that’s how my birthday went. I remarked to Kevin and Karen at dinner last night that never in my life has so little been spent on me, yet this is the best gift ever. That bag and the things in it that are probably not worth over $5 is now one of my most valuable possessions. How cool is that? It really is the little things in life that make the most difference. If you ever come over to our house 1122 N. Mulberry, Maryville, MO and you come in my room, you will probably see them on a nightstand or a desk. If you ever do come by, make it a priority to see them – they sure are somethin special.

Safari, Cell Phones and Photos

2011-12-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

First of all, I want to say Happy Birthday to my dad Larry, who is now the healthiest 70 (10/12) year old man on the planet and my sister Gerri who turned 34 today. She will kill me when I get home for that!

Well I guess I should probably write an update. I just arrived back in Cape Town on the 13^th. Once again it was cold and rainy. If all I had of Cape Town was 10 minute snapshots of when I first flew in I would hate the place. The weather is more befitting of England than Africa. Anyway, I am spending my last week at a travel lodge, the Ashanti. Who cares, right?

What matters is that my safari was awesome. There were 26 of us and they were a fantastic group of people. The diversity added to the chaos. We had 5 Americans, 6 Aussies, 2 Dutch, 1 Greek, 1 German, 2 Koreans (South), a Namibian cook, a Zimbabwean driver, South African trip leader (a communist [inside joke]), 2 Lithuanians, 1 Danish, 2 Israelis, and a Namibian cheetah farmer. What a ride. After two weeks with these people I have dirt on just about everyone it was an amazing time.

So I feel like I should explain the South African communist joke before anyone gets the wrong idea. Our trip leader was a white South African, Nic (my younger by 8 months). When we camped in the Okavango Delta one of the meals our wonderful chef (Sofia) fixed us was hotdogs. She boiled them in a pan that she heated next to the campfire. I made a casual remark that the best hotdog is one on a stick, a thin black crust on the edge, enjoyed with friends and a little bit of ash on it doesn’t hurt either (it’s impossible to get that nice black burn when you boil a dog, they just split everyone knows that). Well let me tell you what, apparently that is the perfect way to ruin a hotdog. What commenced was a literally 30 minute shouting match between Nic and I on how to correctly cook a good dog. Things went to the next level when I called Nic a communist. I felt it was the only rational course the argument could take. I told him that I at least tried his hotdog before I said which I preferred. He told me that he would never try my way of eating a hotdog because it sounded disgusting. That sounds to me just like a communist to diss something before even trying it while trying to force your views on others. Maybe it was a stretch. He then proceeded to call me a fascist and I told him that he was just jealous that we (America) mastered democracy before his country did. Haha that set him off. It was all in good fun of course, we actually became pretty good friends. Good enough that we have actually planned a roadtrip down Route 66 to Vegas and then to LA where we meet up with another member of our trip, John, who lives there. Important to note that this was decided once I showed him my pictures of home and he saw my car.

I think that my favorite part of the trip was probably the Okavango Delta. It is the world’s largest inland water delta. We camped for two days and three nights. Our mode of transport was a mokoro and the locals not only were our pilots but also camped with us and took us on walks through the delta. I got my chance to pilot one, and definitely tipped it over. I was by myself when I did that and only after I got back to camp did I think there might have been crocs to worry about. Oh well, TIA! On these walks we saw zebra, elephant, hippo, wildebeest etc. There were no toilets, no running water, no electricity, nothing. Plenty of mosquitos though. You really felt like you were camping in Africa.

Our “informal” last night we had a trashbag party. It is a tradition of the groups that Nic takes on that on our 2^nd to last night that we nominate a party prince and princess. One responsible and one irresponsible. Both were Aussies; Tony being the responsible prince and Teaghan being the irresponsible princess. It was a total hit. Everyone was really creative and even aged travelers joined in on the fun. I thought I was pretty creative considering that I don’t consider myself that creative. One should easily be able to guess who I was. We had an award ceremony later and I won the award for sweetest tan line, you’ll be able to catch that easily enough. ‘merika!

So I was looking for my American phone today to grab my sister’s number so that I could call her and wish her a Happy Birthday. I never found it. Apparently some customs guy in either Zimbabwe or Johannesburg took a real liking to it. That said I now have no cell phone. So when I get home you can expect one of those Facebook messages asking for your number. Unless I don’t want your number, haha. Only kidding – kind of. I feel a teeny tiny bit better knowing AT&T locks their phones for only their sim cards. If that wasn’t the case I would have been using the phone. So if the thief isn’t smart enough to google an unlock code then he’ll have a tough time selling it. Serves him right. Oh well, such is life. Turn the other cheek right?

So I have some new information on Gwennie (I’ve picked this spelling for her name from now on, it’s official). Turns out that while I was gone that she was able to get to a doctor. The doctor cleared her to play and now it is up to the sports school to accept her. Originally the coach told me that any doctor would do. Then I was told that it had to be a specialist. Then it could be any doctor. So I’m thoroughly confused. Here’s what I do know for fact. 1. The school term starts at the beginning of January so it is pretty late to be accepting kids. 2. Even if she isn’t accepted for this first term, I am told that she can join the school in the 2^nd term which is in March. The only downside to that isn’t just that she will have to go to Hout Bay but that she will also have to by uniforms and such for two different schools. No big deal, we’ve come this far something like stupid uniforms shouldn’t keep her from school. I will go back to the township on Monday and will be able to see Gwennie and her family, probably for the last time, and we can get everything straightened out then. By then it should all be sorted out, one way or the other.

I plan on blogging some more since there is nothing for me to do. I’m really bored. I’ve done about everything you can do in Cape Town and don’t feel like spending money. So now I’m just counting down the days. My next post(s) will pertain to my experiences in general and particular ways. I’m leaving it pretty wide open so I have some flexibility.

Thanks to my new friend Tony Meredith, policy advisor for a politician in Australia, I have some really awesome pictures. The pictures between the two of us that made the final count number over 1000. That doesn’t include video. I’m not going to spend days in an internet café so I can load them up. Ya’ll will have to wait until I get home where I can leave my computer up all day to upload everything I want. There is A LOT of stuff so don’t give up on me just yet.

To end on a happy note, I finished making my movie. I’m not sure if I had told anyone but I started with about 3 hours of video and compressed it to a nice, compact 13:20 video that I am pleasantly surprised with. It is simple, and I’m no Mark Zuckerburg when it comes to computers but it’s not too shabby if I say so myself. It’s GB’s big so obviously you will have to wait about a week for that one. I’ll put everything on Youtube so that you don’t have to be a friend on Facebook to see them.

Here is a sample of the pictures from my safari, enjoy!

Sunset in Spitzkoppe, Namibia

Cheetah Farm in Namibia

Ethosa ("The Great White Nothingness") National Park, Namibia

Dr. Hesse pose - he'll get it

Trashbag Party - Yabadabadoo

Monsoon at Vic Falls, Zimbabwe

Yum, like me some nuts

...and I thought we had good stars at home

Namibian desert where I went sandboarding, you can make out the ocean in the back

Spitzkoppe at sunrise

Hungry cheetah

Thunderstorm evening of Cheetah Park

Talent!

Just finished a drink at the waterfall at sunset

Storm headed our way in Etosha

Water Lily in Okavango Delta

Hungry Hippo

The lillies close up at night, this is sunset on the delta

Around the campfire in the Delta while the locals serenade us

Elephant in the Delta

Two 2 year old male cubs in Chobe National Park, Botswana

Spotted hyenas in Chobe

Safely in Swakopmund

2011-11-26T06:05:00.000-08:00

So as these past three months have gone on, I do realize that I have posted less and less regularly. Some of you probably haven't noticed but for those who have, I apologize for my laziness. These past few weeks have been great and I loved every moment of my time in Cape Town.

Just some quick updates on everything going on now
So most importantly, I am about 90% sure that Gweny has a heart murmur. It is a long long story but pretty much the doctor who didn't clear her (who we were supposed to be seeing) wasn't there. So one of his subordinates checked her out and couldn't tell us anything new. I saw the original doctors form and all he wrote was "Not Cleared" with no explanation. It was only until I asked the doctor to listen to her chest (something I thought was routine) that he listen to her chest that he said he heard a heart murmur, and quite a loud one at that. As sure as he is, though, we can't even be sure that was the original diagnosis because the original doctor wasn't there. OK, so he probably heard the same thing but what if she gets treated for a heart murmur and we find out that the original doctor didn't clear her for some other condition? Then we are back at square one, which is still pretty much where we are now. As doctor visits usually go, we were directed to go to some other doctor - in her case a cardiologist. Whether that is an option for her, I'm still not sure. This all took place last Thursday, 24/11, which was also my last day. I didn't get back into Cape Town from Khulis River until around 7 so I didn't get to talk to her parents. Kevin went and talked to them on Friday but until about 2 hours ago I had been on a bus for +28 hours so needless to say I have no idea what's going on with her right now. She will go see a doctor and we will see about playing sports. I was told by the doctor that even if she has to have surgery, which he couldn't definitely say she'd need, the recovery time is usually in months and not years. That said, the coach told me that she may still be able to be accepted and then allowed to play when the doctors clear her. Obviously her health is the number one priority but all the good high schools filled their spots back in September (keep in mind that the school year here starts in January), so if she isn't accepted for next year she will have to go to Hout Bay High for at least a year. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Oh before I forget as I waited two hours to cross into Namibia at customs I received this text on my phone: "HI SETH JUST WANT TO SAY I MISS YOU VERY VERY MUCH FROM YOUR FRIEND GWENIE." Now if you are keeping track, that is the third different way that you have seen Gwenythe spell her name. I have always seen her spell it "Gweny." So when I saw that I thought my roommates were playing a joke on me with someone else's phone because they know how much I like this kid. I responded by telling the prankster that I would have believed them if they could spell her name right. I then received a message that simply said "Gweny." Now my curiosity was sparked and I had to know so I phoned the number. A woman answered and I instantly recognized it as her mothers voice. I asked to talk to Gweny and it was pretty cool. I don't share this for any real particular reason. But I've never been like really good with kids. I mean I get along with them but usually after awhile I'm ready to give them back. With her it is different so when she text me that and after I was done speaking to her on the phone I don't think I stopped smiling for the rest of the trip. OK, that's a lie - as soon as I saw the line at customs I was definitely not smiling. But it gave me something to think about. It is kind of ironic because prior to her text I had been convincing myself that it was now "me time." Now's the part where I go on safari and I don't worry about the fact that her heart has a structural defect, or that I didn't get to say goodbye to any of the kids because I stayed at that school so late with her. No, now's the part where I empty my brain and concentrate on having fun. So just as I thought I was going to be able to not think about them for two weeks I got the text from her - looks like I was wrong.

Well that went on much longer than I planned.

So it is now 4pm here and in one hour I meet with my travel group for a "Pre-Departure Meeting." Pretty much it's just an opportunity to get to meet everyone I will be spending the next two weeks with. I'm pretty excited. The place I'm staying is great, I have a room to myself with a T.V., Queen-sized bed and bathroom all for R260 ($<33). I must say that it is nice to have a room to myself and some alone time for the first time in three months.

So the bus was really long, oh and I forgot to mention that I'm still trying to figure out how I will get back to Cape Town after my trip. Apparently if I go from Vic Falls to Jo'burg and skip my Cape Town Jo'burg leg of my flight, they cancel the whole thing. So I will finish my safari at Vic Falls, go to Jo'burg, go to Cape Town, then go back to Jo'burg before I go back to D.C. Sounds kinda backwards, right? Oh well, TIA.

Well I don't know what else to write right now. Honestly I'm looking outside as I write this and I can see the ocean and Namibian desert at the same time. The sea breeze feels amazing and I don't really feel much like being on a computer. That said, I don't know how often I'll be able to update these next two weeks. Hopefully not much.

I know lots of people are praying for me and I appreciate that very much. If you do find time to do that for me, though, just make sure you are mentioning these kids and the country and everything else going on here first. They need lots of prayer too.

OK so I'm going to go, if you want to follow my travels as I go here is the link:
http://www.amanzitravel.co.uk/product/africa/namibia/overland_africa/overlanding_africa/namibia_and_botswana_adventure_-_14_days_at043/index.html

Gwenny and Nikki

2011-11-13T02:51:00.000-08:00

So Gwenny is probably the coolest kid I know. She is also the best friend I have made since I got here. Most of the stereotypes that I assumed were true about 14 year old girls I developed as a PE aid in my senior year at high school are fading faster than the Royals in mid-season. And that’s saying something.

I haven’t posted anything in a while and I have been encouraged to write about her so I will. I think I have wrote about her a little before but just some background.. I was nervous when I got here and expectations for me among the kids were raised when they found out that I was an American. They expected that since I was from there that I had met Eminem, Lil Wayne, Beyonce, Kanye, Jay-Z etc. To be honest at first I thought she was a boy. Even after I saw that she had pink socks on I was asking myself why a boy that age would succumb himself to the inevitable teasing that came with wearing pink socks. It made much more sense when I found out “he” was a girl. That leads me to the next reason that I like her, she doesn’t act like a boy. If you look tomboy up in the dictionary then there should be a picture of her face.

Gwenny

Nikki

I think I have written about the media impact that America has on South Africa, specifically and regretfully, wrestling. Of all the things that could make it over here, the WWE has. Of my three TV channels one of them shows wrestling so I am guilty of watching Monday Night Raw and Wednesday Night Smackdown. I know, I know. But all these kids all want to wrestle, a task I am happy to oblige.

So back to Gwenny, she is a phenomenal dancer. Street dancing, of course. The kind you see in the Step-Up movies. I will admit that for their birthdays I brought Gwenny and Nikki to my place, took them out to eat, and then survived through Step-Up 3. My movie pals will know that not even they could get me to sit through something like that; these kids are making me soft.

You don’t have to know me to realize that this friendship is unusual. She’s a tomboy; I made fun of tomboys in school. She likes to watch wrestling; I think wrestlers should be included in the Oscar nominations. She dances; I can’t dance. As unusual as it is we have become pretty close. She introduces me to the other kids as her best “big” friend and big brother; there’s a definite family resemblance!

She is not black, she is Coloured – which is an important difference in the political history of South Africa. Next to being classified as white, it is the best social classification that one could hope for during apartheid. As far as township standards go, she is about as well off as a kid can be, but that isn’t really saying much. She lives in a house with 2 bedrooms and her family owns a car. I know that over 6 people share that house and she is given the couch to sleep on every night. Her dad is a painter and her mom works in a private white family’s kitchen.

I had a pretty lengthy talk from Gwenny the other day in the back of Kevin’s bakke on the way home from a try-out at the sports school. Not because I don’t trust anyone reading this but because she made me promise not to tell anyone and out of respect for her and that promise, I won’t share what she told me. Basically let’s just say these kids battle more things in one day than maybe I have in my entire life. Besides being economically and socially disadvantaged, these kids are succumbed to pressure from the spiritual realm. In other words, witchcraft. The natural response from everyone reading this will to be skeptical. It’s exactly how I felt. I listened politely to her at first as she talked about various things that she had seen and brushed them off as kids’ tales. But it got to where I wasn’t able to rationally explain away any of the things she was talking about. Then it dawned at me that my rational explanations don’t do her any good. If a collective society (the township) believes in it as a whole, then who is going to tell them that they are all wrong? Whether it is “real” or not to me is irrelevant. I think something only becomes real when you experience it. I guess I’m saying that our experiences make our world real to us, if that makes any sense. At any rate they experience it, so it is real to them and that’s all that matters. Of course that opens them up to a world of supernatural and abnormal things. “Muti” is something that one person uses on another person in the form of a curse. You go to the sangoma, or witch doctor, and based on how much money you can pay they make you a concoction of various things that you use to curse someone. This is where it gets nasty. The most popular muti is the limb of a child. It is believed to have the most power. It isn’t as bad here as it is in the Eastern Cape, but there is still danger at night for these kids. I’m not sure how often it is but every few weekends there are some from the township who go out into the woods, dress up in white gowns and pray to the spirits for the whole weekend. They stand there for two days, not eating, not drinking. Just performing whatever rites they do around a fire. If you are a kid I’m told that you stay clear of them. Gwenny told me that she has to be home by 8 every night and by 7 if she is somewhere far away from home. If she breaks that curfew she gets a pretty good spank when she gets home. I’d say she has pretty good parents from what I’ve seen in the township.

The Coloured people as a whole have a strange place in South Africa. The history is lengthy and complex but pretty much they are an old mix of Dutch, French, Huguenot, Malay, Indian, African and whoever else might have been in South Africa for the past few centuries. However, their rich diversity is also their curse. They have no real culture for themselves. The whites during apartheid wouldn’t accept them because they weren’t completely white. Blacks wouldn’t accept them because the Coloureds wanted to be white. If the whites had accepted the Coloureds into their society, we would definitely be looking at a much different South Africa today. Gwenny remarked how they have no culture of their own. In a township where living in close proximity is the biggest link between them and the Xhosa and other black immigrants, they pale in comparison to the rich histories of their neighbors. The Xhosa people have many rituals and rites that their ancestors performed that have survived to present day. The Coloureds have nothing of the sort and I believe that because they were never completely accepted by anyone that they have no identity as a race. They speak Afrikaans (the language of white South Africa) but if you looked at them you could easily mistake them for being Xhosa. As a kid growing up, who do you commit yourself to? No one has really accepted your identity anywhere and you mostly feel like a nomad among the nations. As Americans we have plenty of history and culture to feel proud of. The same cannot be said of the Coloured people, what do you do when you feel like throughout history that the world has never really accepted your people?

So Nikki is in the title and I haven’t talked about her yet. She is the same age as Gwenny, Coloured as well, with a similar living situation. The only difference is that she is much more moody, hence why I don’t like her as much as Gwenny. She is definitely more like a girl. But she’s still a cool kid.

One of the coolest things that Volunteers Direct does is facilitate a relationship that you have with a kid. Just like I have bonded with Gwenny, lots of previous volunteers have found a specific kid and attached themselves to that kid. If they have the resources, or can get sponsorships then they will pay the school fees for a kid to go to school. I have gone over education here is ZA at length but I’ll do a quick review. To get an education similar to the one I received it cost R 25 000 total. That includes books, transportation, tuition, meals etc. About R 8 to every $1 means that you are looking at over $3,000 to send a kid to a decent high school for only one year. Well of course I wanted to help Gwenny out, but I wasn’t sure she could handle a rigorous academic life let alone whether I could afford $3000/year for Grades 8-12. At that point I gave up any thought of being able to help her in any tangible way.

I put pictures up of a beach volleyball tournament that we went to in Muizenberg. The people who put it on play and coach for the men’s national volleyball team. The coach told us that Gwenny had some solid skills and that we should see about getting her into the sport. The township schools have no sports of course as they can’t even afford decent buildings, so we were referred to the Western Cape Sports School. This is a special school. Literally. According to the Western Cape Education Department it is a special school in the sense that it receives unprecedented financial aid from the government and can at any time they choose transfer an underachieving student from their school into public education. The school clearly puts sports above education. The principal told us that their main goal is to make these kids national and international players in their sport. This school is the only one of its kind in the country. By 2018, every one of ZA’s nine provinces will have at least one. Right now the only other institution that offers a similar experience is in Johannesburg and has a meager fee of R20 000/MONTH, NBD. So pretty much the chance these kids are getting is truly, for them, once in a lifetime. The government clearly wants to make ZA a force on the international sports scene and this is how they are going to do it. It is a boarding school of course, which means they are there from Monday-Friday. Sometimes even on the weekends since that is when most of the matches in sport are played. So the kids won’t get to see their family, but they’ll be out of the township. It’s bittersweet but in the long run it will save them I think.

Side note: I talked to the valedictorian of Hout Bay High School and she said that she got up at 3am every morning during school because “it was the only time during the whole day that it was quiet enough for me to study.” She also shares a bed with three other kids. She has yet to take me to her shack because she is embarrassed. That is how serious you have to take education if you want to get out of the township, who among us could do that?

So I added up the cost, the sports school spends over R60 000 on these kids over a course of the year. The final amount of school fees that these kids have to pay is R3 500 for the whole year. That includes school uniform and a meager portion of the tuition fees. Given that this is a huge bargain at an excellent value and also because Gwenny and Nikki’s families are so well off, Kevin believes that their families should put up half of the fees. I agree, it keeps them involved. So, R1 750 for someone who wants to pay for her to go to school. That’s just a little over $200 for a whole year or $400 if someone wanted to pay for them both. That’s not bad at all. Considering the chance these kids have to get out it is truly awesome.

So for me personally, it has been amazing to see God work in this. The thought that a good kid like Gwenny could end up like the bums I see on the side of the street just because of the life she was born into didn’t sit well with me. Obviously I had wanted to make a real difference when I came here and was starting to question whether I could do anything that really mattered. Now this opportunity has come up and it looks like she has a chance. There is a lady visiting here who previously volunteered for 8 months. She is an ex-international player who started this whole volleyball project that I’m doing and she is considering about moving here permanently. She has some funding herself from various people and also holds Gwenny and Nikki in a high regard. It looks like she will be involved in this process too, which is great. These kids getting into that school are the first priority, not me doing something to feel good about myself. So we will see how it plays out, I just need more God and less Seth. More humility, less pride.

Well that’s Gwenny and Nikki. I am finishing writing this just after I got back from the Garden Route. I have some pretty good Sony headphones that I brought over here and you can really tell the difference verses some regular iPod headphones. Gwenny listened with them and loved them. She convinced me to let her have them while I went on my trip. “Yo Seth you gotta let me have them. Plllleeeeeeeassssse!” How could I say no? Of course I wasn’t going to let her have them that easy. We bargained for a week’s worth of coming to the homework club to study for them. Hey, you gotta do whatever you can to get these kids open a book.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi: Murdered martyr or just a swap of the bullet for the ballot box?

2011-10-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

So in the aftermath of the death of one of the world’s most controversial, flamboyant and often idiosyncratic leaders, we find ourselves asking the same questions we do when similar leaders around the world experience their inevitable fall from power. What direction does the country head now? How will South Africa (a staunch supporter of Gaddafi) react to his execution? What happens to the global interests in Libya, an OPEC member?

A brief overview for those who may not be caught up on the Libyan revolution: Gaddafi has long been seen as a dictator, perhaps even a tyrant, to the Libyan people. A revolution started over the internet, Facebook of all places, in February. Since then, Gaddafi and loyal supporters have been battling the rebel insurgence. On 20 October 2011, a military chief for the rebel army informed Al-Jazeera that they had killed Muammar Gaddafi. Three months ago, the Gaddafi government was officially overthrown and a week ago rebels declared victory in Gaddafi’s hometown, the coastal city of Sirte. NATO warplanes had devastated the city and Gaddafi had no choice but to flee. It was the last holdout of loyal supporters to Gaddafi and what ensued after its capture has made headlines all across the world.

The manner in which Gaddafi died reminds me of the way U.S. soldiers were killed and dragged through the streets in Mogadishu, Somalia in the early 1990s. Anyone can go to YouTube and look at a video of Gaddafi’s corpse being treated similarly to the way our troops were treated. What is interesting is that, even in death, Gaddafi is drawing sympathies from many around the world for how he was treated in his last moments alive. Human rights organizations have even given statements expressing disappointment in his death. My question is this: How many human rights must one take away before we take away their human rights? Now let me say that I think that is an impossible question to answer. I tend to believe that when discussing the legality of these often brutal revolutions that there are no right or wrong answers. It’s just a matter of perspective. I just want to say my piece about this and be done with it. All I want to know is where these groups championing human rights were when Gaddafi was ruthlessly running his government and executing innocent civilians or anyone who might oppose him. Is the issue really whether Gaddafi should have been killed, or do we just want to nitpick at how he died? Is there really a right way to die at all? If so, who gets to make the call? Some guy sitting in an office thousands of miles away from the trouble? Or the guy whose daughter was raped and killed? I bet they both have different ideas.

The impact of Gaddafi’s death extends to South Africa. Indeed South Africa and other countries in the world supported the Gaddafi regime, and it makes economic sense. Libya is a member of OPEC and through its resources of valuable oil it is a priority to the rest of the world. Therefore, stability is priority numero uno for the western world. If you are a head of state you don’t want to go to bed at night not knowing who is going to be in control of a country, especially one that is a member of OPEC. Now we raise another ethical question. Is it ok for a country to overlook human abuses in a country if it means stability and therefore an assurance that you will continue to receive a steady stream of oil? If you argue for intervention, I just want to remind you of a country in the Middle East that goes by the name Iraq. I think we tried something like intervention once (and I don’t care what you say – it was for oil, there were no WMDs). Whether you think we should have been there or not can you understand our reluctance to get involved in an identical situation after we are coming out of Iraq?

Another challenge for the new Libyan government: Who gets power? Indeed you can bet that many will be jockeying for positions of influence while they have the chance. Right now it is paramount for the country to extinguish any pro-Gaddafi forces that still remain. If any small flames of the old regime are allowed to smolder and gather support they could turn into a full blown wildfire, with the martyrdom of Gaddafi as its rally cry. Now that the rebels control the country you can expect assistance from the rest of the world. Again it is not so much who is in power but that the country is stabilized. Gaddafi has been in power for 42 years, so I can see why familiarity was a comfort to countries like the US. I do not envy the new government. The euphoria that is sure to infect the country of six million after the toppling of the government will carry along with it high expectations. It’s like winning the AFC/NFC Championship or Game 7 of the semi-finals in the NBA or MLB, it’s a great feeling but you still have work to do. It is important for the Libyan people to keep their expectations for this new government realistic and in perspective. Take a look at Iraq and Afghanistan; we all know their democracies weren’t built in a day.

This challenging task has fallen to the National Transitional Council (NTC) for ensuring that there is equal representation in the new Libya. But even that may be hard. Because there are pro-Gaddafi supporters laying low for the short time, we can probably expect them to eventually try to undermine the legitimacy of the NTC in time. Probably through the fact that NATO warplanes helped devastate Sirte and pro-Gaddafi forces will seek to paint the NTC as an extension of NATO who they will then try to portray as an alliance driven by Western thinking. The NTC will form the transitional government in about one month and a constitutional assembly can be expected to be elected within 8 months – it will be the first time the people of Libya have had a free democratic vote in 42 years.

I read an interesting point this past week. A write for the Mail & Guardian said he thought that Gaddafi’s “death avoids a potentially embarrassing trial.” While acrimonious debate has risen over the fact that he was captured alive and then assassinated in “cold blood,” (I disagree – walking into a strangers house and killing them would be cold blooded, not the case here when he has been oppressing his people for 42 years) some argue that it saves face for some of the world’s superpowers; namely, the US. What if Gaddafi had lived? Who would try him? Would he be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a court that has been heavily scrutinized? Would Libya try him herself? It would be nigh impossible to rush the establishment of a solid constitution and judicial system that would have the capacity to effectively prosecute Gaddafi and handle his appeals. Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East studies program at London’s City University said, “To say that it is better for everyone that he be killed rather than captured is to say that the legal approach has disadvantages, and that is to surrender to cynicism.” Really? Wake up lady. The legal approach does have disadvantages. In a perfect world, it would definitely work. But we don’t live in a perfect world or else people like Gaddafi would never have been able to come to power. I’m not saying that it is better that he was killed, I’m still deciding (I read something about a guy who once said to “love your enemies…”). I plan to go to law school; I defend the court system and a state’s constitution. But I am saying that he’s better off dead if you mean that it would’ve been a better situation if he was tried in a Libyan court. Even if he was tried and a solid legal structure could be constituted quickly, do you suppose he would ever find an honest “jury of his peers?” We’d have to call up Hitler and Saddam from their graves for that one. I’m all for optimism in the legal system but it’s statements like that that take away from the people’s faith in the legal system. The only thing good that could have come from trial in a Libyan court was that if by some miracle the country could try him in legal proceedings that had the capacity to deal with him. That would have shown the strength and unity of the Libyan people. But in my opinion the reward is not worth the risk. I’m not even sure if they are united now that their oppressor is dead. I would expect numerous factions to spring out of the ground to vie for power. If that makes me a cynic then I guess I am. In the meantime you could expect Gaddafi to say/do anything to boost his status with the rest of the world. Knowing that death or life imprisonment was inevitable, nothing would have stopped him from taking shots at the new Libyan government and revealing possibly awkward secrets about other countries. Remember Saddam Hussein? He used his time alive to berate America and refuse to acknowledge our jurisdiction. A Libyan government still in the state of infancy probably wouldn’t have been able to handle such a farce. Slobodan Milosevic is another example. Keeping Gaddafi alive would also probably have drawn protests from those still loyal to Gaddafi which might have been embarrassing to the new government.

Can you imagine the international media clamoring for all of Gaddafi’s juicy secrets? If he was able to sellout any Western countries you can bet he probably would have jumped on the chance. He would have known it was his last chance to get back at those who helped with his capture. Italy, France and Britain are also publicly known to have helped him raise a fortune to build his oil industry. Solidifying the position of a dictator would have looked very bad on them in retrospect.

If I had to guess I would say unfortunately that Libya’s troubles are far from over. There are already reports coming out that Gaddafi’s body was hung in a meat factory where people were allowed to line up and take “trophy” pictures with him. Besides being grotesque and inhumane, it is violation of Islamic law; a body must be buried with 24 hours of death. I don’t know a lot but I know one thing for certain, you don’t want to make the Muslim’s mad. Such inaction from the NTC will not win them any goodwill from those sympathetic to Gaddafi’s death. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and whether stability can be brought to the Libyan people.

In an unrelated note: As of today South African President Jacob Zuma axed several members of his cabinet. What a deal, I’ll have a post on that soon.

Tutu's Bday Celebration, Coldplay and more

2011-10-09T04:26:00.000-07:00

So I got to do a lot this past weekend that I never thought I would ever do. The first was this last Wednesday (10/5) when I went to to Cape Town Stadium to watch Coldplay in concert. I took a bunch of video that I will put up when I get home. It was a packed house, 60,000 strong in attendance. They put on a pretty good show and it added to my Cape Town experience.

The following Friday, however, I experienced something far different. It was Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's 80th Birthday Celebration and I was able to get tickets because the organization I volunteer for has close ties to Tutu. Reflecting on the 2.5+ hour experience I realize that I felt as alienated from Africa as I had in America, but also the most African I have felt since I have been here. I didn't feel African in the sense that so many famous people were there. Bono from U2 and the Deputy President of RSA, Kgalema Motlanthe were just a few of the VIP's who shared in the celebrations. The Sowetan Gospel Choir and sang and performed various tribal dances to bongo drums as well. The keynote speaker, I fail to remember his name he was the predecessor to Tutu, was thirty minutes late to when he was supposed to speak. Typical African time.

I didn't take my camera so I don't have any pictures to share but we had great seats in the balcony overlooking the altar and it was awesome. Currently, the government is facing extreme pressure from the people. It just passed what has popularly been dubbed the "Secrecy Bill." In this bill it makes it illegal for the media to report on whisteblowers to the public. Pretty much if you find out about corruption and report it, the government can fine you and throw you in jail for a maximum of five years. Another key guest that was supposed to be at Tutu's celebration was the Dalai Lama. He was supposed to give public lectures at venues such as Stellenboch University, receive peace awards, and speak at the Desmond Tutu Center for Peace. None of this happened because the South African government refused to issue the Dalai Lama a visa. Someone familiar with international relations can probably guess why; the Dalai Lama represents the thought of independence for the nation of Tibet who is at this moment being grossly prosecuted by China. Because South Africa relies on economical relations with China, having relations with the Dalai Lama (who represents Tibet) threatens that economic security. That is a risk that South Africa is not willing to take. So they delayed the visa and forced him to cancel his visit.

Now I am convinced that as Tutu's body gets weaker, his spirit gets stronger. He ranted against the government, telling (President) Zuma that the government did not represent him. Tutu even went against his own political party, the ANC, saying that he prayed for their downfall. He warned that misrepresenting the interests of the people would not keep them in power for much longer. Of course the government tried to find rational reasons for the irrational action of refusing a peaceful man entrance into their country. The government responded to Tutu by making excuses for his old age and that his anger got the best of him. It is so heartbreaking, even to a foreigner, that a man who did so much for his country is not listened to by his government. Apparently old age makes men more apt to anger and thus they should not be taken seriously. The government of South Africa needs prayer because this country is moving backwards. Tutu even went so far as to say that the ANC government currently in power is worse than the apartheid government. "At least we knew to expect it from them," he stated. And it is true, apartheid was terrible but at least the government made what it was doing legal. They were bold enough to try and justify their actions. This current government is hiding behind loopholes and pointing fingers rather than trying to take steps forward in this young democracy. When you refuse someone like the Dalai Lama into your country and make it illegal for journalists to report on corruption in your government it certainly doesn't sound like a country progressing in the advancement of liberties for its peoples that it openly proclaims it protects

All these things considered, the celebration was truly one of unity. It was moving and there were tears from many natives and a feeling that there is still hope for this country. The Deputy President and Tutu, who were enemies in the press in the weeks before were able to genuinely smile and laugh with one another. I believe Tutu has made his point and is willing to humble himself. I learned a lot from him and it goes back to something I learned from my dad as a kid. Sometimes even when you're right, you're wrong. He has done what he can, furthermore he is in the right and he knows it. But rather than pressing his point (which through all stubbornness the government would allow themselves to be destroyed rather than concede they were wrong) Tutu humbled himself. He is truly an amazing man and I learned a lot in sharing his birthday with him.

One last thing that worries me, South Africa needs a hero. A new one. Nelson Mandela is 93 years old and suffering from Alzheimer Syndrome. He can't have a lot of time left. Desmond Tutu just turned 80 and is in outstanding shape, but his time has passed. The heroes from the days of apartheid are fading and the country needs a leader that it can stand behind. Right now there isn't one. It has been strong men like Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu have kept this nation together for the past almost 20 years. I am afraid that the Secrecy Bill and treatment of the Dalai Lama may just be the continued trend of this country's downward spiral. I hope not. But who in this country is going to step up and say enough is enough to the government? Pray for South Africa.

God is working in my life

2011-09-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

So I haven’t really posted anything about how I have been doing spiritually so I figure it is high time that I let you all know how I’m doing.

A lot of people asked me how I was going to keep from being spiritually dry while I was over here, being away from everything I had ever known and what not. To be honest I didn’t have a real idea how I was. I knew that I would try and find a church and continue on the reading plan that the NW BSU is doing but other than that I was just trusting that God would take care of that. Boy did He ever.

My first encounter was at IAD in D.C. As I was boarding my flight that would eventually take me to Johannesburg after a brief stop in Dakar, a woman came up to me and asked me if they had just called on our section to board. Looking back now it is ironic because it was the first time I had ever flown out of the country and it turns out that I would later discover she had been traveling internationally for seven years. What are the chances that a pro like her asks a rookie like me questions about a flight?? Anyway, I told her and I can’t remember what they keyword she used was but it was something to the effect of “ministry.” I picked up on it and we soon found out that we were both believers. I proceeded to tell her about where I was going, why, etc. I also told her I would be looking for a church when I got there.

Her name was Amy and she is a middle aged woman who used to be vice-president of a mega banking corporation in LA. Her story is amazing and I can honestly say that I have never heard anything like it before. As we were boarding I had no idea about any of this. Our seats were nowhere next to each other and I didn’t see her again. But it just so happened that 20 hours later when I was waiting to board my flight from Jo’burg to Cape Town that I heard someone behind me call my name. Sure enough it was her and we were heading the same place. We hadn’t time to share anything other than our names back in D.C. and this is where I got to hear her testimony. It is too long to post here and I will definitely be sharing it in person when I get back to whoever wants to know. Basically she was living the comfortable American Dream and received guidance from the Lord that her life needed to change. She quit and has been spreading the Gospel throughout the world for the past seven years. She knew of a collegiate ministry of about 1500 students in Cape Town and gave me the name and number of the person in charge and to tell them that she had sent me. Then we both prayed for each other right there in the middle of the airport; it was so good to feel the Holy Spirit so close in the midst of all those people.

So I have been getting settled and still feel like I’m finding my way around this place even though I have been here for three weeks. Unfortunately I haven’t been to the place she mentioned, but it is for a good reason.

I go to an Internet Café that is R 10/hour. Monday through Saturday it is the same girl working behind the desk, her name is Wendy. Originally she thought I was the Seth that acted on the American TV show “The OC.” I knew there used to be such a show but never saw it so I can’t say whether it is a good thing or not. Side note: I blend in pretty well but she and all the kids I work with peg me as American right off the bat. Why? My accent; it is the same one that they here in the movies. The influence of the American media continues to amaze me. Anyway, one day I heard her playing How Great Thou Art and My Redeemer Lives. I mentioned that I liked those songs and she invited me to a bible study that night. Because my meals in the evening are brought to me I told her that I couldn’t that night until I could plan ahead. She gave me a card inviting me to services at the Calvary Chapel Community Church of Cape Town. So the following Sunday I went. She wasn’t there, and I have been giving her a hard time for it! However I did have a couple people introduce themselves to me. One is Johann, the worship leader. He invited me for coffee during the week and is a pretty cool guy.

Today, though, was special. If you have talked to me you know that I am giving these three months to the Lord to show me what He wants me to do for the rest of my life. Too many times in my life I have pursued what I want; invariably what I want and what God wants for me are always two very different things and I end up very disappointed. So now I am just coming in here as open-minded as possible and trusting that He will show me the path to follow after I graduate. Personally, I have a heart towards helping these kids. I have so much that I take for granted. Specifically education. The kids are just like kids everywhere; they are ornery and loud but they are just as bright as kids anywhere else in the world. I think sometimes we tend to think that because they are poor that they somehow have less to offer this world than we do. I want to send these kids to a good high school so they can get a decent education. There is a girl, Nandipa, who could be president if she wanted to. She is very politically aware and is being sent to a very good school by someone who volunteered here previously. She is just one of many bright kids in the townships but unfortunately is only one of a handful who will get to realize their potential. For reasons already posted, the education system here is unequal and many kids will not realize their potential; kids that deserve the same chances you and I had.

Equal education is the key to bridging the gap here in South Africa.

So coming back to Calvary, it is a great place to worship the Lord! It is contemporary and mostly consists of a congregation of young people. 20s and 30s mostly. However, an older gentleman introduced himself to me today as Pieter Pretorius. Funny thing, he turns out to be a lawyer. He invited me for coffee after church and we both shared our testimonies. He gave me invaluable insight into the world that lawyers live in today. I cannot say how encouraged I was, he told me he felt led to come speak to me. Awesome. He has mentored young people before and is often a mentor to young lawyers in his firm. I explained my journey from laughing at the thought of studying abroad to where I am now. He graciously offered to speak to a friend of his, the Dean of Law at the University of Stellenbosch, on my behalf. “Not forcing the Lord’s hand, of course,” he said, “but it doesn’t hurt to talk to him to see what we can find out.” How awesome is that?! That only reaffirmed to me that I am in the exact place that God wants me to be. I don’t know where this will lead but it is comforting to know that God hasn’t forgotten about me and that He has a plan for my life. I was so nervous that I would get home and be just as clueless with God’s will for my career as I was when I had left. Doesn’t look like that is going to be the case. Pieter gave me all of his personal contact information and we set a date for me to visit his home in the country. There are lots of young singles my age at the church and he said it would be a great time for me to make friends.

“²⁶In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; ²⁷and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. ²⁹For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the first born among many brethren; ³⁰and these whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” Romans 8:26-30

This passage speaks to me in several ways. One, the Spirit will pray for me to seek restoration between myself as a sinful believer and God who is sinless so that I may live according to the will of God, even when I don’t know what that is. Two, even though it says “… God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God…” it is a fact that the only reason I can love God is because He first loved me (1 John 4:10, 19). Third, as a believer, God has made me like Jesus. All the good characteristics that I possess are the characteristics of Jesus. Because God first loved me and chose me, he allowed my sin to be justified by sending His son and because I am like Jesus I am glorified.

So in summary: when I’m lost for words, God isn’t. God is going to have my life work for His good because I love Him, even though the only reason I can love Him is because He first loved me. Whenever I meet someone and make an impression enough for them to invite me to their home and to offer hospitality, it isn’t because I’m a good person. It is because God has conformed me to the image of Jesus, and when you see the characteristics of Jesus people will take notice. So I am conformed to the image of Jesus because I love God, but I can only love God because He loved me first and predestined that I would know Him, which was a result of the Holy Spirit interceding on my behalf through the limitless power of prayer.

I get lots of feelings from this. It is humbling that in my life God doesn’t need my input or my help. Yet I am also comforted. God has my life in control, not me. And that’s a good thing. If you or I were in control of our lives we would surely mess it up. The only reason all things can work together for my good is because God is good and because He wants them to. My love or works are not needed by Him and the things I do are not factored into the equation. It is all God doing good things for my life, because He wants to accomplish His will and He is good.

Soccer game at Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa

2011-09-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

Ok so first off, all of the videos I make are way too big to upload through this blog. If I post any videos it will be on YouTube and I will be sure to put the link. But a 4:30 1080p HD video takes 199 minutes to upload so I’m thinking I will have to make low definition videos if I want to post them before I get back. I have a video that is 15 minutes long of me going to a game in this stadium but won’t be able to post it. So frustrating…

So Kevin has a great tradition here that when there is a pro soccer game in Cape Town that he gets the volunteers together and we all pick one kid each to pay the admission fee for and bring them with us.

Used to you could buy kids’ tickets for R10; less than $2. “Peanuts, really,” as Kevin calls it and I agree. However, when we went to this game the tickets were the same for kids and adults, R60. So R120 is no big deal to pay, less than $20 to go to a soccer game in the same stadium that the World Cup was played in.

I can’t resist going long without talking about politics and how frustrating the system is here in South Africa. And maybe this is no big deal and I’m blowing out of proportion but I guess you’ll have to decide for yourself. South Africa was awarded the 2010 World Cup and Cape Town wanted to host some games very badly, understandable. FIFA said sure, but we want you to put the stadium next to the waterfront so that it is right by the ocean. That way after a commercial break we (FIFA) can have a nice image of the city from a blimp that is going to make us mega bucks by paying for advertising. That is not convenient at all, unless you are a tourist I suppose. Then you can go next door and pay ridiculous Dutch prices at the waterfront for things no one really needs. I’m getting sidetracked… Anyway! So the stadium is in a bad place, got it. Ajax (pronounced IX) Cape Town is Cape Town’s team for South Africa’s futbol league. They don’t usually get to play in the Green Point Stadium, so this was special.

Since the World Cup was over, there have been a total of three, yes 3, games played in the stadium. Forums and debates were held, taxes were raised and a huge stadium was erected to show off for the rest of the world. Now, there is really no use for it. It is a beautiful stadium but a complete waste. Now what does this have to do with the prices? Well now they have to jack up the prices so they can try to pay for having this stadium. Consequently, fewer kids can go to the games. So now this stadium is losing the city money and they are thinking about tearing it down. I have no idea why they don’t play more games in the stadium. I think it is because it will never be full enough to make any money. It is built to hold 50,000 I believe, although they had extra seating during the World Cup that boosted that number to 80,000. It just costs more money to operate than money than can make. They should’ve figured they wouldn’t be able to sustain a World-Cup-like atmosphere forever.

If you watch the video you will see that they couldn’t even fill the lowest level of the stadium. This was a big game too; two of the top four teams were going against each other. I believe Kaiser Chiefs were number one, although they lost to Ajax. There is a smaller stadium here in Cape Town that the city can usually fill. I imagine it makes money because it costs less to operate. Cape Town should go to a Royals game for a lesson on how to maximize a bad product for the best value to make the most money.

So, as I come to a close on my rant I suppose my problem is basically two things. One, a stadium that you didn’t need and obviously can’t manage is costing the city and its people huge dollars. Two, to try and salvage what is starting to look like a bad idea more and more every day, they jack up prices to try and break even. I understand that but now the kids can’t go to a game. When the kids in the township found out we were going to a game we were flocked the whole day. Everywhere we went, “Take me, take me!” Well, sorry kid I would but you have idiots running your city and we can’t afford to. The one thing they might be doing right is that they are talking of tearing the stadium down. It is very embarrassing and humbling but hey I guess sometimes you just have to cut your losses and take it like a man.

TIA mate, This Is Africa. Unfortunately sometimes this is the African way. What do you think? I would post the video but it was going to take over 5 hours to upload from the connection I have here. It is obvious I have a bias and you can see it in the tone of this post. Do you think this was a good choice for Cape Town, I mean it did make them quite a bit of money during the cup (but not as much as was hoped)?

PS- Ajax Cape Town beat Kaiser Chiefs 2-1, it was a great game! Oh and I forgot to mention. I am really getting attached to certain kids here. One is Gwenny and I can tell she really likes me as well. I met her through the volleyball project that I do with the kids and she was the one I asked to go to the game. She is a definite tomboy; in fact when I first saw her I thought she was a boy. I saw pink on her socks and was so confused why a guy would wear pink socks. Pretty much she loves soccer and playing sports and beating up on the boys. I asked her to go and was surprised that I was nervous. Do you remember that nervous feeling you get when you ask someone to come somewhere with you and you are afraid they might say no? I think back to high school and asking girls on dates. Well I was confused because now I was feeling the same way. I was in a strange place, asking pretty much a stranger if I could pay for them to come to a game with me. Her saying yes would mean we were friends, which is a big deal to me. These kids like me but they see volunteers all the time. I think making a real connection with a few kids is the best way for me to maximize my impact in their lives. So I asked her but she said no, she had to go to church! Wow, just my luck! My first instinct was to talk her out of it because I wanted her to come very badly but I was like no way I can talk her out of going to church. I felt like I had asked a girl out to prom and just been rejected. But in a contest between soccer and God I can’t blame her for her choice.

PSS- The soccer game was on Wednesday and two days later this past Friday after we were done with volleyball she came up to me and told me that next time she would come with me to the game. I think I made a friend.

Mohammed aka Mr. Bubbles

2011-09-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

So September 16^th was a Friday which meant it was a pretty lackadaisical day at schools throughout Cape Town. We spent most of our time at Hout Bay working with kids in the morning. Now before I go any farther I have to tell you about my roommate from Germany, Julia, who has been with me for a week now.

She is twenty and doing some traveling before she goes back to Germany to university. I’ve learned that it is very common in Europe to have a “gap year” where you travel after high school and Europe, wish I would’ve known people do that four years ago! Anyway, she has been traveling now for about forty days and is leaving at the end of September to go to Australia for 8 months to travel and work to pay for more traveling. She is staying with me because two years ago she volunteered here and wanted to stop by to check on the kids.

Side note: She only volunteered five weeks and found it really hard to leave; I’ve only been here two weeks and I’m already getting attached to these kids. It will be hard to leave after three months I’m thinking.

Anyway, she’s a pretty girl and won over the hearts of the guys here. I think I met more of the boys this week just because they would come up to me and ask me where she was. One of the guys was “Mr. Bubbles.” His real name is Mohammed but he is called Mr. Bubbles because he likes to go around bursting everyone’s bubbles. Super nice kid. I’m thinking he is like 17? He is naturally Afrikaans speaking and dyslexic but makes up for it with his voice. He can sing lights out, maybe good enough to make a living out of it. In the video you can hear him reference Julia, it was hilarious. He actually has already recorded a couple songs so I’ll probably be posting video of him often. He is also Muslim and his dad is the Imam ul-masjid. He let us go visit the mosque. I would post that video but it is about an hour long and hard to hear at times.

This is one of those things that is probably funnier when you are actually here. Every now and then if it gets quiet around the house I will play the video and Julia gets really embarrassed but I literally lol every time that I watch it. Oh and he asked me if I had seen the movie American Pie. He wondered if all students in America were like that. SMH. If you’ve seen the movie you’ll understand.

So since the video is HD it is too big to upload here. You will have to click on the link and go watch it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdOIsen5jBQ

I'm making friends!

2011-09-17T02:55:00.000-07:00

So before Julia got here she was on an expedition in which she met a bunch of people our age. She introduced me and we all have had a great time hanging out with each other! I have met people from Germany, all over the UK, Switzerland, Scotland, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. It is so nice to have international friends; I’m the only American and just about everyone is of a different nationality which keeps things interesting. It is so cool that I will only know these people for a very short time in my life but make memories I will never forget. Especially with people that I really don’t have that much in common with!

Julia, me, Niels and Jonas

My new friend Sipho was able to get us on the guest list to a club called Thirty-One, you can guess why it's called that.

Beautiful view of Cape Town!

Mussels

From right to left: croc, ostrich, springbok, kuboi, lamb, pap and idk what the yellow stuff was

This guy played while the other guy sang Pavarotti

Think you might be too drunk to drive, never fear!

Secondary Education at Hout Bay High

2011-09-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

One of my previous post discussed education at length, specifically for the primary schools. This one will focus on secondary education. Oraanjekloof, the primary school where township kids go, will send the students that pass and choose to continue their education to Hout Bay High. Today we met with Mr. Julius who told us the many flaws in their system. At one time, Hout charged a R400 fee per student for the whole year (R7 = $1, about $57). Being townships students, only about 7-10% of the kids were able to pay that money. Hout Bay has about 600 students every year. 60 kids paying $57 is $3420 to run a school on for the whole year. Now, teachers are paid by the Department of Education, so the $3420 does not go to salaries but it is still not enough to run a school on. Mr. Julius uses the $3420 to try and get the other 90% of kids to pay fees. Use the only money you get to try to get the money you are owed = not a good school. DOE realized that and made Hout Bay a no fee school. So now the DOE gives Hout Bay R738 per student. The total budget for the school is about R80 000 (about $11,430). Less than $11 500 to run a school on for the whole year. Oh, and the South African government spends more money on education than any other country on the whole continent. It’s not a great comparison but there are schools in other countries, such as Zimbabwe, where the education is decent. That money is then used for but not limited to: pay electricity, water, sewage, toilet paper, paper towels, lunches, stationary, pens, textbooks. Starting to get the idea?

There are no sport programs for these kids, who happen to be great athletes at soccer and dancing. To haul the amount of kids that play to a game ends up costing about R2000. That’s just for one game. Needless to say one thing they could use is a minibus, or a regular bus for that matter. Something that can seat about 20 kids. That would cut spending in half according to Mr. Julius. Right now teachers haul the kids in their own cars, with their own fuel on their own time. A secondhand minibus costs about R200 000, more than the entire budget of the school for over two years.

Hout Bay is an all-black school. Last year there was only one white student but they left rather quickly as you can imagine. Now compare Camps Bay High to Hout Bay. Camps Bay is situated in an affluent white area and the only black kids who get to go there are the ones who happen to be sponsored by a wealthy donor. Either that or they have rich parents. Either way no poor kids go to Camps Bay unless it is on someone else’s dime. Cost of going to Camps Bay = R2000 per student. Per month. It totals about R18 000 not counting school uniforms, textbooks and other like materials. Oh and Camps Bay gets money from the DOE as well. Camps Bay also has about 600 students in their secondary school. And the teachers are paid from the DOE. Talk about a lot of cash. Where would you rather teach? Tells you who gets the best quality teachers. Also in South Africa, students are tested on the same curriculum nationwide. At the end of the year students from Hout Bay High and Camps Bay High will all be tested the exact same material. I’ll give you three guesses as to which school gets the higher score.

What do you do?

Robbery in the church and coffee with a Nobel Peace Prize winner.. all before breakfast

2011-09-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Well my first week is in the books I guess you could say. One down, eleven to go! It was very interesting and a culture shock to say the very least. Today, however, was probably the most active. It started off early enough, waking up at 6:30 to go a mass at the Episcopalian church. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu usually hosts Friday morning mass at St. George’s Cathedral (beautiful and a must-see!) in Cape Town. Karen, the wife of Kevin, is on the committee from the church and very close with Desmond. I must say that if I hadn’t known beforehand what service I was going to I would have bet everything that it was Catholic. Never having been to an Episcopalian service before I cannot say how they are in the states. This one was very formal and reserved. Rites were read from the Anglican Prayer Book and communion was taken. I did not partake but you can bet that I went up and received my blessing for the day from the archbishop! Poor guy, you’ll see from the pictures that he is very small; I leaned very far forward so he could reach my forehead. Below are the pictures, after the service he changed into his Springbok gear as he was leaving for the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand during the day sometime.

He was making fun of me because I was so tall. I was on my way down to one knee when someone snapped the pic.

He loves his Springboks!

More after the jump.

Student group from North Carolina

St. George's Cathedral

So after we had all had coffee, Helen and I were looking at a room full of photos documenting the struggle against apartheid. A young black man came in and asked us for money (not uncommon at all) and we declined. We then watched as he went into the dining area and took something from the tables and then proceeded to take a donation jar full of coins and leave. To be honest I thought he was just taking it to an office somewhere to be counted. He was just asking us for money for a donation to the church, right? Well Helen asked if I saw that, I did but wasn’t very concerned. She suggested we ask Karen so we did. Karen had no idea; neither did the lady serving coffee. We described him to the lady at the counter and she thought we were teasing her. We assured her it was no joke and she hurried out of the Cathedral but he was nowhere to be found in the street. We took a right and down a very long walkway that goes through a huge garden in the middle of Cape Town I could make out his red jacket. I was sure it was him and pointed the man out to her.

Ashamedly I must admit we were all hesitant. After all it wasn’t my money. If she didn’t want her money that badly why should I care? She was a small young woman my age and I could tell she was having a tough time deciding what to do. All of a sudden she started after him. Well I couldn’t let her go by herself, he might have gotten violent. I chased after her as she shouted at him. He turned around and saw us. “I earned this money. It’s mine. I’m just claiming what is owed to me!” he kept shouting as he threw the money on the ground and ran. He kept the bills but all the change was on the ground. I just kind of stood there and watched him leave and thought about all the bad juju he was going to get for stealing from a church. I’m sure there wasn’t much money there to begin with; Rand bills are not worth much compared to dollars.

Karen did not know we had run after him so she had found the priest to come looking for us. We explained it to them and they were just as shocked as we were. I was glad the guy just ran, I wasn’t looking for a fight but he was much smaller than I, plus I had just gotten out of church. Karen told me I would have gotten a blessing from God for beating him up. I don’t know if I could handle a blessing from God and Desmond Tutu so close to one another, haha!

I only share this to illustrate the level of poor here in South Africa. Stealing from a church is a new one for me; probably for most of the people reading this blog. Maybe you knew a bad deacon or two but no guy walks into a church, asks you for money, receives none, then just takes what is in the offering plate and leaves like it’s no big deal. He was completely casual about it, which is the sad part. It was like he’d done it before. Karen helps run a soup kitchen during the week. She says that if you leave a bag in plain sight they will break in and steal the possessions of the people who just gave them a free meal.

I won’t get into this very much but it is very obvious to me that there is a lot of animosity against the whites; some rightly so. Young black kids grow up in the townships living a terrible life, looking for someone or something to hate. White people are the easiest target because they have everything those kids never had. I think the thought process of the young man was that life had treated white people better than him so rather than wait for a change he was going to take matters into his own hands. Its messed up, but what would you do for one more meal?

During the service, Desmond had the visitors stand, introduce themselves and state what they were doing in Cape Town. Through the introductions I found out that a group of about 15 students from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill are in Cape Town for a semester with their professors. It was nice to see some fellow Americans my age. During coffee, a young blonde girl from the group came and introduced herself to me. I made my first friend older than 18 but younger than 25 (25 is important because it is when the brains cortex is fully developed and allows a person to make informed decisions, or so the psychologists tell me – I only have just over three years to be irresponsible and jump off bridges, swim with sharks and ab sail off mountains)! Her name is Abby and it seems that she and the rest of her group live like two blocks away from me. I told her that we must all get together and go out so that I can meet the rest of her group. They are traveling Cape Town this semester going to lectures and conferences experiencing the multicultural aspect of South Africa I believe. At any rate they seem to be willing and go do things some might call risky with me that I will not tell you about until after I do them.

We also went to Hout Bay High during the day and spoke with the headmaster, principal, Mr. Julius. Helen and her school has partnered with some schools in the area and they are paying him to come to Holland so he can see the system there and hopefully learn something he can take back with him to South Africa. It is a very good idea, too bad the Department of Education doesn’t show this kind of initiative. I will probably write about that visit in another blog. It is rather lengthy.

Well for this post I don’t know what else to write. If you have been following along, a German girl arrives in Cape Town tonight (actually she is probably already here). Helen is going to move out of the flat tomorrow morning at 9:30. I am sad to see her go; she has been a lot of fun and a very good conversationalist. Plus I am young and full of ideas and opinions that I share while she sits quietly and very patiently without ever criticizing me. I can see why she was able to be a successful teacher for 35 years. A 20 year old German girl is moving in tomorrow and staying for about 10 days. I don’t know what she is doing while she is here; Kevin says she is on break and just using this as a place to stay for a short while. After she leaves there are two more German girls coming to stay, I don’t know how long they are going to be here I can only keep my mind wrapped around a few women at a time, guys will know what I am talking about, haha!

I am developing a sort of affection for rugby. And the United States is playing in the World Cup so I must go and cheer on my country. Kevin is taking me to his sports club on Sunday morning to watch the Springbok game. Now I think is when I feel the most pride for my country; when I’m in a land of aliens. Plus the weekend celebrates 9/11 and a time to reflect as I’m sure a lot of people will. Desmond Tutu mentioned it today in the service and many people asked me what it was like that day. I was in sixth grade in computers class and remember the teacher starting to cry and take us back to our room and turn on the TV. I felt a great sense of pride for my country when Desmond brought 9/11 up but also gratitude for the great mix of cultures taking time to pray for all Americans. I feel like there is always negativity towards America from the rest of the world but it was nice to see the support of the nations in remembering the 9/11 tragedy. We Will Never Forget.

Pictures thus far!

2011-09-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

View from Table Mountain when I first arrived

Kids had a Prom Night when the first day I got there

The beautiful Gardens. More pics later

Devil's Peak

Table Mountain

What I wake up to every morning

"Break," which consists of running. Nothing to really play with. 1200 kids

Where the kids who go to Oraajekloof Primary and Hout Bay High live.

Getting ready to leap over the raw sewage. The smell was unbearable.

Ground is wet from the outhouses that just leak out the bottom

U11 soccer team that beat the all white team 8-1. Kids can ball.

First Day - May be offensive to those who are comfortable with their lives

2011-09-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

The first place we stopped at was the Imizamo Yethu Township. Kevin has often asked what “Imizamo Yethu” means but said he’s gotten about six different answers. The way to the township is what I would describe as the best contrast between South Africa’s rich and poor. The difference can be seen literally across the street. On one side of the road were modern homes with lots of glass, Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, stables to take horses on the beach and lots of concrete complete with state-of-the art security and ADT Armed Response stickers posted next to every gate and window. Every time I come back to my flat I have to unlock 5 different locks at three different locations. On the other side of the road was a high chain link fence (the area used to house wildlife, something I found highly ironic) behind which there were steel shipping crates, crudely erected structures of tin, dirt and mud, and people just standing around on the street doing nothing. First punch in the stomach? Check. I hadn’t even gotten out of the bakkie yet.

Kevin gave me a quick tour of the township, taking me to some pretty bad parts. We did not go to what he described as the worst part although I am not sure why. I figured maybe because the “road” looked to be pretty much decayed or because it wasn’t safe for us, more specifically me, as Kevin is treated like a movie star everywhere he goes. We went to the Oraanjekloof Primary School, which is exclusively all black just like the townships. Only students who live in the townships go there. The schools are not segregated like it was during apartheid but far too many things are the same. Whites all live in areas ranging from modest to stinking rich. Obviously the better neighborhoods have better schools. All of the townships have exclusively black faces. Of course the schools suffer for it because the income is less and consequently the kids suffer for a quality education as well. I believe that to go on to high school it costs money to go if you do not live inside certain areas, which ultimately means the poor black kids don’t get to go to school unless they pay something ridiculous like 16,000+ R. Not including school materials, meals and uniforms. Fortunately the group I’m working with has had some wealthy volunteers from Europe who have become beneficiaries to some township students who have shown rare promise.

While in the townships or school I did not meet a white face all day. The Oraanjekloof “school” is a group of no more than 10 one-story buildings that have no heat or air. Some buildings are the size of an average classroom, some are two or three times that size with the corresponding amount of classrooms. I arrived there as some students were getting lunch. There was one line, with one teacher multi-tasking as lunch-lady, with one ladle, serving one student at a time who had one plastic spoon and one plastic bowl. Lunch was beans. Just one serving of one plastic bowl. I’ll save you the details but let’s say I’m very glad that I did not eat lunch with them. I remember when I complained in high school that a Bosco cheese stick and sauce was the main protein for one lunch. Second punch in the stomach? Check. I hadn’t even spoken to anyone yet.

Every single student, and South African I saw my first day for that matter, was wearing an overcoat. If you read the first post you know I don’t have mine. Other than being the only one in short sleeves I did not get many stares that day and think I blended in pretty well. I might have passed as a white South African to some, but anyway back to my day.

Apparently some time ago Nelson Mandela came to the school and helped open up another building that is two stories high, but Kevin and one of the main schoolteachers were conversing about how that the process has now become corrupt and that it isn’t going to be used the way that Mandela intended. If Kevin says it’s corrupt then it is corrupt. Other than an 80 something year old lady who runs a mission in Arlington, TX, I have never met another person so invested in the lives of the less unfortunate. He knows the system and how it works. Unfortunately, there isn’t much he can do about it.

“We have to focus on only the students that can make it,” he told me. “Most of these kids want to be pilots or lawyers when they grow up but the reality of it is that they are all going to be laborers for the rest of their life. The women will be maids or waitresses.” How sad. I’m getting to live out part of my dream right now. Of course they don’t know that and their faces light up with smiles thinking of the future and then it breaks your heart to know that there is a 99% chance they will never get to experience their dream.

This one stumped me for a long time. What would I do if I lived here or taught these kids? 1.) Do you work up the guts to flat out lie to their faces and tell them that they can do anything they want so that they encouraged to keep working hard? But if you help them build up their expectations and then they fail then it hurts even worse and then you are part of that feeling. I can’t help but think that when you go around the room in kindergarten and the teacher asks you what you want to be when you grow up and you reply astronaut, or policeman, or whatever it is that although you probably will be something else there is no reason you do not have a legitimate shot to make it. In America will not only believe but teach that with enough hard work, skill and determination that we can do anything that we want. In South Africa this is not the case, as many times the only students who are given extra attention are the ones who will have a chance to go to a university. 2.) Or is it better to hit them with real life so they can start preparing for a life of poverty in the hopes that maybe something will spring forth that promises a better life than the one they were given and the one their parents live?

Depressing to think about, isn’t it? I try to keep to my word. In the words of Dr. Suess, “I meant what I said and said what I meant.” So lying to someone’s face doesn’t sound good. But neither does telling someone they will fail in life. I think what most of us would choose to do is neither. Stay out of it and not get involved. Then you don’t have to make a choice. We, me included, live our lives as if none of this stuff is happening and figure that it is someone else’s problem. I sat next to a black South African lawyer from Jo’burg on our way to Cape Town and bombarded him with questions the whole way. He said something very interesting that hit home with me when we were discussing how he copes with idea that South Africa looks very much like it did during the days of apartheid and how one could hope for a better future for his country. He reminded me of something either I think I had forgotten or just didn’t realize until I saw these kids. On a very basic level we are all human beings. None of us got to choose what life we were given. The good Lord could just have easily given us the life of one of those kids. So why are we living our life like places like Imizamo Yethu do not exist. Neither you nor I did or can do anything in this life to earn what we have been given so why do we act like it? We live extremely comfortable lives in America and check these problems off as someone else’s. Well Zamile, the kid who lives with his aunt and uncle because both parents died of AIDS, is my brother and your brother too. Think it’s not your problem? He is 15 and can’t read yet. You can’t tell me that he did anything to deserve that. That said, I believe in hard work and not being lazy. But I believe we have been given blessings so we can use them to bless others, not so we can keep them for ourselves. Are you using what you’ve been given to bless your brothers and sisters across the world or are you going to pretend that it isn’t your problem and let someone else deal with it? If you believe the latter I encourage you to check out Luke 16:19-31. If any of this offends you, I apologize. Not because it offends you, but because the only reason you could be offended at the thought of helping out another human being is because you are feeling guilty if you don’t. I’m sorry you would rather feel guilty than help out someone who was given less than you when you were born, that saddens me. There is a way to fix that, get involved. Any way you can.

This is not the uplifting read that you thought it might be but I have to live out my convictions. What kind of person could truly feel one way but live and speak another? I am truly enjoying my time in Cape Town and there is much to love about this city. A lot of good people live here and there is plenty of reason for optimism. I will post some of that stuff later.

Now that I have stepped down from my soap box, I will finish what I originally had written about students and education.

Just because a student is slow compared to his South African peers doesn’t mean that he isn’t helped along. On Mondays and Fridays Kevin and who is volunteering at the time will go to the Oraanjekloof Township School tutor students falling behind in class. Notice that most of the kids I saw in the Imizamo Yethu Township have to walk about 45 minutes to get to Oraanjekloof. Just recently a teacher requested Kevin to help with 4 students: Anele, Zamile, and Zama. I don’t know who the fourth child was; I only made it through three. Apparently we’re only supposed to spend twenty minutes with these kids at a time and I was creeping towards 45. Anele is 15 and I ended up spending probably 15 minutes trying to explain the difference between read and read. We take it for granted but really think about it. The English language is hard to teach to someone who is using it as a second, third or even fourth language! Zama is a 14 year old girl who is naturally Zulu learning English from a woman who is naturally Xhousa. It would be like me learning Russian from someone who is German.

Kevin explained to me that in South Africa, the unions rule the roost. If they don’t get their way, they strike and there is no one to replace them. The labor is hard and the pay is awful, making the value awful for the employee. No one is running across a border to get jobs in RSA. Because the pay is terrible for the work done, many South Africans find a way to cheat the system and draw benefits from the government. Why work really hard and not earn much more than you can get from the government by not working? Either way you are still going to be below the poverty line so why not skip out on the work? It’s slightly less money but in the long run maybe you will be able to live longer since your health was never endangered in the mines. One of the most powerful unions is the teachers’. The education system in South Africa is broken, so they have a lot of control. If school is supposed to let out at two, the place is cleared out by twelve. You say, why is the state (province actually but for Cape Town it is the Western Cape) or federal government not doing anything about it? I’m not sure who exactly that responsibility falls to, probably the province but I imagine that rather than fix it they spend their time arguing about whose fault it is. Anyway, what to do? Fire the teachers? Yeah right. Cut funding? What funding, have you seen the schools? Now, that said, the teachers do not take total advantage of this and not care about the kids at all. I mean teaching over here is not exactly riding the gravy train and it would take an extremely patient and talented person to teach through what I saw on Friday.

As for the kids, they are loud and often misbehave. Most have been abused and act out in a way that screams for attention. Kevin told me that about half the kids in the room have a parent or are themselves infected with HIV/AIDS. A greater number still has probably been sexually abused in the townships they live. The school is slightly more organized than the townships. In the townships people just stand in the street. Occasionally you will drive past a shebeen where a lot of money is wasted on liquor.

Again, this is not a feel good post (you’ll have to wait for those) but people need to hear this. You might occasionally hear it on the news or even feel like you should do something to help but because it makes you feel uncomfortable you bury it away somewhere underneath all of your own problems. I know, I’ve been there. But please take the time to evaluate your life and where you stand. That is all I’m asking. I’m not suggesting everyone roll out and come pitch a tent in Cape Town (that would be awesome though!) but just ask yourself if you could be doing more. That is all, just be honest with yourself and with God. Then have the courage to do something about it.

Contact Info

2011-09-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

Seth Slayden
PO Box 21581
Kloof Street
8008
South Africa

If you are going to mail me anything make sure it is marked as air mail!!!!

My webcam didn't get to me in time, it is on its way to Africa. When I get it I will Skype.

Skype: seth_slayden

First Impressions

2011-09-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

This post will be mostly about my trip over, my flat and first impressions once I landed. It will be mostly boring relative to what I will post later, just stuff that I know mom will want to know. So feel free skip this and check the post “First Day.” It will be a much better, albeit sobering, read. But if you are in college, tired of looking at Facebook, and are looking for an excuse to not do homework then this will suffice for a short while.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my rather chilly flat, not that I have internet but I just want to write this now so I can copy and paste when I go somewhere with Wi-Fi so I don’t have to pay much – call me cheap I guess. I’m sure that I’m a comical sight to behold, I’m on a pretty busy street (Union right off Kloof; not much privacy here either, the blinds won’t shut) buried under a heavy blanket listening to some good ol’ Alabama, it’s the most American music I could think of (plus it starts with A so I didn’t have to scroll down far!). Oh and my first meal I fixed myself was some boiled hotdogs and frozen mac & cheese. I cut up one hotdog and mixed it with the mac and then added some salt and.. wait for it…. curry! I know that thousands of miles away that Kasuma will be smiling at that one. Now it was not a lot but there was some in a cupboard so I figured it would have to do since I couldn’t find any pepper.

So I landed at about 9:15 pm on 1/9 (that’s 2:15 pm for you folks back home in the Midwest) after waking at 4:30 am central time 31/8 to leave for KCI. Unfortunately my first impression of Cape Town was somewhat dreary, directly correlated to the weather outside. Turbulence on the way in was pretty rough and I didn’t realize until I landed and met Kevin that he had almost gone back home because he thought the storm was so bad that the plane would turn back to Jo’burg. I’m sure glad it didn’t, 30 hours of flying + layovers = no fun/sleep. Oh and like the rookie traveler I am, I didn’t clear my checked bag through customs in Jo’burg when I landed so it is not with me at the moment. It had all my warm clothes. Fail.

I knew this was going to be an awesome trip because before I arrived I had already exchanged email addresses with three most friendly, interesting and yet different people. It definitely made the trip easier and more bearable! I met Sarah from Eastern Mennonite University (no Kit she did not have facial hair, at least that I could tell), Amy from all over and, last but most certainly not least, Pritzman Mabundu from Jo’burg, RSA. Each one had a unique story and I built solid relationships with each of them, all too long to put in this post so I will only reference them until I decide whether or not to write about them separately.

Leaving the airport, Kevin gave me the super quick run through of what I would be doing for three months but I’ll get to that later. I am staying in a suburb in the middle of the city called Gardens. It’s a nice place and the flat is located in Strathmore Court No. 12 of the Union Street Gardens remember. I’ll put it in my address when I list my contact info. Anyway, we got here and he gave me a quick run-down of the flat; one bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, living room and balcony turned room (where I sleep). It is fairly modest but I am more than thrilled to be here! A retired schoolteacher from Holland is supposed to arrive 3/9 at 9:30 pm who will get the bedroom. She’ll probably be here by the time I post this. So, other pretty much waking up to gale force winds and rain howling through the wall sized windows right by my bed, literally chattering teeth and taking way too long to figure out how the electricity works (it runs on a prepaid meter in a cupboard which Kevin pays monthly) it was a pretty good first morning. Better than 99% of the people I would encounter my first day anyway.

By 10 Kevin and I were traveling in his diesel powered Nissan pickup, or bakkie as the South Africans call them (for those who care, it is 9.81 R for a litre of diesel. 7R = $1). Before I knew it we had made it out of town and on a winding coastal highway heading for Hout Bay. Until then, I had never seen the ocean in person. It was too dark and stormy the night I arrived, and my family didn’t ever go to vacation there. I couldn’t have picked a better time in my life to experience it for the first time. Driving along Hout Bay you drive around a sharp curve and there it is – huge waves smashing against gigantic rocks, all set below the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen. Even in the fog and somewhat hidden in the clouds, Table Mountain is still something amazing to behold. Words cannot explain how beautiful it is; I won’t even try, just trust me and come here for yourself! We took the road into the township, all the while Kevin attempting to explain to me the things I was about to experience. As for as much info as books or the internet can tell you, I liked to think pre-arrival that I was exceptional compared to the average (including political science) student when it came to knowing South Africa. I found a way to integrate it into any paper or experience I had to write about in class and made it a point for any research paper. I had read numerous books and been reading two South African newspapers weekly starting back in January 2011. And like any young, overly ambitious and cocky college student living abroad I thought I had mentally prepared myself for anything I could see and figured that by being more educated than most of the country that I would be able to understand and rationalize the situation better than the locals, hey I admitted it was cocky. But just as it is always too often the case, boy was I wrong.

PS- This is the most beautiful city in the world. Look for that later.

South African History

2011-08-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

I was bored at home eating some of my mother's delicious pancakes and decided I would write some exciting South African history!

If you are a history buff I think you will enjoy this.

"I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America."

Former Senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke these words to the National Union of South African Students at the University of Cape Town on 6 June 1966. Most people would probably be pretty surprised at the similarities between US and ZA history.

Read more after the jump for a very condensed review of how South Africa was transformed through trade, slavery, colonization, apartheid and finally democracy.Before we talk about Africa, I want everyone to know how BIG it really is as a continent.

As you can see, the whole continent of Europe and two of the three biggest countries in the world fit into this continent. Why is this important? Because in the 15th and 16th centuries when the world was really being explored, navigating Africa was a huge challenge. Take the Dutch East India Trading Company for example, or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) as it was originally known. Africa was a huge detour for trade between Europe and southeast Asia. In North America we eventually created our own shortcut, the Panama Canal, so that we could avoid having to travel around South America. No shortcut through Africa.

Starting to see the dilemma? A voyage that took that long with the limited resources and the technology available at the time often left sailors either dead or sick with scurvy. Thus, South Africa made logistical sense for trade routes. Jan Van Riebeeck arrived at what was later called the Cape of Good Hope on 6 April 1652 with his family and eighty-two soldiers along with their families. Before I give the credit to the Dutch, it was actually the Portuguese who landed on the Cape first but they had little interest in colonization after conflicts with the indigenous.

Van Riebeeck and the Dutch, however, set up the first permanent settlement. Used to their own way of life and believing their way superior, the Dutch of course tried to "civilize" the natives. Question: How many Dutch settlers does it take to civilize a southern African native? Trick question. It didn't happen, so logically the Dutch decided to either kill them off or push them back into the frontier.

I'm struggling to think of a country to which I can relate this to...

What happened next was a lot of blood shed, especially when southern Africa was found to be rich in natural resources. The settlers eventually thought of a most efficient way to get rid of their "native" problem. Similar to the Native Americans, there were different tribes in southern Africa that did not play nice with each other. The settlers exploited this weakness by instigating tribes against each other. Make an alliance, take what you need and then create discord between societies to start a war and/or justify the imprisonment or death of Africans.

1779 saw the first major frontier war between the Dutch and Xhosa, one of the largest tribes in southern Africa. Eventually realizing how valuable southern Africa could be (or just waiting for someone else to do their work) the British took control of the land at the end of the 18th century. The Dutch who had been settled in southern Africa became known as the Afrikaner. Afrikaner farmers were known as Boers. Settlers kept coming and Africans kept being pushed back into the frontier.

Boers eventually grew tired of British rule (who hasn't, I mean really?) and sought to escape their rule. This became known as the Great Trek (Trail of Tears anyone?), which had the basic goal creating their own culture and re-instating slavery. The British had previously abolished it.

Here are some highlights of what happened next:

Boers run into Zulu and war ensues (watch the movie Zulu, it's good). The British defeat the Zulu's who lose their independence in 1879
In 1867 two children discover a "shiny pebble" in the Orange River. It is a twenty-one carat diamond
Gold is found in Witwatersrand in 1886, full-fledged British imperial ambitions and miners pervade the country
The Boers seek their independence during the Anglo-Boer Wars in 1880-1881 and 1899-1902 but to no avail as the British win.
The British establish the Union of South Africa in 1909 and try to impose democracy and English as an official language. Up to this point the Afrikaners and Boers had been speaking a crude form of Dutch known as Afrikaans. Afrikaners were HUGE advocates of nationalism. They resented, some still do today, the British for their actions during the Anglo-Boer Wars and resented anything British.
In 1914 the National Party is formed. Their main platform is independence from Britain and advocating the advancement of whites. Blacks and Coloureds also become increasingly marginalized although accounting for over 75% of the population.
It would not be until 1961 that the Union of South Africa enacted their own constitution and became the Republic of South Africa as it is to this day.

There is much much more to South Africa from when apartheid was enacted in 1948 to where it is today. This post is just to cover South Africa's early and humble beginnings. I will make a separate post later over its history from 1948 until present, specifically apartheid.

Where I'm volunteering from Sept. - Dec.

2011-08-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

Volunteers Direct

Flight Itinerary

2011-08-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

Well in case you want to know, here is my flight schedule for when I leave!

Leave KCI at 7:30 am on 8/31 on United Airlines Flight 5973 to Washington Dulles Intl @ 10:56 am

Leave D.C. @ 5:40 pm on South African Airways Flight 208 to Dakar - Yoff in Senegal @ 5:50 am

Leave Dakar on the same flight @ 6:50 am to Johannesburg - Jan Smuts in South Africa @ 5:20 pm

Jo'burg on SAA Flight 367 @ 7:20 pm to Cape Town - D.F. Malan in South Africa @ 9:30 pm September 1st

Well that is my trip, although as I was writing this I looked over my itinerary and noticed that there were two extra flights in my itinerary that I hadn't booked. After I land in Jo'burg from Dakar, my itinerary has the same flight going back to Dakar and then to Washington. Then it jumps in and sends me from Jo'burg (which according to them I should be back in DC) to Cape Town. I've never really flown a big airline or trip before so I hope I can just like skip those two flights. The time adds up to just a two hour layover between the first flight to Jo'burg and the last one to Cape Town so I guess everything should work out. I just now have to phantom flights I know nothing about. NBD, I'll just skip them.

First Post!

2011-08-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, if you are here then you have heard the fantastic news that I am going to South Africa!  I am hoping this blog does a lot of things for me i.e. keeping in contact with friends and family, independent study, etc. I'll get to some of that stuff later.

PS- If you want to skip some rambling, start reading after the page break. At least I think that is what I'm inserting...

I have never done a blog before so bear with me because I am still not sure how all this works, so far it seems fairly straightforward and simple. I am really not sure what to write here, I would like to write something interesting that would make you want to come back but I am not making any promises. I want to make it known that if you intend to follow my adventures in ZA (South Africa, or, as it was originally known by the Dutch, "Zuid-Afrika") you may unfortunately be exposed to some of my dry and sarcastic humor for which I do not apologize. Just ignore it and move on. Also if you find some of this boring, don't tell me. Post nice things and encourage me because when 12/21 comes around I want as many reasons to come back to the USA as possible (although my family and friends will trump anything you could say). For any spelling or grammar mistakes I apologize. This blog is counting for one hour of Independent Study so I will try to be as "scholarly and academic" as possible whereupon it is deemed prudent. Being an inexperienced blogger, I'm not sure if I am supposed to keep these things short or if they can be long. I will probably tend to write a lot, I always write over my word count on papers at school so I do not expect it to be any different here. If it is too long, boring or whatever, feel free to leave at any time - no one is making you read this! Except for Dr. Hesse, sorry prof. What I deem important to write is mainly based off what people have asked me. I'm taking all the questions I've received about this experience and answering the best I know how in one setting.    Now that I feel like I have written a suitable introduction for myself here's how all of this began!

So I am going to South Africa, that in and of itself surprises me and probably would you too if you had known how I felt about studying abroad. I thought Study Abroad was not utterly useless, but irrational. Apart from maybe experiencing our world in a global, and most definitely, varying perspective (who needs that anyway, right America? No one has ever heard of the South African Dream!) I did not understand why anyone from the United States would want to travel to any other country (except maybe someplace like Cambridge, Oxford, LSE) to study at an institution that could not in all likelihood provide me with the education that I was already experiencing. Boy was I wrong. My narrow minded way of thinking expanded a little wider when Dr. Hesse let a student who had studied abroad speak after one of his classes (Fall '09). I became slightly more intrigued and decide to investigate. I learned a little bit more and one day I bit off more than I could chew (I'm still reaping the consequences!) when I mentioned it to Dr. Hesse. His encouragement fueled a desire in me that I did not know that I had.

I began praying about it and wondering if God had going to South Africa in my future. Why ZA? I can't really say. I could list tons of reasons but ZA is like getting to experience what Africa has to offer, but still similar to home (modern and English-speaking). I am not throwing myself into the bush, but I'm not skimping on seeing something vastly different than what I have been exposed to here.

My trek to where I am now was unfortunately somewhat disappointing. When I decided this was something I was going to do (Spring '10) I began with the Study Abroad office at Northwest. Since I did not want to study abroad until Spring/Fall of '11, they put me on hold so they could concentrate on their current students. I came back in the fall ready to get signed up and go. The people in the office were very kind and helped me through the process of transcripts, resumes, reference letters, etc. I was told that with my background, grades and (from what I was told) very strong reference letters that I would almost be a lock to go. I would find out over Xmas break whether I was accepted. I paid my fee and sent my thick application in. On my application I could have listed 12 sites to study abroad but I only chose one. I have only ever wanted ZA and I was not going to settle for anything else. It was kind of a suicide mission, if I didn't accepted then I wouldn't be able to go. The program was ISEP-Exchange. ZA sends someone to take my place at NW and NW sends me in their place to Stellenbosch. Two weeks later I received a letter from ISEP that they were no longer exchanging students with ZA because not enough students from there wanted to come here. Fail. I gambled and it didn't pay off. Was God closing the door on this opportunity?

If you know me very well, I'm stubborn and don't give up easily. Plus, I figured that if there was anything worth giving a second chance that this was it. Soon afterwards I was confronted with two options. Dr. McLaughlin told me that there were many church movements in Africa and that I should look into those. I thought of the International Mission Board and went to their website. Sure enough they had something going on in South Africa, not just any program but a college program in Johannesburg. Jason Yarnell, the BSU campus minister at NW, also happened to have a contact in the IMB. Slam dunk. I'd been praying about this, found something that focused on missions, and also had a foot in the door. I prayed about it some more and figured this was it.

A few weeks later Dr. Hesse introduced me to Volunteers Direct (VD from here on out, a group that volunteers doing various projects in the Cape Town townships.) I felt really good about this opportunity. It had work that was more catered to my skills and just had a better feeling. However, I had kind of already plunged into the IMB. It was the more "churchy" choice and gave me what eventually turned out to be a false feeling of direction. Kind of like a "hey I'll chose whatever one would sound better to Jesus and go with it." Plus, IMB was cheaper and Jason had already spoken to his contact for me. I definitely try to make keeping my word one of my highest priorities.  I cannot tell you why it never crossed my mind that the impact I could make was not dependent on the opportunity I chose, but how much I put into the opportunity.

More resumes, references letters, background checks, fees, waiting on emails etc. I thought about posting an excerpt from an IMB email but am too lazy right now, pretty much I received something to the effect of "Thank you for your application. We will notify you when we know when you are to be serving and at what position. So when will I know? Your application is in the final stages of review." Maybe I was naive but I figured that sounded promising, plus I figured if God had me do anything, this would be it. Well I was wrong.. again.

IMB had filled all of their fall spots due to unprecedented interest, bummer. Well so much for ZA. I found this out in the middle of May. I'm not sure why I didn't think about re-investigating VD. Shortly after however, another door opened. There was a friend, of a friend, of a friend who did contracting work in ZA - digging wells building steel structures for churches and orphanages etc. Now this HAD to be it. This was so similar to what I do on the farm during the summer that it had to be the right thing. No need to really pray about this one, thanks for the introduction God I'll take it from here. I mean how many college students have any experience doing that kind of work? Not many, I think. I had deactivated my Facebook account after school but brought it back so that I could keep in contact with this man from ZA.

I'm not sure where the miscommunication happened, or if some people just changed their minds. July rolled around and I was informed that I would not be able to stay down there for over three months. *Important note: I never planned to go to Africa unless I could get college credit for it. No way I could blow thousands of dollars in the middle of school. Kudos to the NW Political Science department for bending over backwards to make sure this would count for hours! Now the most internship hours one can receive is 11 hours. It takes like some 450 hours of work. 12 hours is a full time student, hence one hour independent study and the blog you are reading now. "I know you really wanted to come over here, but don't take it personally. It is not like they know you or anything," is what his last email said to me.

I give up.

I informed all my professors I would be unfortunately be at NW this Fall. Two days later, Dr. Hesse calls. Before I go any farther (and this may sound sappy), I think there comes a time where we all need encouragement. I believe that is one way we grow. Well I didn't know it but I was growing. I am one of the most independent people I know. If I can, I will do everything myself. There's lots of reasons but they aren't important to the point I want to make. A lot of times we as relational beings push ourselves as far as we can, putting as much energy into something as we can that way we can share the success with only us while making sure it is done the way we want in the process. But who of us has ever been able to do every single thing on our own without any help or encouragement from someone? None, if you think you have then you are a liar. I think it is a great thing that we need other people who care enough about us to assess our needs (in this case encouragement) and invest in our life by providing what we need to succeed. This is what Dr. Hesse did for me. He convinced me I was as ready to go abroad as any student he had seen and that I had come too far to give up now. Even though I had already told everyone that I was coming back to NW, and you know I don't like going back on my word. But in the end it was a pretty lame excuse for not giving Africa another shot.

I decided to look into VD again. I emailed with Kevin Wilyman who is a co-founder and told him I would do the maximum time they would let me; which turns out to be three months. With VD there was never an issue of whether or not I would be accepted, it was if I could afford it. There is a fee depending on how long you want to stay that covers meals, lodging, medical assistance, etc. While on vacation I bought a plane ticket and here I am, I'm going!

Understandably, some people have asked me if maybe I forced this into happening. Maybe all the failed attempts to go was God's way of telling me that I shouldn't go. Yet, unless something happens in the last 12 days, I am most definitely going. I do not believe that I would be going if it was not in His plan for me. So rather than look at all the closed doors as reasons not to go, I choose to look at those as guidance to lead me to His original purpose. Besides, I don't want to live my life looking for reasons not to do things. As I try to make a radical impact in the lives of others, I want to experience as much of life as possible. I definitely don't have all of this ironed out but it is getting me to Africa so I'm okay with it! It's all in God's hands and there is nothing I will do in my life that He hasn't already planned for.

Well that is the tale of my journey from no Africa to Africa. If you made it from beginning to end I wish there was a medal or something I could give you for sticking through it! Instead all I can tell you is that this is going to be a lot of fun and I am going to enjoy sharing everything I do over there with you! Check back often for new posts.