Week 3 - ECD, Retreat & Church Outreach

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The next week was all about ECD (Early Childhood Development). I spent Monday morning at the mall, putting all your donations to good use! I bought lots of new educational resources for ECD including jigsaws, flashcards, matching games, books and posters, which I spent the week role modeling for the child care workers. The problem is that we often have 16 preschool age kids who are not used to being taught, they are used to just being allowed to roam free. This means that if you want to take a small group aside to demonstrate how to use an alphabet matching game for instance, all of a sudden, you are swamped with 16 kids all trying to get as many pieces as they can! Unfortunately at the moment, the Play Therapy room is out of action until we raise some funds to kit it out, so we are all in the ECD room, which is fine for free play, but a nightmare to teach in! I seem to be constantly picking up jigsaw pieces etc and trying to return them to the right puzzle!
Friday the 9th was a retreat day for all Ethembeni staff, which includes all those from the Family Centre and the hospice too, which was nice because I don’t often see the care workers from there. We looked into values, what our values are, how we got them & how they affect, or should affect the way we act. Bongani, a local guy who is at Bible College a long long way away came to preach about how we value our time. Bongani’s a great guy, I love him to pieces, but he can be enormously frustrating too. To him, everything is black and white, there are no grey areas, which makes it hard to have a discussion with him because he refuses to see any other point of view other than his own! I loved his preach though, it was entitled something along the lines of “4 keys to mananging time effectively”. Bearing in mind this is Zulu people, who work on what is known as “African time” ie much more laid back than I’m used to! In fact I don’t think the whole time management concept is one these people have ever come across! Anyway his 4 keys were this:
1. Time is short (I agree, I don’t have much of a problem with that)
2. Look at people who’ve died already
3. Look at people who are dying
4. Look at people who are closer to dying than you
Now, I know he was translating all this from Zulu, and I was the only person there who didn’t speak Zulu as their first language, so I probably got the shortened version of the preach, but that was literally it! He really didn’t go into much more detail, so I was left a bit disappointed, thinking I was going to get some magical way of putting 10 more hours into the day, and all I got was “look at dead people”! Well that’s Bongani for you! The third part of the day was individual reflection, which is secretly my favourite part! That’s one aspect of my time out here that I’m really enjoying. I live a simple life, I go to bed quite early, well around 8pm, so actually very early! This means I’m wide awake at 5:30am before work starts at 8am so I have fantastic devotional times in the morning, to really be filled up before the children drain me of all my energy! However, that is not the Zulu way. They tend to do things more in groups, so for them, they really needed to be guided in this time. I would have been quite happy in the beautiful grounds of the retreat centre for hours, but after 20 minutes, we were called back in! I’d only got halfway through the guidelines!
I left the centre on my own as it’s only just round the corner from where I live & the others went back to Mpophomeni in the taxi. Unfortunately, there was a diversion on my road as there had been an accident. I later found out that Shelly, the fantastic wife of Grant, was the first medical person on the scene. It turned out that an 8 year old girl had jumped out of a taxi onto the road and a car had been going ridiculously fast, knocked her over & sped off. Unfortunately the little girl died. It’s awful to think that wreckless driving, and death, are much more part of everyday life here, especially out in the township. In the last 3 weeks 2 of Zwe’s cousins have died, both of them young, yet he and his family carry on with life, they mourn for a few days then get on with their lives, no doubt grateful they’re still alive.
That Saturday was a very cool day. In response to the lady who told us that she was HIV+, Pastor Elliot decided we would do some practical outreach. We know that we must be reaching out to people whether rich or poor and healthy or sick. So we were all to take 2 loaves of bread to church on Saturday morning, I actually forgot with all the busyness of Friday, so had to pop to the Supermarket on Saturday morning in a massive rush, concerned I would be late and Pastor Elliot told us if we were there after 9 we wouldn’t find anyone at church because they’d all be out in the community. Well I should know by now not to worry because whilst at the supermarket, 15 minutes away from church, at 8:45am, I saw the Pastor chatting away to someone whilst buying his bread too! I decided I couldn’t be late if he wasn’t even there yet, and sure enough it was well past 9:30am by the time we actually left in our groups! We were all given a few houses each to visit, where we would give the families the bread and clothing if they needed it, as well as sharing the Gospel with them. I find it humbling everytime I do visits like this, because there are these people who seem to have so little, but I am so blessed everytime I go, there is something they give me in return for the food I give them. They allow me to enter their homes, to come alongside them and they share their story with me. One house we went to was quite quiet and sad. The Gogo (grandmother) there told us her daughter who was also there, was in mourning for her husband who died a few months ago. She was wearing mourning robes and didn’t really speak to us, just wept. She lost her home when her husband died, so now her and her 2 children live with the Gogo in the tiny house with no food. I felt so useless. I mean, I could give them food there and then, but what of her emotional needs and what about a home for them and food in the long term. There seems to be so much poverty sometimes I wonder whether it will ever end. So many people need help and I’m just 1 little human being. At times like that, it’s important to focus on who’s work I’m doing, to remember that I’m a tiny piece of a massive puzzle, to realize I’ve come in to this story part way through and I’ll leave before the end. As Jim Bowler wisely told me the day I left “There is a God and you’re not Him”! It wasn’t all doom and gloom though, we invited her to church, but she can’t leave the house until she’s finished mourning, which will be next winter, but then hopefully she will be getting more support, certainly spiritual support. Also, we had lots of fun with the shoes we were giving out. Some of them weren’t exactly tasteful, but Mbu the guy who leads worship, enjoyed himself trying on the ladies shoes & searching for his Cinderella!
The Sunday passed without incident, well I ploughed straight into a herd of goats on my way to church down the main street of the township, but other than that, it was rather quiet! The teaching at church here is fantastic, I’m making sure I’m taking good notes, which is quite easy as the preach is always in Zulu & English so I can write during the Zulu bit! Dolly, the Pastor's wife preached about endurance, then the Pastor himself preached about pain and how to endure it by doing what Stephen did and look up to Heaven rather than wallowing in self pity. I also have a Zulu Bible now, which I try to read every morning to get more of a feel for the language, and it’s very useful to hear people reading from it at church so I can learn pronunciation etc. I'm starting to pick out familiar words now, which is a very satisfying feeling!
After church, we went to visit Owen, quite a tall, jolly guy who is always dancing. He was sick, so the entire church descended upon his tiny house for cake. I’m not entirely sure of the logic, if someone is too sick to attend church, I can’t really see how having heaps of people squish into your home is going to make it better! Anyway, once we all fit in, which took a good 10 minutes for us all to filter in in single file to find some space to stand, I did try to take a picture but I couldn't get my camera out without elbowing someone, we had a lovely time singing some songs. I could even join in, thanks to Grace’s lovely gift of the CD the week before! Then we prayed together for Owen’s healing, then we laughed a lot! No-one ever mentioned what was wrong with Owen, only that he was “sick”. I think in all the circumstances I have come across, with the exception of the lady the week before, no-one ever talks about HIV or AIDS, only about being sick. Similarly, he may only have had a cold, I don’t know and I don’t think I can presume to guess either!
Well I turned down an afternoon of fun with my friends in favour of some peace and quiet at the cottage as I was feeling a bit sick myself. I thought I just had a bit of a cold & an afternoon of proper rest would cure me. That, however was not the case…

Over n out

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