this weekend

Friday was National Heritage Day here where everyone celebrates their heritage by eating a lot of meat, which is obviously a holiday that we wanted to get in on, so Friday night we had our very own braai. South Africans are all about the braai which is a cook-out that involves as much meat as possible. Generally sausage, pork chops, chicken, and whatever other meat you have lying around is thrown on the grill for a long time and then eaten with salads and we had pap and a tomato based salsa also, which is very traditional african food. We also roasted marshmallows and made s'mores which confused the South Africans helping us, be we had a great time.
Saturday we had a History and Culture excursion to see some bushmen paintings so we set out early in the morning for the Drakensberg mountains which was a beautiful drive. The Drakensburg are lumpy, malformed mountains that look like they are crumbling and they are burning the fields right now so every once and a while we would come upon a black mountain which was peculiar, but it was still a beautiful drive. We hadn't seen much of the rural areas of South Africa before the trip so that was also interesting, to see how the people in the country lived. There were a lot more traditional houses made of wattle and daub and there were also a lot of the traditional round houses which are made round so they don't trap spirits in the corners. We also saw a ton of livestock and had to stop a couple of times to let cows and goats and sheep cross the road. Cows are really important in Zulu culture- your wealth is measured in cows and a bride price was traditionally paid in cows. So after a couple of hours we got to the site and hiked for about an hour to the bushmen paintings. They were small and unassuming and our guide was a man of few words so the actual experience was pretty quick. The paintings were painted by medicine men while they were in a trance communicating with the ancestors, and all the paintings were of animals and were focused around the hunt. The bushmen are totally gone now, they were a small people that were migratory hunters and gatherers and they have died out but our director actually got to meet the last remaining bushmen about 40 years ago. He went with his daughter and because they had very limited access to white people they thought that Reg's daughter was severely ill because she was so white. So after we saw the paintings we hiked down to a stream and ate lunch and then we hiked back out and drove home.
Sunday morning we went to church which was great. It was fun going back because i had met people the week before so it was nice knowing some of the congregation and being able to connect with other people my own age. All the high school kids are on holiday, so some of them will be coming up to hang out with us again this week.
School is getting crazy right now cause mid-terms are coming up next week (ridiculous right?? we just started!! literally!!) so i am super busy with class work and all the stuff they have for us to do on the weekends so i'm having to be really intentional about having quiet time to just rest in the presence of God, but it'll be good for me to learn that.
"At the time, discipline isn't much fun. It always feels like it's going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it's the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God." Hebrews 12:11


the braai



the drakensburg mtns.


a cave painting

Zulu

Zulu can be complicated and a little stressful but the more i learn about it the more i like it. Today we had our first test which was mildly terrifying because it was our first test on a totally new language in a totally new country with a totally different teaching style. South Africans just kind of laugh at you when you ask what the format of the test is like or if there is a study guide. That's not how they work here which does little to ease test anxiety, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. My favorite thing about Zulu is the way African concepts and customs work their way through the language. We learned today that there is a different word for the death of plants and animals and for the death of humans. When humans die the Zulus say that they have slipped away like the sun and for a year the deceased is considered a shadow. After that year there is a ceremony and the person becomes an ancestral spirit. The lilt of Zulu is also quite beautiful. Most of the words start and end with vowels so it sings like italian and is pleasant to listen to, like a never ending poem.
In a month we will split into groups and work in the Zulu community with different organizations. We got to visit one of the organizations today and we spent about an hour talking to the older Zulu ladies working there (because our bus broke down- it's africa) and we had such a great time. They were funny and open and thought our very limited Zulu was hilarious. I can't wait to get into this community and get to know these people and the way they see the world.

Durban/Indian Ocean

Yesterday we visited an indian area of the coastal town Durban and went to the beach! The drive from Pietermaritzburg is about an hour and 30 mins so we left pretty early and spent the second half of our morning walking around the predominately indian town just outside of Durban. It was the poorest area we've been in so far (it was about on par with Soweto, but we didn't get out of the vans for very long there or interact with any of the people) and it was a great experience. We were confined to walking around the main street and as soon as we pilled out of the vans it became ridiculously obvious that we were very out of place. I have never felt so much like a tourist or so obviously white in my life. We all went our separate ways (in groups- except for Adam, who talked to every single person on that street) and we started walking through the market area where women were cooking things like huge sausages on small fires and selling produce and clothing. We then moved toward the shops and looked around for a while. Most of them sold about the same random assortment of clothing and bedding and shoes and any other random thing they could squeeze into the small room. The women that ran the shops followed you as you browsed and most of the stores did not even bother pricing their wares because everyone haggles over everything. The South African people are so overwhelmingly hospitable and open that everywhere we went we had people shouting greetings and questions at us and we were invited to the homes of a couple of the shopkeepers we had particularly long conversations with. Most of the shops were owned by indians and the workers were blacks and generally the owner was in the shop standing in the door until someone came in and then they stood and talked while their employees shelved and moved things. In one of the shops i met a man that told us that we should tour the mosque at the end of the street so we made our way there and as we were walking around trying to figure out how to get in we ran into the principle of the school that was attached to the mosque and he ended up taking us on a tour of the mosque and the school. We were not allowed into the prayer area of the mosque but we were able to stand in the back and the principle explained what the different areas were for and how prayers work, where the leader stands, and all the other basics none of us knew. Then he opened up the girls school for us and let us walk through a few of the classrooms and explained how they split the genders after puberty. They actually had one classroom where both boys and girls took a class and there was a brick wall splitting the room in half so they remained separate. After our tour of the mosque and the school we looked through some more shops and got back in the vans and went to the beach. The coast of Durban is beautiful and the water is clear and a light green blue, not quite like the Mediterranean but still very beautiful. But the most impressive thing about the beach was definitely the waves. Since my primary frame of reference is the Atlantic it doesn't take much to impress me, but these waves were unreal. I made the mistake of just walking into the water instead of bracing myself like i was going into battle and i was immediately knocked on my butt. But besides my not-so-graceful beginning, the water was warm and we had a great time. After swimming we met up with a local youth group. We had to move beaches because a number of men had parked themselves right next to us and were getting progressively more and more drunk which was taste of the disappointing reality of SA. This country and its people have so much beauty and potential but you are confronted with serious social issues every time you turn around. Leisel, Reagan's (one of the CLC's) wife was talking to us about the struggle with teenage pregnancy that is going on especially in the black and colored communities. The potential of this place is so overwhelming and there is a feeling that this potential is not being realized and is not being met. But we have a lot more time to wrestle with and try to understand these problems. So after we switched beaches we started the braai which involves a lot of meat which takes a long time to cook so we walked around and talked with the local kids until it was ready and by that time it was late so we ate and went home.
This morning i got up and went to church with Reg, the director of the program. His church is mostly white and is so full of joy and the holy spirit, it was great to be there. I love that we are getting the opportunity to see God praised and experienced in so many ways, it is really impacting all of us and will definitely change the way we understand the global church and the way we experience and see God.

Week 1

Our first week of school is done! It actually officially ended for me yesterday, because isiZulu was cancelled for tonight but now everyone else is done as well and the weekend can begin. My week was much different than the school schedule i am used to because i usually take morning and afternoon classes and Zulu is only at night so i had way more free time this week then i am used to, but my roommate and i managed to be somewhat productive during our free times. On wednesday we hiked up the stream to find the other waterfall and i had my first big "i am in africa right now" moment. We were about half way up the stream to find the second waterfall and hacking our way through jungle and i had slipped for like the 12th time and it hit me that i was not on jungle cruise, but was in fact in the middle of a real jungle in the bottom of Africa. We did not make it all the way to the second waterfall, we found a different one instead (they seem to be all over the place on this campus). On the way back to campus i found a porcupine quill near the stream which i thought was exciting but was not so impressive to the South Africans. Apparently porcupines are common roadkill so the sides of roads are generally covered in quills. Because i didn't have class today i spent most of the day walking around the nature reserve and saw a few bushbuck. No zebra yet, but many people have seen them so we know they are there. It's only a matter of time. Overall it was a great first week and i think school will be very manageable in terms of homework load and coursework and all of the kids taking Zulu are interested in exploring Pietermaritzburg while everyone else is in class so we will be planning some excursions to do some fun things in the area. Tomorrow we are visiting an Indian town down the coast from durban and going to a market and then meeting up with some South African Indians from a local youth group for a braai (cook-out, the word is Afrikaans for "roasted meat").

the monkey post

So there are monkeys on our campus. My interaction with them thus far has been limited to them running into my chalet, lecture hall, or dining room. They move around in a pack and are either all there and in the way, or are no where to be found. They are grey and about 1ft to 1 1/2ft tall. They fight occasionally and some of the meaner ones are missing their tails. They eat whatever grows on the trees and whatever people accidentally leave out. They have not bullied any of us yet and just seem intent on taking our stuff and being nuisances. And now for the pictures:


monkey in repose


two monkeys plotting outside of our chalet

1st day of class

Today was the 1st day of class and chapel. Chapel is student lead, so i played guitar for worship today and our program director Reg spoke. He is outrageously smart and a biblical scholar in his own right and he had some really great things to say about the kingdom of God and our role in it, which was a really great message for the start of this trip since that's what so many of us are doing. All the people on this trip seem to be searching for their calcutta/their role in the kingdom work so it was a great direction to start the semester in, thinking about that role and understanding our responsibility as citizens of heaven to respond to it by responding to the needs of those around us. After chapel i hung out with the other kids taking the 8 units of Zulu on the lawn because we have night classes so we pretty much have mornings and afternoons off to do whatever we want. We are planning hikes and other activities to keep busy so we don't end up napping or on facebook all day. While i was packing up my stuff to go to class before lunch someone left the door open to our chalet and we had our 1st monkey visitor! He ran in and saw me looking at him and promptly ran back out the door so any possible crisis was averted. After lunch we had our 1st Intercultural Communication lecture and then went to Intro to Zulu. Inter Com should be really interesting- it's kind of a combination of sociology and com and anthro and it counts toward my major, so it is a win all around. Intro to Zulu is not the 8 unit course, it is the one that everyone takes- the "Zulu-light" if you will, but we jumped in with both feet today in our hour and a half. Our teacher is white but grew up with the Zulu people on a game reserve (her parents ran the reserve) so she is pretty much a native speaker and has been teaching it her whole life so she knows what's going on. We learned all the vowel sounds which are pretty similar to english and then we learned all three clicks which are not at all similar to english. They all sound different because they are made in different parts of the mouth and are notated by the consonants "c", "q", or "x". Some combinations of vowel and click or consonant and click and vowel are pretty difficult, but once you work through it slowly and hear it a few times it isn't that hard to catch on. After we learned the sounds we worked through a basic greeting/short conversation so now i can respond to the cleaning guys whenever they ask me how i am doing which will be great. They will love laughing at me. Tomorrow we will visit our service sites that we will work on once our school segment of the semester is done and i will have my 1st real Zulu class which will be an adventure.

back to school

Today about 20 people and i went to church with one of our CLC's, Reagen. He goes to an Indian church in Pietermaritzburg and it was certainly different, but also really great. The service was in english and because the church has some affiliation with Hillsong we actually knew a lot of the songs so that was pretty similar. The worship time lasted for about an hour and was great, the church is not formal so everyone was very expressive and was very excited about being there. After that the pastor spoke for about an hour. The sermon was not that different and i was expecting to notice some theological differences but it was honestly your pretty standard topical sermon that might be preached from any pulpit in the united states. The pastor and congregation's biblical knowledge was extensive which was probably the biggest difference i saw- they were very committed to the reading and application and memorization of scripture and placed a very heavy emphasis on it. But besides that it was a pretty normal church experience for me. I am going to attend a different church next week, the church where the director of our program goes, but from what i know of that church i am pretty sure that i will be attending the New Life church where i was this week because it is the least similar to what i experience at home and i want to take advantage of that while i am near it. After church we stopped at McDonald's quickly where i learned that South African creme soda is green and is nothing like our cream soda, and then we came back to campus and had lunch. After lunch we explored the nature reserve that surrounds our campus and walked about 3 miles through the trails. Everything is very dry right now but there were some very nice parts and once the rain comes the whole thing will be beautiful. There is a small stream that flows through campus (remember the waterfall?) that also flows through the nature reserve and pools have been damned and bridges built whenever the trail crosses it resulting in some beautiful areas and really scary bridges. So we finished our hike and walked back to campus for tea time (seriously, the greatest) and have been doing pretty much nothing but talking to people from home since then. Everyone gets pretty tired pretty early still (thank you jet lag) so after dinner most people go to their rooms and go to bed so things aren't that exciting in the evenings here yet, but it should get better once we are totally used to this time zone. Tomorrow is the 1st day of classes so summer's finally over even though it's just starting here.

Maritzburg day 2

Today we had our first lecture brought to us by our director Reg who knows everything. So needless to say it was very informative but parts of it were especially interesting to me because of their relationship with the present situation here in South Africa. We learned about the different tribal groups in Africa and touched especially on the history of the Zulu people which was mostly bloody and filled with conflict, but the proud and warlike character of the Zulu people explains a lot of the conflict going on in the government here right now, especially because the current president is Zulu and is very proud of it. So learning the history and the tension and issues between the colonial and native groups here was very interesting and will help us understand Apartheid better when we get to that time period in South African history. Another thing that was very interesting about the lecture was the amount of South Africa history that lines up with American history. Colonization happened in about the same time, rebellion against the British started at about the same time, expansion (manifest destiny stuff) happened and gold was found at about the same time. It was kind of erie. Mid lecture we stopped for tea time which is my favorite thing about this country so far. We have tea time at 11am and 4pm every day and it is the best. Rooibos tea. Look it up.
After the lecture we drove to Pietermaritzburg and stopped in the train station where Ghandi was kicked off of his train because a white man wanted his seat, which was the catalyst that started his peaceful resistance movement against Apartheid in South Africa and British rule in India. It's not particularly remarkable, but it is still a working train station which is nice. After the train station we drove up toward the mountains and saw a show at a refuge for raptors and other GIANT birds. There were all kinds of owls, hawks, eagles, and gigantic vultures as well as storks that were definitely bigger than Will. South Africa has about 3 times the amount of raptors then America so it was fun to get to see all the different kinds and to get to be really close to some of them in the show.




a waterfall behind my chalet

If you ever want to see more pictures you can check them out here.

Day 1 at AE in Pietermaritzburg

We got up early this morning and made our way to the airport. The airport in Johannesburg is very nice but, still very African which means that a lot of things are a billion times more confusing than they need to be, but we finally got things figured out and made our flight. Once we arrived in Durban we grabbed our luggage and jumped into the vans and made our way to the African Enterprise Conference Center in Pietermaritzburg, our home for the next 3 months. The campus has one large building where we eat and take classes that is surrounded by smaller offices and chalets where we are staying. The chalets are 2 story and pretty good sized holding about 20 people in each and ours has a kitchen! The campus itself is beautiful- i haven't had time to see all of it yet, but it's set back from the city and is surrounded by a nature reserve which makes it kind of secluded and offers some great animals- Adam saw antelope and zebra before dinner. It is definitely colder here than in Johannesburg but it will get warmer as it moves into summer and the rainy season here. Until then we will just be big fans of our space heater. Tomorrow we have our first lecture and then in the afternoon we are seeing something that has to do with birds of prey.

Day 2 in Johannesburg

Before I tell you about day 2 in Johannesburg I thought I should give some basic info on some things you might be curious about:
Weather: It is hot during the day and cold at night. Today it was mid 80’s in the sun, but I wore 2 shirts, pants, and a sweater to dinner because the sun goes down around 6 and it gets a lot colder fast. It is also very dry here. I was talking with Janet (one of our community life coordinators- she works for APU and makes sure we have fun on the weekends. She’s South African, from Pietermaritzburg and isn’t much older than us, probably mid 20’s) and she told me that they were going through a dry spell and that the farmers were saying that the rainy season wouldn’t be here until October which is late so it will be dry for a while, although Pietermaritzburg, where we are living, gets rain during the winter so it will be greener. But everything here is dry and brown and the dust is pretty bad.
Hotel: Is certainly decent by American standards- it’s pretty generic looking, like any motel chain in America. The beds and rooms are smaller and breakfast is better (they offer potted meat here! Not being sarcastic though- the breakfast is good) but other than that it is pretty much the same. And there were soccer ball stickers in our room when we got here.
Johannesburg: From the highway downtown looks like an older version of LA’s fashion district. None of the buildings are very tall, and everything is old and squat and brown. I think the downtown itself is mostly businesses because the upper class lives in the nicer suburbs and the lower class lives in Soweto.

Today we visited the Apartheid Museum and took a tour through Soweto, a very large township south west of Johannesburg. The Apartheid Museum was set up well which made it even more interesting to explore. You entered the museum with a ticket that said either white or non-white, which determined which entrance you took into the museum. I entered the white door and the walls were covered in identification cards of white South Africans and quotes from the white leaders and from legal documents and laws from the Apartheid era. We then joined the non-white group and walked through the rest of the museum, which explained the rise and fall of Apartheid in South Africa, which was explained through pictures and personal stories, and accompanying memory boxes, which was interesting. There was also a Mandela exhibit going on which I got the chance to walk through which was a lot of reading but good background for our history course because I really know so little about South African history and Mandela’s role in it. I accidentally walked through his lifetime timeline backwards which didn’t help to make things less confusing, but it definitely made things more interesting. Something interesting for all the Methodists reading- Mandela was baptized a Methodist by his mother and attended a Methodist school and in a stack of his school books that were on display there was a book titled Minutes from the Methodist South African Annual Conference of 1948. After the museum we picked up our tour guide, a friend of one of the men in charge of us for these next three months and she took our bus through Soweto her hometown. Soweto is a mix of squatter camps, state housing, the homes of upper middle class families that drive BMWs, churches, schools, the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere and in all of Africa, and all the other things you need to accommodate 3 million people. We did about half of our tour and then stopped at our guide’s restaurant, which is a restaurant by day and her home the rest of the time. I really have no idea what we had for lunch- I know I had hake, beets, something like cole slaw, something like pico de gallo, bread, mashed potatoes, rice with a spicy red salsa, a beef stew, and a couple of other things that were generally unidentifiable. Desert was vanilla ice cream and something like pound cake and homemade vanilla custard, which was probably my favorite part of the meal. The vanilla is different here, it is much sweeter and much richer which made for a very heavy desert after a large lunch, but it was good. Waiters brought us our drinks and we served ourselves buffet style. My table was right next to the kitchen so I could see the women preparing our food, which was interesting. After lunch we got back on the bus and went to a memorial for the youth that lost their lives, that were sent into exile, or that went missing during the student protests, specifically a 13 year old boy that was caught in the cross fire, Hector Peterson. We actually met the nephew of one of the youth the memorial specifically honored- a few of the family members of those honored work in the museum, which is pretty cool. We got back on the bus and drove by Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s houses, which are right next to each other in a nicer middle class area of the city, and then we visited a square that held the Freedom Charter Memorial- a rotunda that houses the 10 pillars of the Freedom Charter Memorial which are the foundation of the South African constitution. After that we finished up our tour and headed to our guides neighborhood to drop her off and on the way she taught us the 3 clicks in the Zulu language and then attempted to teach us a sentence in Zulu that was very strange and had to do with back pimples. It was also extremely difficult to get the clicks in there right- Zulu is going to be very challenging till we get that figured out. After that we dropped her off, drove past the soccer stadium built for the world cup and headed back to the hotel. The kids were getting out of school as we drove around after lunch so everything was really active and it was fun to see kids everywhere walking home and hanging out with their friends. All of the kids walk home regardless of age unless they go to school in a formerly white area and their parents pay a driver to take them back and forth because it is too far to walk. Once we got back to the hotel we napped and then headed out for dinner at the same restaurant we went to last night, the Harvard Room which is actually adjacent to a small airport so you can watch the planes take off and land while you eat. The food is American/Italian with an African spin, which made some things a little dubious, but overall everything was good. Tomorrow we will catch our final flight to Durban and then drive to our new home at AE in Pietermaritzburg.

the entrance to the museum

Reagen- one of the CLCs, the people that make sure we have fun, and I

Soweto- where we stopped for lunch

Kids walking home from school

We're here!

Greetings from Africa! We landed in Johannesburg about 5 hours ago, moved into the hotel, and went to dinner. Not terribly exciting, but we are all exhausted from the time fog we have been in since Monday night. We had to ask the desk clerk what day it was when we got here-15 hours is a very long time to be on an airplane. Tomorrow we are going to the Apartheid museum and to Soweto, one of Johannesburg’s largest and most famous townships.