Kid Version:
Hi guys!
How are you doing? I hope that you are having a good summer. What have you been busy doing? Do you remember in my last email that I was going to be moving to a new city called Mthatha? Well, I am here now, and boy is it different from Grahamstown! Most of you probably know that when you get to a street, you need to do something before you can cross it. Can you guess what it is? Stop and look both ways to make sure there are no cars coming, right? Well, if you got it right, I’m inviting you to come and teach the people here in Mthatha how to do it, because they don’t know that rule. They just wander all over the streets like they’re taking a nice walk in the park. And the cows, dogs and goats are no better! This can make it very difficult to drive. Some days I still feel like I’m in a video game.
Another thing that is different from Grahamstown is the work that I am doing. Each day, I go to a poor part of town called Itipini where people live in very small houses called shacks. Some of you may have a shed in your back yard where you keep garden tools or the lawn mower. The shacks in Itipini are about the same size as a shed and sometimes as many as ten people live inside! Can you imagine that? My house in Spokane is at least ten times bigger than most people’s houses here, and I get a room all to myself. That means I live in a mansion!
The people in Itipini speak Xhosa, which is the language I’ve was trying to learn in Grahamstown. Except here, most people don’t speak English at all, so I have to try even harder. Do you know any words in another language? Which language? My brain gets very confused because along with Xhosa and English, there is some French in there too, which is another language. So sometimes I get all three muddled and say things that don’t make any sense and I just end up laughing. Actually, I spend a lot of time laughing because most people understand laughter. Plus, it’s one of my favorite things to do.
So you can see that people here are very different from you and me. But in some ways (the most important ones), they are the same. For example, when one of the kids gets a cut on her finger (even a teeny tiny cut) it’s VERY IMPORTANT that she gets a bandaid. Except here they call them “plasters,” not “bandaids.” Also, lots of South Africans pray to God just like people in the United States do. And guess what? Even if everyone in the United States and South Africa and the whole world prayed at the same time, God would still hear all of them! Isn’t that crazy? I guess He must have giant ears. Lots of times, people here pray by singing. Do you do that? My dad doesn’t really like to sing, so he prays by talking or by thinking. Sometimes I pray by singing but other times I pray by painting or writing or even just by looking at what is around me. Isn’t it cool that there are so many ways to pray? This is because God is so big that we can’t run out of ways of being with Him.
Speaking of being with someone, I wish I could be with you because I miss you. But until I come home, know that I am thinking of you. I will write again soon.
Love,
Sarah Jackson
Grownup Version:
Hello everyone!
Whenever I had to describe to a South Africa my year here, a form of the following conversation generally ensued:
“I’ll be in Grahamstown until July.”
“Oh lovely!”
“And then I’ll be in Mthatha until December.”
“Mthatha? Well, that will be . . . an . . . experience.”
Either that or the person would say, “I went to Mthatha once. Well, I drove through.” And that seems to be the overall opinion of South Africans toward this city – fundamentally skipable. But I made it here and I did not drive through. After a few rather low days of missing Grahamstown and the US, my time here has been characterized by a growing familiarity of and affection for this new South African city.
I work for an organization called African Medical Mission, which supports both the orthopedic hospital in town and a community center in an informal settlement called Itipini, which is located on the sight of the city’s former dump. The community center consists of a clinic, a preschool, an after school program, a craft room, and sponsors a feeding scheme. The variety of people these programs bring in means that every day, I get to interact with men, women and children of all ages. The center has had a longstanding presence in the community and as in Grahamstown, I feel grateful to be joining in well-established programs instead of having to begin something entirely new or on my own.
I spend most of my time either in the clinic or with the preschool. In the clinic, I do any of the jobs I can to make things easier for the two nurses who see the patients. I sort and count pills, weigh patients, give the TB patients their medication, write up summaries of the appointments in the book, and fill up medicine bottles (we have a bring your own bottle policy which means that I’m sometimes pouring cough medicine for a child into a gin bottle). The most daunting task for me is to get each patient his or her medical card. The fact that I am still not very familiar with Xhosa names is made even more difficult for several reasons: 1.) Most people don’t actually pronounce their names very clearly, 2.) I have a hard time telling whether someone is giving me their first name or their last name and 3.) Some people try to help by spelling their names but many of them don’t actually know how to, so they just make the letters up. Most people are quite understanding, though, which is helpful.
When there are other people helping in the clinic, I tend to leave and go to the preschool, where I expect to spend the bulk of my time. This time usually offers both the highlight and the lowlight of my day. I have never been infuriated on such a regular basis. In general, these kids have experienced very little discipline and very little love. They are desperate for any kind of attention they can get, even if it is a scolding or a smack on the head from their teachers. They fight constantly, and there is someone crying at least 50% of the time. Children wander in and out of the classrooms and often the teachers just leave. Quite regularly, I have to try to suppress the thought, “This would be so illegal in the United States!” My attempts at discipline are ludicrous, and I almost wish people were watching so that at least someone would get something out of the experience, even if it was just a good laugh. There is one benefit to the language barrier that I’ve discovered: I can make facetious comments aloud in English and as long as I say them in a sufficiently saccharine voice, no one will be any the wiser. My most common ones are “Well, this is the most chaotic classroom on the planet, isn’t it?” “Where on earth did your teachers go?” and “You are possibly the most annoying child I’ve ever met!”
Discipline has been a very difficult issue for me largely because of the language issue, but also because I’m still enough of a novelty that the children see any type of punishment I try to impose as a kind of game. The only disciplinary method the teachers know is to threaten to hit the children. To me, it seems completely counterproductive to get children to stop hitting each other by hitting them. And because I never will do that, there’s not much else I can do that will have an effect on them. The concept of time out is totally foreign and when I’ve tried to introduce it, the kids just run away. Positive reinforcement seems like the best possibility, and today I made up sticker charts for each of the classes to reward the kids for good behavior. If they’ve had a good day, they get a star, and if they get lots of stars by the end of the month, they will get a present. I’m not sure yet what that will be, but August has only just begun.
The most useful thing I think I’ll be able to do is to take pairs of children aside and work with them individually, allowing me to focus on specific skills they need. There is such a variation of abilities that are not necessarily related to the age range. So far we’ve done some threading activities and a lot of puzzles. It is hard enough trying to talk a child through a puzzle when you know their language, but it is significantly harder when you don’t. We’re getting there, though.
Another benefit of pulling the kids aside in smaller groups is that it is easier to get to know their names. It’s my goal to learn at least one or two of their names per day so that in about a month, I should know all of them. In turn, they are trying to learn my name. I didn’t realize that it is so difficult, but it really is posing some problems. When they don’t call me “Teesha” or “Missy,” I get a lot of “Sela,” “Seva” or “Isela” (“to drink,” “we heard,” and “thief” respectively).
Here are a few of the kids who I have gotten to know over the past few weeks:
Dumisani: This little guy is new to the preschool and was one of the first kids to warm up to me. He loves to sit on my lap and put both of my arms around his stomach. He also has a peculiar habit of sort of burrowing into me and in the process wiping his face all over me. I’m not really sure what that’s about.
Avela: He has gigantic eyes that seem to be either taking in every detail of the world around him or seeing a totally other world altogether. He is one of the smallest in the preschool and I was so frustrated by him at first because he was so violent. But at one point, he came up to me and just gave me a huge hug, and since then, he’s been a lot better.
Esihle: She is one of the most gorgeous little girls I’ve ever seen, and is also one of the most annoying. I’m trying hard to see her whiny-ness and bossiness as manifestations of her need of love. It’s people like her who remind me of the importance of the quote, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Linge (aka The Growler): This guy is hilarious. Most of the time, he speaks in this ridiculous growl that I haven’t quite figured out. He is one of the few kids who doesn’t clamber all over me or doesn’t demand my attention whenever I’m around because he’s content to do his own thing. He’s always making funny faces or doing crazy dances.
Anele: This little guy is a hard case. He’s one of the oldest kids in the preschool, but is quite behind academically. He is the most obvious example of how a lack of affection and positive physical interaction can cause such a desire for attention that he could even seek it through violence. He comes from one of the most messed up families in Itipini, and his mother left him with his grandmother, who the preschool teachers suspect beats him often. In turn, he hits and kicks his peers and even me. But he also just melts into your arms if you hug him. I spend my time oscillating between total aggravation at him and total pity for him. If we can convince just this boy that he is worth loving, I will be satisfied with my time here.
Most days, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything at all; I just hang out. I realized recently that as a creative writing major and an art minor, I have been trained to produce. That kind of mentality is hard to stifle, but it is important to do so to some degree in the work I am doing, or else I will constantly feel like I am coming up short. (I just save it for my sketchbook/journal!) Some days I wonder if the only thing I will leave with this community is the knowledge of how to do an umlungu’s (white person’s) hair. There are a number of roadside barbers, so this could actually be a valuable skill; I look fifteen years down the road and see a handful of kids from Itipini cornering the admittedly small street market on blonde hair. This is a learning process, though, and they have a way to go. I’m convinced that by the time I go home in December, I will either be bald from all the hair that I lose each day or I will have dread locks because I will have simply given up trying to comb through my hair each evening.
While the day is quite unstructured, there is a bit of a routine. We all start off the morning by praying. This is my favorite time of the day because the light is just right and hits the women and children in the foreground, and the hills surrounding Mthatha in the background. It is also my favorite time of the day because the kids are so funny when they’re praying. For some reason, they’ve been taught to pray at full volume, so they yell their prayers. When they sing “Jesus Loves Me,” they beat their chests with one arm. Lots of the prayers are in English, so they don’t exactly realize what they are saying. For example, the teachers say, “Close your eyes,” and “Fold your arms,” to which the children are supposed to respond. But they usually get confused and end up yelling, “I AM FOLDING MY EYES!” while simultaneously peeping at their neighbor out of one eye. My new favorite thing at Itipini is when the teachers lead the prayer, “Oh, dear Lord, three things I pray: to love you more dearly, to follow you more nearly, day by day by day.” Apparently we need to do some work on counting.
You may not have noticed, but since coming to South Africa, I seem to have been surrounded by people whose names start with J. There was June with the after school program, Jean with CSD, Mama Jane who ran the shelter school, my friend Jeremy, my cousin John who I’ve gotten to see on several occasions and who kindly helped me make the move up to Mthatha. This trend is continuing here as the two people with whom I work most closely are Jesse and Jenny. Jesse is a friend I met through Matt and who has been volunteering at Itipini for a year. He will come back for another year after a stint at home. It’s been very helpful to have his guidance and company as I’ve settled in. Jenny and her husband started African Medical Mission and she has been working at the clinic at Itipini for over a decade. She is truly a saint (they don’t all belong to Grahamstown!), and spends her entire life giving, either at the clinic or elsewhere in the community, where she is much-loved. It is a total honor to work alongside and for her.
Mthatha is different from Grahamstown in many ways. On the one hand, it appears a lot busier than Grahamstown. There are always people hanging out downtown and there are many more street vendors. The streets are a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting (and hooting) taxis – vans that are stuffed with passengers and that stop pretty much anywhere they please to see if they can fit any more people in (I suspect they’re competing for a Guinness World Record); cars, only some of which are driven by people who seem to have actually learned to drive; pedestrians who have no qualms about walking in the middle of a lane up the main street; and occasionally the odd animal. (Once you get a few blocks out of downtown, the animals become a real issue and you have to be careful to not hit any, alive or dead.) Add to this roads in famously bad condition, and driving to work can be quite an adventure. On the first day I drove the volunteer car to Itipini, I accidentally drove off the road at a particularly eroded spot and the people we were taking bailed out of the car. Now when I get to work without incident, Dorothy, one of the two head nurses at the clinic, usually congratulates me.
So Mthatha is very busy on one level, but on another, it’s a lot more laid back than Grahamstown was. My working day begins later and ends sooner. “African time” seems especially relevant here, and I am unashamedly late almost anywhere I go. Also, the work I am doing at Itipini is less structured than my work at CSD or at the monastery. This means that I am able to construct my day more or less how I’d like it, and spend as much time in the clinic or preschool as I want.
My work here is different also because the problems I am trying to alleviate seem much more immediate and direct. It’s not that they are worse than those I encountered in Grahamstown – I think it’s unhelpful and insulting to compare people’s suffering. It’s just that the problems are more visible. It’s a lot easier to notice neglect when a child comes to school in rags and gnawing on garbage. My work here is also more direct in the sense that at CSD, I was helping those who helped the preschool teachers, and I rarely got to see the effects of the help we were giving. Here, though, I work alongside the preschool teachers, which is both a privilege and a frustration. I am sure that I will continue to see how my time in Grahamstown prepared me well for my time here.
Part of my preparation has been through the Xhosa lessons I was able to take. It would be significantly harder to enter this community without the little Xhosa I have. Some people at Itipini speak a smattering of English, but for the most part, it is total immersion every day. I understand very little of what people are trying to tell me, and my reservoir of Xhosa phrases is equally limited. My most common ones, aside from the standard greetings, are “Andiqondi” (“I don’t understand” – this one always makes people laugh because I can’t do the q click), “Sukubeta!” (“Don’t hit!”) and “Ipi igati yam?” (“Where is my ponytail holder?”). I will be taking lessons with a tutor, which I am excited about, but I will continue to have many unofficial and unintentional tutors, mostly the kids. It is fascinating to see how learning someone’s language can be such a gift to them, not only because you are making an effort to understand them on their terms, but also because they become the experts. I end up relying on people I might not trust in any other situation. Literally everyone I meet at Itipini can teach me something.
I have been attending an Anglican Xhosa church service, where Jesse has been going for several months. It is three and a half hours long, but it really doesn’t feel like that. I understand almost nothing of the service, but I am somehow still really enjoying it enough to have invested in a Xhosa hymnal and prayer book. Plus, I figure that I really understand so little of God anyway that a layer of Xhosa on top of things won’t change too much.
Other weekly activities include going to Jenny and Jesse’s Bible Study (which is at the same time as the one I went to in Grahamstown, and we study the same texts because we read the passages for the upcoming Sunday. It’s kind of comforting to know that.). I definitely see potential for this one becoming as special to me as the one in Grahamstown was. On Wednesdays, Jenny has any volunteers or other hangers-on over for dinner. Because volunteers can come and go so quickly, the dynamics of the group are always changing, which is fun.
I live in a house at the orthopedic hospital connected with African Medical Mission, where there is accommodation for volunteers. For the first two weeks, I shared the house with Kim, a wonderful South African physical therapist who is now living in the States but was here volunteering for a few weeks. I’ll be on my own in the house until September, when another longer-term volunteer will be moving in. The hospital is outside of town which means that on a daily basis, I get to see the gorgeous hills and distant mountains around the city.
An unexpected benefit of living at the hospital is that I’ve been able to visit the pediatric ward every day. Kim introduced me to a young girl named Pumeza with whom she’d been working, and asked if I’d continue to go up and see her regularly, especially as she has no family who will care for her. Her mother put her in a pot of boiling water a few years ago and as a result, Pumeza has terrible burns that have required skin grafts. Her legs have contracted and warped seriously and she cannot stand. Her knees fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, and her feet look like ballet slippers because she has no toes. She is a total flirt and spends most of the time giggling. We have a lot of fun together, and it’s been great to get to know the other kids in the ward as well. We’ve built up a strong little community there.
So as you can tell, this has been a full few weeks for me. It’s been good, and I am excited for the next four months. Sometimes four months seems like no time at all – there’s so much to be done! But sometimes, it seems like an eternity to be here. This is usually when I’m missing home. I want to thank you so much for your emails and letters. It’s impossible for me to describe how important and encouraging they are. The hardest thing about being here is not the crazy traffic or learning to click in Xhosa, but the fact that I’m not there, where you are, sharing in your lives. Hearing news from home – no matter how mundane it may seem – helps with the occasional bouts of homesickness and helps me to stay connected with you. So thank you so much.
I have updated my website, so feel free to look for new photos, sketches and poems. You can find it at http://sarahjackson314.googlepages.com.
I hope that you are well and know that I miss you.
Love,
Sarah/Mouse