act 6 scene 1

So last time I wrote I had this week ahead of me - our cultural evening, our first outreach and a new speaker. It’s been an amazing week so far, let me tell you about a few of the highlights. Since it’s such a long post I’ve put some sub headings in for you.

Welcome

On Sunday after church we were invited over to the home of Gareth and Linda MacDonald. Also home of their young boy Andy and their nieces Joy and Rachel. They have breath taking views from their house on the hillside in Fish Hoek - overlooking the town and providing a view of both the Atlantic and Indian oceans depending if you look left or right.

Andy rapidly exhausted me in the pool diving and swimming :-) It was an amazingly relaxing afternoon. We had a Christmas dinner with a Cornish hen and gammon. My favourite part was the beautiful pumpkin pie that Linda had cooked. Now I’m no fan of pumpkin, but now I’m converted - it was simply delicious.

It was a great afternoon from beginning to end - I hope to post some photos of them when time allows and write a little more, but this is going to be a huge post anyway.

Culture

Secondly, the cultural evening. We opted for Toad in the hole and Cream teas - we spent a few days successfully convincing people that we were actually going to be eating frog :-) We had a great set of helpers that decorated the dining hall in red, blue and white and put both myself and David at the end of the table with appropriate Prince David and Prince Simon signs.

We started with “My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen” etc, raised the Union Flag to the National Anthem and did a presentation in which we used interesting words such as archipelago, taught cockney rhyming slang and seemed to find the balance between silly and informative. Fun was had by all.

Learning

Our new speaker this week is called Pete Thompson - he’s actually a Brit although now lives only a few miles down the road from here, having married a South African. He’s been talking to us about the character of God. What is God acutally like? How big is he? What does he look like (as best we can understand it)? It’s been very interesting so far and we have asked and answered questions that are both easy and difficult - all of which has been helpful.

Kids

On Wednesday we went to Masiphumelele - also known as Site 5. It’s a township that is mostly a sprinkling of the odd brick building amongst large numbers of tin shacks (a wooden frame with tin roofs and walls). This is only 15 or 20 minutes from base by car and as you drive through it’s instantly a different side of South Africa. There is a surprising contrast in the standard of living, even within the township - the tin shacks have electricity. Some have large televisions, DVD players and all the other things you might find at home. Shacks next door to these might have very little - being lucky to have beds and mattresses.

Anyhow - the school in Masiphumelele was our destination on Wednesday afternoon. We arrived just before one and were shown our project for our time there - there is a large area out the back which is their playing field. It’s also bumpy and strewn with breeze blocks and other rubble. The plan is to flatten it and put down enough grass to turn it into a reasonable football pitch.

We had a look around and then spent the first afternoon playing with the kids there, giving them shoulder lifts and swinging them around, playing basketball and football with them and just being generally entertaining and entertained. White people rarely come to the township and so we are fascinating. The school is also HIV/AIDS friendly and many of the kids will have been born with the virus.

I’ll try to get a photo or two uploaded soon.

Building

Today we prayed for the Dad of one of the other people on the course who is in surgery for a cancer operation. After that we headed to class for another days teaching. Pete had other ideas though. When he turned up he told us that there had been a large fire down in Masiphumelele last night that started at around 6pm and raged through till about 10pm. About 100 shacks had been destroyed leaving over 500 people without shelter. So why sit in a classroom? - let’s get down there and help in the clear up and rebuilding, and that’s what we did.

Half an hour later we were sun creamed up and walking through the township from the community center to the flattened area. All that was left were the brick toilets, charred telephone/electricity poles and rubble. The residents had started the cleanup and were salvaging what they could of the building materials. Fridges, ovens and loads of other stuff was being carted to the roadside for collection by the rubbish lorries and scrap metal merchants. Old bits of roof would be salvaged and flattened ready to be reused.

To start with we started to rake and dig up all the charred wood and rubbish on this one site of a woman who had not been around when it started and had lost absolutely everything apart from the clothes on her back and her family. We dug a large hole in the ground, excavating a pile of clean soil and burying the burnt soil and rubbish. The clean soil was then spread over the ground ready to start building again. The fire had been intense, you could see from the molten glass and the pieces oof metal strewn around that had once been mattresses and electrical appliances.

We met some guys from a local baptist church who were bringing food in. Shortly after a vat of soup appeared and we set to serving it out and giving it out. This was closely followed by about 40 loaves of bread and lots of meat and cheese - so we made sandwiches for quite a while.

All this was done in the scorching sun (it reached about 36 in the afternoon) and we were absolutely exhausted. Being white and unfit meant we weren’t really up to the task - the black guys, with their natural sunscreen seemed to be doing a lot better.

We had a break for lunch and met some other guys from another YWAM (Youth With A Mission) DTS (Discipleship Training School) in Hawaii. They are based at Beautiful Gate up the road (which is a place that aims to impact children with HIV and AIDS).

The overwhelming vote was to go back out and do more work. We carried some more materials around for a little while, moved a fridge and then spent another couple of hours building a wooden frame for a shack. Some of the people could afford to go out and buy new wood and new tin. Others could only salvage wood from elsewhere and do the best they could. I was helping a couple of guys who fell into the latter category. Nailing lengths of wood together to reach between the posts that had been placed in the ground. By the time we left the main frame was in place and they were pulling out burnt tin.

It was the last thing I was expecting to do today. It was incredible to get out there and make a real difference to these people. There was also a real sense of community with people helping each other and also a real sense of just getting on with in - there were very few people mourning about the loss, most people just changed gear and got on with clearing up and building up.

The last thing I heard as we got in cars and headed back was gospel singing coming from one of the churches.

Standing on the edge of the tidal pool, getting hit by the incoming waves and getting clean again. Today was probably the first time I got out there and was forced to take initiative and get involved in helping out in any way I could with people that didn’t really speak English that well.

I’m glad to be here.