Holiday Break

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First, as it is nearing Christmas time I thought I would ask everyone to consider a donation to Open Arms. As you have read in my past few blogs, it is a really special place with many special children. We are committed to guiding these 51 kids to reaching their fullest potential and that is impossible without your assistance as Open Arms Home for Children is totally dependent upon donations from individuals in the United States. Please take a moment to look at our website and consider donating any amount! If every person who reads this blog donates $20, we would be able to pay a whole year’s worth of schooling for one child! It’s that easy to make a difference. And most importantly, I am currently here to witness that all of that money goes straight to the Children of Open Arms.

Please click on this website to donate or learn more: http://www.openarmshome.com/pages/OnLine-Donations.cfm

If you have any questions at all, please contact me at [e-mail]

Now onto the boring part 😉

I might as well start discussing Notre Dame since we are going to the National Championship. For the USC game, I had decided that I could not miss another game of ND football and was able to secure a friend’s couch to watch the game here. The thing was that the game started at 3 am. So after never having an all-nighter in college, I had my first one here in Africa as I stayed up all night to watch the ND-USC game which ended about 6:30 am here. The Sunday after was quite rough as I had to go straight to church with all of the kids on no sleep and then into our Thanksgiving lunch.

For Thanksgiving, we decided to have one even though it is obviously not celebrated in South Africa. Earlier in the week, I was at a grocery store in East London and bought about 6 turkeys. So for the lunch we let our kitchen mamas do what they do best and cook. They made an awesome meal of turkey, 2 types of stuffing, squash, and tons of other goodies. I personally had about two full plates and went into a food coma right after as did the kids. The hour after our Thanksgiving meal was the quietest I have heard in a while as all of the kids just sat around as their stomachs came to grips with all of the food they just shoveled down their throats.



The Notre Dame win convinced me that I had to fly home for the National Championship and I currently have a flight scheduled so I will be in Miami from Jan 2-9 so I’m hoping to meet up with a ton of people there! I know it’s crazy but I never thought I would see ND as the best team in the country possibly in my lifetime so I can’t pass up on this opportunity to visit my family and friends in Miami. My dad won two tickets in the lottery to the game so I'm assuming that since I am flying all the way from Africa for the game that I will get one of those tickets (lets hope right haha).

Everything in South Africa has really blossomed. The fields surrounding Komga have become endless fields of golden flowers. I have never seen anything like it as both sides of the highway are so gold into the distance you would think that someone just painted the whole countryside. As I wrote last time, we have had record setting rainfalls but that has resulted in very luscious plant life everywhere.

The past month has been extremely busy to say the least. Since I am the only one of the volunteers that can currently drive stickshift into the crazy East London, I have been making about three trips a week and everyone is a day of stressful driving. The vehicle I drive is a Toyota Quantum which is basically a small bus or a huge SUV. It fits approximately about 14-16 people. Such a car is totally fine but driving in East London can be wild as just like in the US, the taxis “choose” which traffic laws to follow but they tend to ignore the laws more than the US counterparts. And that’s what happened last Friday when a taxi slammed into my car while I was driving.

On Friday morning, I spent the whole day at Cecelia Macquewani with Anne and Loveness (our social worker) for some of our twin babies who need a level of care that is not available in our little town of Komga. Public hospitals as you can imagine are not the most efficient in the world and really made me appreciate the US health system. The hospital is an enormous brick maze with outdoor corridors that appear to have been built over a century ago. Imagine a horror film hospital setting and you have Cecelia Mac. Finally, after having getting our babies medicine (which we were lucky to get quickly since some people had waited over 8 hours that day to get their prescriptions) we scheduled our follow-up appointments and left though I had to return the following Monday.

Friday rush hour in East London is insane as I quickly learned. I was patiently waiting at a large, busy roundabout when finally it was my turn to move when a taxi refused to slow down at all barreled through traffic attempting to cut a pickup truck behind me off. It ended up hitting the pickup truck then hitting the back of my car. I was terrified and the first thing I did was check on our twin babies in the back seats. Thankfully everyone was 100% okay but the event was terrifying as I had to file a police report in a somewhat sketchy area of the city. Our car ended up only having structural damage but getting the car fixed may be a little more complicated since the taxi driver most likely does not even have a driver’s license! However, our insurance agent said everything will be taken care of and not to worry.

While I am talking of mishaps, I recently had to prepare the kitchen for pancakes at 6 am a few Saturdays ago. We have pretty industrial cooking equipment and I had to light our flat-top grill for the first time since I was here. Of course, whatever I did I did it wrong since as soon as I stuck out my lighter towards the gas there was an explosion that blew right into my hand and face. Needless to say, I pretty much lost all of my eyebrows and eyelashes in a moment and had singed the hair on my forehead as well. My right hand that was holding the lighter also got blistered up pretty good too.

Despite my heated appearance and lack of eyelashes, I continued to do whatever I needed to do which on several days involved driving some of our kids to visit family for the day. On one day, I took two of our kids, a brother and sister, to visit their parents who are unfit to care for them. After driving pretty deep into the informal settlement called Duncan Village – which is possibly the most dangerous area of East London, I was told by Loveness and by the kid’s parents that I must stay in the car and keep guard for if I left, the car’s tires would be stolen and possibly the whole car itself. Thankfully, I had no issues and ended up just playing with some cute little kids who were wandering around the streets near my car.

Later that day, on the way back to Open Arms I noticed some grass huts being erected by groups of men. Out of curiosity, I asked some of the male child care workers about what was going on. When a male in the Xhosa culture becomes a “man,” he has to spend about a month in the bush living in a small grass hut. One painful aspect of becoming a man in the Xhosa culture is circumcision which marks the beginning of the young man’s journey. Additionally, the initiate has many rules wherein he is not allowed to look at a women and especially women with children. The males paint their whole bodies white and wander around the bush wearing little more than loincloths. After they complete their month, the initiate is considered a man and is now allowed to find a wife and has to be able to provide for a family. Since around the road to Open Arms is “bush,” we have about a dozen or so huts lined up near the railroad tracks and constantly see the white-painted bodies of the initiates. Whenever I drive by, I wave at the “men-to-be” who always smile and wave back.

As we get closer to Christmas, I have attended numerous of our children’s holiday performances from the preschoolers (who have the cutest little dances ever) to our middleschoolers. In fact, on December 11, Open Arms had its own holiday party wherein we invited the local Police Officers, Firefighters, Social Workers and friends of Open Arms. We filled almost every seat in our Immanuel Hall with guest from the community and also our off-duty staff who all wanted to come in to see the children perform. The show consisted of many different traditional Xhosa dances, songs, poems, and plays. In fact, the children created all of their outfits the morning of the show (very stressful morning as you can imagine) and they all turned out wonderful. Hopefully I can attach some photos later on. Afterwards we had a big feast for everyone who attended.

Speaking of special occasions, one of our child care workers – Mama Fundy – had her wedding last weekend and invited us three volunteers. So at about 3 pm in the afternoon we wandered into the “location” or the informal settlement in Komga. The church where the wedding was held happened to be right next to a “shebeen.” Shebeens are most often located in black townships as an alternative to pubs and bars, where under apartheid, black Africans could not enter a pub or bar reserved for whites. These establishments have continued on and primarily host black Africans though there is nothing keeping me away from entering one. So during the wedding, you could hear the occasional loud beat drop while the preacher spoke in Xhosa (of which I understood almost none of his speech). Thankfully, the gentleman next to me would translate the basic gist of the speech in English.

The most remarkable part of the wedding that I noticed was around when the couple kissed. While the couple kissed like they would in any American wedding, the most significant moment of the wedding was when the couple cut the cake and handed it out! The cake was cut and handed out. I imagine since the community isn’t use to having three Americans in the audience we were served the cake first as well as the biggest slices. As I chomped into my cake, and the girl’s cake as they couldn’t eat the whole slice, I could hear the thump thump from the shebeen partying next door. From my little interaction with shebeens, it appears as if they are always packed full of people especially on Friday and Saturday afternoons.

A few days ago, our directors returned from their holiday in the United States visiting family and friends. It is nice to have them back as now I don’t have to worry about coordinating all of the finances and staff here at Open Arms anymore! It is already great to have a little more time to play with the kids and hopefully go on some adventures again soon. I recently purchased a key to a local 25 meter pool so on nice days I can go there and swim a few laps and bring a few of the kids to join me. It is finally time when I can begin teaching some kids to swim and maybe some of them will like it enough to join the Komga Jr. swimming team but who knows! Either way it will be really fun!

And if you are looking for a little holiday cheer...Check out this video of our kids:

you liked it pass it on to your friends!

Well please let me know if you will be in Miami so we can meet up while I'm there!

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Comments

[Julie Engelman]

What a great Christmas present - seeing your beloved ND in a national championship!
Kevin- So happy to hear all about your latest adventures with Open Arms. I'm sure your voice added to the throngs cheering for the Irish in Miami with be just what's needed for an ND win! Safe travels, Merry Christmas, and Happy New year. Go irish!