The Smaller Things in Life

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During this past weekend the third group showed up at the house. Oddly enough it was the coldest few days we have experienced since I arrived two months ago in winter. When we were supposed to have our welcoming braai in the backyard, it had actually decided to hail briefly. I again helped out the staff cook and set up while the new arrivals were in orientation. But it’s funny. I don’t know if I should even try anymore to connect with some of these people. Perhaps I have become overly critical of those I am forced to live with. Maybe I have been here too long to even care about culture shock and jetlag. And when asked what I most like to do in Cape Town, I think longer term volunteers would want to answer their questions with, “I live here.”

It is a busy time for us at Fountain House this month. We have an Art Exhibition, Sports Day, and Kite Festival coming up. The Sports Day is next week when a number of institutions within Cape Mental Health converge on a single location to play soccer. I have been running the soccer program at Fountain House trying to get members to come out and practice on a regular basis. This is not to say that we are doing hardcore workouts or anything. Simply, it is great to get them outside and being active. Playing soccer is only a part of the greater scheme of things. We play on a field in an industrial area at the foot of Table Mountain and Devils Peak. Yet nothing is easy when working at Fountain House. It is even a challenge to change a light bulb let alone get people to actively want to participate in soccer practice. My example is this; the bulb has gone out in the bathroom. I am asked to change it by the cook, Nundi. So knowing that I cannot reach it without some kind of a lift, I go in search of a ladder. They tell me there is one in the backyard and so I go looking for it. Turns out, there never was a ladder on property. So now, I think to myself that maybe I could fit a table into the bathroom and stand on it. This is also not feasible because the bathroom is too small to fit this entire table inside. Now I am starting to run out of ideas on how to change this light bulb. I go back to Nundi to tell her my predicament when she suggests that I get the trashcan from outside to stand on. So I go out and wheel this plastic bin inside, stand on it in this little bathroom and somehow manage not to kill myself when it should collapse under my own weight. I could see the headlines now, “International volunteer dies when rubbish bin fails.” Somehow changing a light bulb fits in there as well.

I gave photos to Natasha and Nolundi of themselves. They we so happy to receive such a gift and I don’t know if anyone had ever done that for them before. I know that they are going to take the pictures home and show their families what they do when they are working. It was the least I could do since they have taken care of me since I got here, and the fact that they have a two hour commute one way just to get to work.

There is a Scottish woman named Liz who lives in the states now but has all the quarks that you might expect. She has been assigned to teaching and counseling at her field placement in Cape Town. We have so much in common in our lives that it has actually become kind of scary. Some of which includes cycling, her son being a former EMT, and the love of German Shepherds. Anyway, she lived in Johannesburg from 1971 to 1973 and had told me a few of her stories from that time. One goes something like this:

Because Apartheid South Africa was so challenging to live in Liz would often travel into neighboring countries for vacation. On one such adventure she had decided to go skiing in Lesotho. While in a van full of Germans (for some reason) they were all stopped at the border. As they were being inspected by armed guards, they had to all show their respective passports at which time the guards noticed her British passport. She was asked to get out of the car in the middle of the night and nobody knew why. They were also smuggling in a German Shepherd hidden in the van and it was all they could do to keep the dog from moving while they were sitting on top of it. Liz was so frightened that she latched onto her friend’s arm and he accompanied her when she got out of the van. This older man motioned for them to follow off the side of the road and into the forest. In sheer terror because they still had no idea what was going on and probably were thinking that they could be shot at any time, they both followed. They all walked down this path into a little shack at the bottom of the hill. When they got into it, the guard points to the wall where there is a picture of the Queen of England. This is what he wanted to show her. He was so proud to meet a Brit that he also made the point to stamp her passport. The only problem was that he didn’t have any ink. So the guy licks this stamp of the country of Lesotho and smears it on one entire page of her passport. They were sent on their way all in one piece.

Wishing you a Happy Birthday, Mom, from half way around the world!

--Me

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Comments

[arturo vega]

yo
keep writing these things i really do enjoy reading them.