Kid Version:
Hi guys!
How are you doing? Very well, I hope. I am sure that you are all getting ready for summer, but I am bundled up in a blanket as I write this because it’s almost winter here. Will you please say hello to summer for me? And I’ll say hello to winter for you. Since the last time I wrote, I have been busy with lots of things. Sometimes they sound very exciting. For example, I got to go to a city about an hour away from Grahamstown with the kids I teach at the after school program. We spent the morning at the beach and then went to the Oceanarium, where we saw dolphins, penguins and seals. Also sharks. I did not like the sharks. What sea creature do you like best?
But sometimes what I am doing doesn’t sound all that exciting. For example, most mornings, I work in an office where I help people with their different projects and do other grown up things. Do you ever feel like you have to do boring things when you would rather be doing something very exciting? (I used to feel like that about homework, but now I kind of miss it. Isn’t that crazy? Maybe there’s something wrong with me!) Just remember that even when something like homework doesn’t seem like what you want to be doing, it is still important and it can still be fun, especially when you get to do it with good people. I’m lucky because I’m friends with all the people I work with, so we have fun and laugh a lot.
Two things that I have been able to do that make me very happy are write stories and draw pictures. Have you ever written a story? What was it about? At the after school program, the kids are writing and illustrating their own stories. They have also been practicing drawing faces. A picture of someone’s face is called a portrait. Can you draw a portrait of your own face? (This is called a self-portrait because it’s a portrait of yourself!) What about one of your mom or dad’s or your brother or sister’s? I would love to see your portraits sometime.
Thank you to those of you who have sent me emails. I love hearing how you are doing. Isn’t it funny that we are on opposite sides of the world and we can send each other messages? Pretty amazing if you ask me. I will write again soon. I miss you!
Love,
Sarah Jackson
Grownup Version:
Hello everyone!
The other morning, I was at a workshop which was teaching members from various community organizations how to make polystyrene-filled cushions designed to envelop a warm pot. The insulation is so effective that the meal actually continues to cook as it sits. With the rising petrol and paraffin prices, this was a particularly timely and practical skill to be learning for many of the group members, who also hold positions in the community where they can teach others what they have learned. As I sewed alongside about 30 ladies from all over Grahamstown, one began to sing. Soon almost everyone had joined in. I enjoyed the songs, but it wasn’t until about the fourth or fifth one that I realized what an incredible phenomenon was occurring around me. No one had said, “We should sing” or had suggested certain songs, and they obviously had never rehearsed. Yet they sang in at least three part harmony and everyone knew all of the words. Their voices had a natural richness and unity to them that trained (and morally-challenged) choirs anywhere would kill for. This spontaneous outbreak into song was something that I’d marveled at when I first arrived in South Africa, but it has become such a characteristic of daily life that I barely even notice it anymore. It’s good to be reminded of how much of what continually surrounds us is actually cause for wonder.
The month or so since I last wrote has been characterized by this growing sense of familiarity accompanied by juxtaposing realizations of how far I still am from thoroughly understanding this place. For example, after about three months of being a bit of a job nomad at the Centre for Social Development, I finally feel familiar enough with the issues and the possible solutions here to be able to settle on several long-term projects where I can make more of a lasting difference. One of them is organizing an exploratory reading room for children during the National Arts Festival coming up in June. It has taken this long for me to determine what specific needs I can meet, which ones I want to commit to in the time I have left, and to make contact with the appropriate people. Now when people talk about education and literacy, I actually contribute to the conversation because I’ve read and experienced enough to have opinions. However, as I discover more and more about the complexity of problems saturating the education system in this country, the more aware I become of how little I actually know, which in turn spurs me to learn more about possible solutions. For example, I found out the other day that only about 15% of children in the Eastern Cape Province attend any kind of preschool. That knowledge made me realize that I know almost nothing about the kinds of learning environments the majority of young children receive before attending primary school. The realization of my ignorance has led me to become involved in existing Self Help Groups in the community to try to promote family literacy, whereby multiple family members become involved in teaching a child to read and write, often by becoming literate themselves.
While much of the time isiXhosa still is unfamiliar to me, I am making gradual progress, largely thanks to the class I’m taking and the help of my tutor, Thandeka. She and I can converse for quite a while in isiXhosa, albeit about the typical first year language topics (how we are, what we do during the day, what the weather is like, what our families are like, our religion). Tomorrow we’re going to branch out and try to talk about art to add some vocabulary that most people wouldn’t think of teaching but that I think is crucial to being able to talk about life. When learning a new language, it is precisely because of your unfamiliarity with it that you often discover its quirky or quaint characteristics that native speakers don’t even notice. Some of my favorites in isiXhosa are that you say “married with,” not “married to” and that the equivalent for “whatchamacallit” is “ntoni-ntoni,” which is literally “what-what.” I’ve also been both frustrated and appreciative of how flexible isiXhosa words can be. The verb “funda,” for example, can mean read, study or learn, so significant differences in meaning are dependant on the context. When someone asks “Uvela phi?” they could be asking where you are from originally or where you came from just before arriving. This caused a bit of confusion among the preschoolers I worked with. For several weeks, a flock of them would surround me after I arrived, demanding “Uvela phi? Uvela phi?” I kept saying “Emelika” – “America,” but they were never satisfied and just kept repeating the question. I realized only later that they were interested in where I had just come from. They eventually stopped asking so perhaps I’d unintentionally convinced them that I flew in from Emelika every Monday morning just to hang out with them for an hour. Oops. At any rate, learning isiXhosa makes me appreciate how specific English is.
A foiled mugging several weeks ago served as a good reminder that feeling too familiar with my surroundings can be dangerous. I was on my way to the grocery shop and had stopped to talk with someone who was asking me to buy him dinner. All of a sudden, two very drunk men came up behind me, jostled me a bit and in the process took something out of the front pouch of my backpack. Some random girl who happened to be there returned what they’d taken. It turned out to be a laminated card of Philippians 2 that I keep in my backpack because I’m trying to memorize it. Despite being quite shaken, my first instinct was to give them a lecture on irony which they did not at all appreciate due to the language and inebriation barriers. Although I wasn’t hurt and had lost nothing, I was reminded to be careful. The hardest thing, though, was understanding that these men have come from years of difficult circumstances combined with bad decisions. How many of the children who I see and work with every week will have the fortune and strength to overcome similar difficulties?
As many of you know, I am a one-on-one person, so the only way that I can practically conceive of making any kind of an impact with children is by working with them individually. This is why I’ve been so fortunate to be able to work at the monastery’s after school program. Because there are seven children in the classroom and two teachers, we have a great deal of flexibility in how and what we teach. I know what each child is struggling with and where they excel. I know that Sethu and Xoliswa need to learn their capital letters. I know within minutes if Xolani is going to have an “on” day or an “off” day. I can see that Thembelani is making regular progress in his reading. Two months ago, he couldn’t read the word “I,” and now he could read the following sentence. It makes me so happy to work with these kids each day.
We’ve been working towards a production for the last day of this term. The older boys will do some gum boot dancing and our younger kiddos will do two plays that we’ve been working on. One is the Three Little Pigs and the other is a traditional Xhosa story about a crocodile with a toothache. In these plays, we’ve unintentionally stumbled upon a quite effective way of making up for many of the skills the kids are not being taught in school. They are learning group work, confidence in speaking in public, how a story is constructed, and we’ve even managed to get some manners lessons in (“Every pig must say please and thank you. Only the wolves get to be impolite because they’re big and bad.”) These kind of projects would be much more difficult in a larger classroom. We’ve built up routines and rapport and I am trying desperately not to think that there are only about two weeks left until they will no longer be part of my afternoons.
I’ve become increasingly aware of how little time I have left here in Grahamstown. A few weeks ago, I had my last visit to Luzuko, the preschool where I was volunteering weekly. After three months, they no longer climb all over me and they have started calling me “Missy Sethu,” “Our Missy.” Yet some things have not changed. They are still fascinated by how hairy I am. They sill want me to look at everything they could possibly think of. Junior, the youngest boy at the school, still bursts into tears every time he sees me.
Part of me is frustrated that I am only now feeling like I am actually contributing in a significant way. But I also know that no matter when I left it would be too soon. As predicted, I have fallen in love with this town and its people. Grahamstown has officially been added to the list of places that I consider home which corresponds exactly with the list of places I miss when I’m not there. I’m thinking that heaven will be a divine smushing of all our various homes together. So for me it will be called something like SpoGrahamNantesComa, but we’ll just call it the City of God for short.
I’m anticipating that I will soon be adding Mthatha, where I will be moving in July, to that list. A few weeks ago, I took a trip there. Jesse, a friend who for the last year has been serving in the same community where I will be, showed me around it and the city. I’m still not exactly sure what my role will be, but I will be working at Itipini, a community on the site of the city’s former rubbish dump. There is a clinic, a preschool and various after school programs, and I spent most of my visit with the preschoolers. They were some of the most infuriating children I have ever been around because they had no discipline whatsoever and no one seem opposed to them beating each other up. I tried to mediate and stop the pushing, kicking and hitting but to no avail. Jesse says he puts them on the roof when they’re misbehaving which seems to work, but I can’t reach the roof, so I’ll have to come up with another plan or find a ladder. At some point in the morning, though, I realized that perhaps these children were so desperate for physical touch that they would resort to hurting their classmates just for some kind of physical interaction. Perhaps a few more hugs, cliché though it sounds, could make a difference. And I’m tall enough for that. Since then, I’ve tried to hug as many people – especially children – as possible. I doubt it’s changing the world, but at the very least, it makes my arms feel happier.
The visit to Mthatha made me excited to move there, but it won’t be any easier to leave Grahamstown, mostly because of the communities I’ve been a part of. Grahamstown has the feeling of both a classic small town where you can’t go anywhere without seeing several people you know, and a large city, where you are often surrounded by people whose backgrounds differ drastically from your own. As a result, very different people find themselves interacting. On a walk through town, I could easily run into a friend from Rhodes University, a co-worker from CSD, a few boys from the shelter who I know, and a classmate from my isiXhosa class. The volunteer opportunities here are similarly diverse because of the variety of the needs and of the people who can help alleviate them. There is a wide enough range of structures and organizations in place that someone will most likely be able to make use of whatever skills you have. And especially beneficial to a freshly graduated English major is the opportunity to continue to discern what exactly those skills are. I’m learning, for example, that while I enjoy teaching children to read, on a different level, I equally enjoy making materials to help them in this process. I’m confirming my earlier decision to not become a preschool teacher. And being around Rhodes students and professors has made me miss aspects of academia, leading me to consider graduate school options.
I’ve been working on the story that I’m writing which has been slow going but enjoyable. In addition, Matt and I have begun a new story project about a boy and a warthog. We’re wanting to print copies of it to use at a reading camp where I will be working in July. The fact that I get to spend some of my time here doing something that I love so specifically is a testament to how many different opportunities there are here. Ideally, we’d all be doing exactly what we love for exactly the people who need it. I’ve gotten a luxurious taste of that since being here.
In general, missionaries are asked either to start projects or to join in and contribute to existing ones. I have found that there are so many good ideas already in place in Grahamstown that what is most needed is people to build upon and then sustain them. Much of the work I’ve done with CSD in particular has been behind-the-scenes, supporting the people who are already supporting the poor. Sometimes my work feels mundane and disconnected from those who I am ultimately serving. A lot of the time I feel replaceable – that anyone could do what I am doing (this is exaggerating – I know from experience that even simple skills that I wasn’t aware I had, like being able to make a table in Microsoft Word, are far from universal here.)
Before this year, I tended to glorify missionaries and consider their lifestyles exotic and noble. I’m learning, though, that there are as many ways to serve as there are people willing to do so and that if you’re committed, however you choose to serve will inevitably seem normal as you make it a part of your routine. This makes me consider my “non-missionary” life in a new light; if a service-oriented life will feel ordinary much of the time, then surely ordinary life is an ideal time for service. I’m also learning that “serving the poor” can take many forms. Sometimes the most helpful thing I can do during a day is to listen to a housemate who is going through a difficult time. In other words, often, my life and the service I’m doing doesn’t differ that greatly with what I was used to in the States. Occasionally I wonder why I’m here doing what I’m doing when I could be similarly engaged in the States, and someone else could fill my role here. Recently, though, I’ve come across several Scripture passages and have had several conversations with friends that are convincing me that concentrating on results from my service is dangerous; my only concern must be obedience in the place God has put me. And for the next month, that place is Grahamstown.
I have been busy with work, but there has been time to play as well. I’ve made several trips to the ocean including a weekend with some friends in an absolutely gorgeous setting called Chinsa (pronounced “Sinsa” by people who are afraid of the click). Most memorable, though, was when Ntombekaya, Matt and I took the younger kids from the after school program (the ones with whom I work) to the beach and the Oceanarium in Port Elizabeth. This was their first encounter with the ocean, and watching them gradually become acquainted with it was like watching two of your good friends meet for the first time and hit it off right away. One of my favorite songs has a wonderful line that translates into English to “If you look in your mind, no need to take off your hat, you will find several photos of the ocean.” This trip with the kiddos will certainly be one of the photos of the ocean which I will carry in my mind.
I have also attended a number of concerts in the last month or so, including one by a marimba band and one by a high school jazz band from a town near Cape Town that happened to be giving a concert in the pub where some friends from the States and I were. They played some classic band songs (YMCA, I’m a Believer, and the Austin Powers theme song), and we of course couldn’t help but join in. Vivaciously. The students were a bit overwhelmed by our enthusiasm, but I’m sure they appreciated it in the end. Most surreal, though, was a concert by an Elvis tribute band, which was quite amusing because there were about 5 different Elvises who all looked completely different. Most of them managed the deep southern accent relatively well until they broke character to introduce themselves. Then their higher pitched South African accents came through unequivocally, forcing me to remember which country and which decade I was in.
On a much darker note, I’m sure that many of you have been aware of the xenophobic violence that has shaken this country in the last few weeks. Most of the unrest has been in the townships in Johannesburg and some in Cape Town, though there have been isolated incidents around the country. While Grahamstown has been spared these attacks (and thank you to those of you who expressed your concern for my safety), they have alarmed all South Africans to the core. What a tragic irony that the very people who were oppressed by Apartheid until fifteen years ago have had so little change in their lives since then that they feel threatened enough by immigrants to resort to target racial violence when trying to find someone to blame. I have been impressed by the number of individuals and communities that have taken firm stances against the violence. At the same time, I join in the nationwide lament that this country, which has so many resources and such potential to move forward, seems in many ways to be joining the ranks of her African neighbors in the ineffectiveness of her leaders, the depth of her poverty, and ultimately, the division of her people.
2008 has not been an easy year for South Africa – first the ongoing energy crisis, then the falling economy, then the rising food and petrol prices and now these series of attacks. It is easy to understand why so many people who can have left the country. I do have one idea, though, that might just give South Africa the kick-start it needs. I’m positive that in addition to gold, platinum and diamonds, the South African economy must be able to capitalize on what must be a fairly high concentration of magnetic material buried in the land. How else can one explain the people who visit here once and can’t stop coming back, to the extent that some even move here permanently? How else can one explain the large number of South Africans who have gone abroad and who “can’t imagine living anywhere else,” despite the myriad problems that plague the country on all levels? Many people say that the simple fact of the matter is that South Africa is home, whether you’ve lived here your whole life or whether you’re here for the first time. That may be, but I think it’s the magnets.
It is probably clear by now that I love being here, but please don’t take that as an indication that I don’t miss the States, and particularly all of you, wherever you may be. In fact, it is your support, whether that takes the form of finances, communication or prayer, that makes it possible for me to be here loving this country and this community. (And yes, I realize that that just sounded like an announcement after a Public Television program: “This mission has been brought to you by the letters K and P and the number 6. And by readers like you.” But what can I say? I’m a PBS girl.)
I have updated my website with new sketches, photos and poems, so feel free to check it out. And as always, this email and the one I am sending to the Mission Commission at my church and which focuses more directly on my role as a missionary, will be available there as well.
I do hope you are all well. When you get a chance, I would love to hear about how you are doing, and the kind of service opportunities that you’re finding around you, whether they are new or whether you’re continuing faithfully in a role you’ve had for years. It is hard to emphasize how encouraging it is for me to hear about your lives.
Much love,
Sarah/Mouse
Ps: There are one or two of you who are probably trying to figure out the significance of the letters and number I just mentioned with the PBS comment. Please don’t waste your time. They are completely arbitrary, or “arb,” as people here are fond of saying.