Thoughts on Week 1

I have now been in Canada a week and a day.  Things that have been an adjustment: 

-People driving on the right side of the road.  Every time my dad turns, I feel like we're going to crash into oncoming traffic.  When crossing the street I keep looking for traffic on the wrong side.
-Being unremarkable.  I blend in here!  Toronto is a very diverse city, so actually everybody blends in.  But I haven't had a single man hit on me since I got here.  What's this?!
-Air conditioning.  I went into a grocery store and it was freeeeeeeeeezing.

Things that are nice:

-Mom and dad, and nice people I know here.  People welcoming me back and wanting to know all about my time in South Africa.
-Cinnamon rolls!  And lots of other delicious food.
-Hot showers, any time I want!
-Free pool games.  I'm determined to improve!
-Washing machine and dryer.

Things that are not so nice:

-I miss my friends and family in Sosh.
-Colder weather.  No more summer for Julie.  :(
-Feeling like I live too extravagantly.  I have a whole trunk full of clothes I left behind.  Why do I have so much stuff?!


Just a few random thoughts.  It still hasn't sunk in that this is a change that is going to last a while; I still feel like I'll be back in Soshanguve sometime soon and everything will be the same.

"Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.  'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I hope in Him!'" (Lamentation 3:22-24).        

Birthday

My birthday was a few weeks ago, and God really used it to remind me how blessed I am.  For a couple weeks in July I was really excited to go home, which was making it difficult to be present here. 

So, I had a joint birthday party with my teammate Rebekah (whose birthday was a week before mine) and our neighbor Ellen (whose birthday was a week before Rebekah's).  I was very frustrated for a while leading up to the party, as there are a lot of cultural expectations and assumptions that make it very difficult to throw an affordable party.  You are expected to provide a huge meal with lots of meat, and in the township anybody who wants to can show up--so it can be huge.  We couldn't afford this, so we decided to have a snack party--grilled chicken feet, gizzard kabobs, chips and cake.  So there was still some South African flavor!  

Rebekah, Ellen and I with our delicious party snacks...

I heard from a lot of people about what was wrong with our party plans, but we persisted, and I resigned myself to being criticized.  But on the day of the party I was just amazed at how much the community gathered around us, contributing to the party and then celebrating with us--even if they didn't get any meat from it!  A couple people donated money to buy chips and sodas, a whole group of kids and neighbors were cleaning the chicken feet for us while we were busy with ministry activities the day of the party, my brother Katlego pretty much singlehandedly baked and decorated all three cakes, friends offered to help with the music, Petunia and a host of friends kindly operated the grills for hours on end...It was amazing how helpful people were!  AND they all had fun, so we were able to just enjoy each other's company and dance the night away.  I am so blessed to have been embraced as one of the community here--a community in which everyone just participates in each other's lives and helps each other out when needed.

Cake!

After the party, I thought the birthday itself would be pretty anticlimactic, but again, my dear friends here made sure it was special.  Rebekah, Katlego, and my friend Rony made me breakfast in bed and woke me up singing happy birthday at my door!  Ellen took the day off so we could hang out and go out to eat.  I visited the girls at Jabulani, and they had made a cake the week before and sang and gave me a beautiful card.  Katlego and Rony and Rebekah had also made another cake so I could have one on my birthday.  I felt so loved!  I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have such amazing friends near and far.

My South African brothers Katlego (far left) and Wesley, who were both HUGELY helpful and made my birthday very special!

So yes, I am still excited to go home and see my friends and family there.  But I was reminded of the wonderful friends and family I have made here, that I am so blessed to have and very sad to leave.  But for now I will live in denial of the fact that my time is limited, enjoy the beautiful relationships I have been blessed with, and try not to take the wonderful people in my life for granted again.   

Do You Know the World is Beautiful? Part II

After my last post I began praying that God would open my eyes to the beauty around me in Soshanguve, and help me appreciate it.  I began to recognize a lot of beautiful things I normally take for granted.  The beautiful pinks and oranges and reds of the sunset; a clear, starry night sky; a lunar eclipse (ok, that one I don’t normally take for granted, because it’s not a usual event).  While I may not have places where I can spend long peaceful hours outdoors, I am learning to affirm the beauty that God places in front of me every day.

And then there are the small miracles, the beautiful things that happen that remind me that my heart can be touched by a beauty that goes beyond what my eyes take in.  When this little girl:

runs toward me with outstretched arms, my day is instantly better.  When I see a teenage boy who is so eager to grow up—who has written Born To Kill on his arms in marker because apparently that makes him cool—playing gently with a little girl, and then helping her tie her shoe with great affection and tenderness, that is beautiful.  There is a choir of young people at Jabulani (the government-run children’s home where I volunteer).  I got to sit in on one of their practices once, and acapella, a small group of 8-10 teenagers from broken homes filled the room with some of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard.  I’ve never cried just from hearing or seeing something beautiful, but I was holding back the tears then.  Somehow, it reached my soul.  When, time after time, people welcome me into their lives and homes with such warmth and hospitality; when my friends and family here insist that I cannot leave them; I am reminded of the beauty of our unity in Christ despite our differences and the distance that might come between us.

There is a lot of beauty around me that is easy to overlook.  What beauty do you see when you open your eyes?  

Do you know the world is beautiful?

I just got back from a road trip around South Africa with my dear friend Vanessa (pics coming on facebook soon).  Out trip was very outdoorsy, with just about every day that we weren’t driving including a hike of some sort.  Who would have thought this city girl would become a nature lover?  Maybe it has largely to do with the fact that there is a distressing lack of natural beauty around Soshanguve.  There is nowhere that I can easily access (I don’t have a car…) where I can be alone outside.  I’ve felt that loss, and I’ve missed it.  In Greensboro I used to climb a tree or go to a park or arboretum to be alone.  In Miami, I would go to the beach at night and watch the stars while I listened to the waves.  I feel most peaceful when I am outside.  Like the clutter in my head and heart drift away with the tide, like my mind is aired out with the breeze.  Somehow, sitting in my room trying to listen to God is just not the same.

Yet, that’s my only option around here.  The only space I have in which I can be alone is my room.  I could potentially go to one of the few parks in Sosh, but I most certainly would not be left alone.  Being one of a handful of white people in a township of over 1 million doesn’t really allow for me to go anywhere without a bunch of people staring at, hooting at, hitting on, and proposing to me, wanting to talk to me or at least find out what a white girl is doing in the township.  Maybe throw in a concerned Afrikaner lecturing me on how unsafe the township is for white people, and you have my regular outings around Soshanguve.  So, to be alone, to be silent, to seek God, I sit in my ten foot square room, staring at the white ceiling and bare light bulb and trying to hear beyond the sounds of children playing and the dog barking.  It’s not the same.

So it was wonderful to take two weeks of being outside nearly all the time.  Even driving was a pleasure, as there are beautiful views along the way.  It made me realize how much I missed that.  The world is so beautiful!  I miss beauty.  I miss green, and nature, and majesty.  I know there is beauty everywhere, and seek to open my eyes to it, but it gets lost in the dust and the noise of poverty, lost in the day to day grind of survival.  I wonder that no one else feels the loss.  Do they see the beauty my eyes are missing?  The few flowering trees in the spring, the mountains on the taxi ride in to town to work… is that enough for everyone else?  What other option do they have?  Beauty is a luxury, not a right.  And of all those small luxuries I have given up to be here, it is one whose loss I feel the most.        

Welcome to the Rainbow Nation

It’s time for a little history lesson on the origins of the township where I live.  During apartheid one of the government’s strategies for maintaining power was dividing people along tribal lines.  If Africans united against them, they would lose their power, so they did all they could to ensure that did not happen.  One of the ways they did this was by relocating Africans to certain areas according to tribe.  They called each area a Bantustan.  The area around Soshanguve was to be a Bantustan called Boputatswana, where all the Setswana people would live.  

The problem came when people of other tribes were relocating for various reasons to the area around Pretoria.  The government tried to force them to go to Boputatswana, but people of other tribes did not want to have to speak another language.  So, people of many different tribes built their houses outside the approved areas in informal settlements that eventually became the township of Soshanguve.  The name Soshanguve reflects this diversity: So for the Sotho people, Sha for the Shangaan, Ngu for the people, and Ve for the Venda.

So the language that is spoken here in Soshanguve is a mix of all those (and other) languages.  I am taking classes in Setswana, but our teacher frequently tells us, “the Setswana word is ________, but here in Sosh we say __________.”  Or, “the Setswana word is _____________, but most people say _______________ which is Sepedi.”  It makes language learning quite complicated, because any textbook or program we might buy will leave us speaking pure Setswana, which nobody around us speaks.  As a matter of fact, because children in the township grow up speaking Sosha language, they are often not fully fluent in any one language, but understand them all. 

When I was living with Mama Jane, her son, Pule, once asked me how many languages I spoke.  “Just English and Spanish,” I replied.  In the US, people were often impressed that I was bilingual.  Pule’s response? “Only two?!  Wow!”

Language

I am now on language learning attempt number three.  The guy who tutored me for my first three months here started university in January, so he no longer has the time.  We decided to go to an adult school nearby and take the level 1 Setswana class.  Though our teacher, Queen, is accustomed to teaching illiterate adults who speak Setswana how to read and write, she willingly took on the challenge of trying to figure out how to help us learn the language.  It was quite an adjustment for her, I think.  Our first class she spent teaching us about syllables, and trying to get us to form words from different sounds.  We tried to explain that we could put random sounds together all day and that wouldn’t mean they were Tswana words, but seemed to have trouble getting the point across.  When we would ask her about rules and grammar it would take a long time to get the point across-probably because her normal students don’t ask about those things.  Though she did try, and got progressively better in our four classes with her, she eventually decided that the work load of trying to put together lesson plans for us on top of all her usual classes was too much.

Now, Mama Jane, a dear partner to InnerCHANGE South Africa (and the woman I lived with from November to January) has taken on the challenge.  She is a retired teacher, and taught Setswana.  It’s also her first language.  I know it’s difficult because we are at different levels-I have been learning since October, Emily has a month or so under her belt, and Rebekah is just starting out.  We like to know what rules are and why things are the way they are, which can sometimes be hard to explain.  We want to understand the structure of sentences and words the way we understand the English (or Spanish, for me) structure of sentences, and have to just learn to let go of our desire for everything to have an English correlation.  It’s an interesting journey for all of us, but I’m excited to have someone who knows us and loves us and has experience teaching taking on the challenge.  Maybe there’s hope for me yet!

Love

I’ve had love on my mind lately.  I recently reread the (amazing) book Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers.  It is a retelling of the story of Hosea, set in California gold rush days.  I’ve read this book many times, but this time more than others I was struck with a deep longing to know God’s love as it is portrayed in this book: passionate, pursuing, always patient.  The longing was sometimes so great I would just put the book down and weep.  Every fiber of my being cries out for a love that could fill me up, that could take my heart of stone and turn into a heart of flesh.  While I know in my head about such love, it is hard to grasp it when you can’t see or feel it.  Dominated by my emotions, it is easy for me to make decisions about whether God loves me and how much by how I am feeling at any given moment.  

A movie I watched recently had a similar effect on me.  It was Moulin Rouge (you can laugh at me if you want).  There is a phrase repeated several times in the movie and it stuck with me afterwards: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”  The movie lifts up love as the ultimate good, and it touches on something, doesn’t it?  Only it’s focused on the wrong source for that love.  I’m starting to believe that the best thing I can learn in life is to just love God, and allow Him to love me in return.  Everything else flows from that.  It will result in learning to love the people around me without expecting anything in return, and being able to receive their love without placing my identity in it.  

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19.

My New Home

Here's a video of where I am staying now, for anyone who is curious.  I'm enjoying it so far!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=104016656318334&v=app_2392950137#!/video/video.php?v=752838503691&oid=104016656318334

Safe

"All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely.  But dear children, do not tiptoe.  Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe."

I put this quote (from The Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne) as my Facebook status a couple months ago because it resonated deeply within me.  Growing up in Colombia, safety was always an issue.  We were warned to maintain a low profile, not draw attention to ourselves, and not go to certain parts of town.  From a young age I felt frustrated with the sensation of walking on eggshells-of treading carefully on the ground God had called us to for fear of the consequences of our presence.  I had forgotten that sensation, in my comfortable eight years in the United States.  Now, as an adult it’s all coming back to me.  Countless times before coming to South Africa, people asked me if it was safe for me to go live in a township.  Even living here people ask me all the time why I would choose to live here and warn me of the danger: don’t walk here, don’t go there.  Not that I should throw caution to the wind and wander around the township at night with dollar bills sticking out of my pockets, but I have reached the point where I no longer want to reassure people that I am safe.  Because I am not.  I cannot guarantee that someone will not see where I live and decide that because I am a rich white person I am a good target.  Then again, I couldn’t guarantee that in Greensboro, or in Miami, or in Toronto.  When did Jesus ever tell us that following Him was going to be safe?  It wasn’t safe for John the Baptist, for Paul, for Peter, for Stephen, or for countless martyrs throughout the years.  It wasn’t even safe for Him.  Why would I be any different?  Why should I spend my life seeking comfort and security and call it God’s blessing, when the very example of my Savior tells me otherwise? 

Erwin McManus, in his book The Barbarian Way, says, “Instead of finding confidence to live as we should regardless of our circumstances, we…choose the path of least resistance, least difficulty, least sacrifice.  Instead of concluding it is best to be wherever God wants us to be, we have decided that wherever it is best for us to be is where God wants us.  Actually, God’s will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution.  God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance.  God created you so that your life would count…”

No, dear friends, I do not have a death wish; I kinda want to live for quite a bit longer, and this is not an indictment against anyone who is living “comfortably.”  God gives us all different paths to follow, and I do not claim to have found my own, much less a prescription for anyone else’s.  All I know is that I don’t want to have a “safe” faith.  I don’t want to tiptoe carefully through life.  I want to dive into whatever God has for me, though the thought scares me to no end and I find it easier said than done.  I want to follow Jesus, whether He leads me to suburbia, USA or the ghettos and slums of the world; whether I live for 100 years or 30.  I don’t want to choose safety over significance.  I don’t want to arrive at death at a ripe old age and say, “well, at least my life was safe.”  I want to get there, look back on my life, and say, “It mattered!  It mattered that I lived!  It mattered how I lived!”  God, give me the courage.