Sunday, April 20, 2008

"So... where did everyone go?!"

Last week I went on a field trip with my Service Learning class up the west coast to Saldanha Bay. We took a two hour bus ride north to the Military Academy. That's where we stayed the first night in huge tents. It kind of felt like summer camp, I'mnotgonnalie (yes, I am proposing that that oh-so popular and overused phrase be made into one simple, convenient and beautiful word). We aslo had a braai with some wine accompanying (naturally... I mean come on, would this still be South Africa if we didn't?).

The next day the fun started. And what sort of "fun" does one do on a Service Learning field trip, you may be asking? The garden-planting variety, of course. As a group of twenty-two students, we got to work digging up eight plots and filling them with "compost" (it was really just bagfuls and bagfuls of shredded-up paper, like someone had gone to town with the paper shredder for a couple weeks). We eventually finished up the garden, having planted eight neat little plots of carrots, cabbage, cucumber, tomatoes, etc.


The reason we were planting the garden, we were told, is that the nearby AIDS clinic realized that people had been coming in to receive their anti-retroviral treatments on an empty stomach, which totally messes everything up. The problem is the community is too poor to afford food. So they decided they would start providing food to everyone who came in (a nice soup or something) so that they wouldn't be on an empty tank when they took their meds. Good idea. So in we stepped and plopped a lekker garden right on their doorstep. We just hope it actually grows stuff (not ink-contaminated from the sketchy "compost").


After that, we went to Middelpos to do some work in the township. For any of you who don't know, townships are South Africa's ghettos where, for centuries, the whites stuck everyone else into slum-like living conditions. Seeing inside of one, even for just a day, was definitely and educational experience, if nothing else.


So as we were dropped off outside the "safe park" in Middelpos where all the local kids came for after-school care and playtime, we looked around and didn't see much around us. Most townships I've seen are on the outskirts of towns, but this one seemed to be pretty much in the middle of nowhere. So as five of my classmates and I walked up and were instantly taken in by all the kids, we turned around and saw that our whole group had completely vanished. Poof. Driven off to some other place. No words of advice or instructions, just "hear ya go, play with the kids, see ya later!" Naturally, when we realized this we were a little offput and confused. But actually, we (as a group of six white American college students dropped off in the middle of a township in South Africa) took the situation surprisingly well. Even considering all the language barriers (everyone spoke isiXhosa) we seemed to manage pretty okay for the time we spent there.


Well anyways, when I said earlier that the kids took us in as one of their own (almost), I meant it. We noticed that they had one of those mini spinning "merry-go-rounds" that are so common on playgrounds. But on a piece of playground equipment that should actually only be supporting about ten kids, there were about twice that many jam-packed on there. So we decided it would be a good idea to help spin them around. Fast. Really really fast. Only we soon realized that kids were starting to fly off or fall down underneath the thing and have everyone's flailing legs in their face. Not a good situation. So we decided we'd cool it and not break some kid's neck.


But the kids were not too keen on the whole "playing it cool" idea and instantly starting shouting the Xhosa word for "faster! faster!" Add to that, they picked up chanting the phrase "one more time!" from Corey, and you got twenty kids on a spinny thing that just wanted to be spun. So, by the wingéd feet of Apollo, they were spun. Fast. Really really fast. And even though kids were flying off left and right, they were loving it. And they were having to hang on to every inch of me in order to stay on, but I was loving it too.


And then something that our instructor had told us earlier suddenly hit me. Sixty-percent of these kids have HIV. And most of their parents have AIDS. How's that for a mind blower? And the fact that it suddenly came back to me, after I had forgotten it for an hour and had been having so much fun with these kids made me realize something else: it doesn't matter. At least not in terms of how I'm gonna treat these kids, or how I'm gonna see them as beautiful children of God just the same as everyone else. I guess you could say I had a spiritual realization right then of what it really means to love others as Christ loves us, and what our calling as Christians in this world really is. Playing with those kids for the afternoon was about as close as I've come yet during my time here to seeing the Kingdom of God become real. A pretty gnarly experience.






(Left) Laura and I with the kids on the spinny thing. They loved it. Greg is behind us playing soccer, and behind him you can see why I say "middle of nowhere"
(Right) Me a little overwhelmed. Oh well. One More Time!





Two Middelpos boys with Laura. (Yes that's a boy on the right).



(Left) Jamie posing with the kids. They were also in love with having their picture taken.
(Right) They really wanted to braid the girls' hair.



The Middelpos Hair-Braiding Salon in full-swing.






After the "safe park" (which, ironically, was just about the least "safe" park I've ever been in, considering the play equipment was either broken or not fully installed, there was broken glass and rusty metal all over the place, and ticks were everywhere) we walked through the township to the main care center to serve the kids a meal. Adding to everything that had already happened, walking through the streets of the township with kids on our shoulders and holding our hands as they sung traditional Xhosa songs was doubly gnarly.


Then after serving them a little dinner, which proved to be pure chaos and mayhem (with about 100 kids, only 40 bowls, and 6 of us dishing it out), they sang us some songs of thankfulness and parting. It was mostly in Xhosa, except for one which included parts of the Lord's Prayer, but despite my lack of understanding, it definitely brought some tears to my big manly eyes.




Then we finally got picked up by our group, drove home, and I slept for about twelve hours. All worth it, though. And if I had been feeling somewhat encapsulated by the "Stellenbosch bubble" before, this experience definitely popped me out of that sentiment.




1 comment:

Anastasia said...

Absolutely BEAUTIFUL story, Carl! So heartwarming...

Mark 9:36-37 - "He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in His arms, He said to them, 'Whoever welcomes one of these little children in My name welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me does not welcome Me but the One who sent Me.'"