Christmas Part One

I have no idea where to begin.

I have just gotten back to the house. I am alone. Everyone else went to the computer lab to talk to people back home. I got to talk to my family this morning and at this point in the day I am so full of emotion I wouldn't know what to say to anyone.

Last night, we had an amazing feast. Will made steak, Jeffrey made garlic and lemon green beans and I made a sage and onion potato gratin casserole that normally goes in the oven, but we don't have an oven so I figured out how to do it on the stove in a pot.

Afterwards we went caroling to all of the houses of our kids. As soon as we got to the first house, the word started spreading and soon the kids came to join us. We picked up more and more kids at each house who started singing and dancing with us. They didn't know any of the words but that did not squelch their enthusiasm.

Christmas is not a very big holiday here, which is surprising given the intense level of Christianity practiced at Refilwe. They don't really sing carols and they don't really celebrate, but we brought the love of the holiday and shared it with them.

We had invited all of our youth leaders over to our house today for an American style brunch. Eggs and bacon and pancakes. I found a from scratch pancake recipe online (thank you once again, America's Test Kitchen) and we made regular, chocolate chip and banana pancakes. Our toppings included: syrup, Nutella, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, an apple compote that i made with sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and ice cream (this is big here and OH SO AMAZING).

We also introduced them to the concept of Secret Santa and instructed them they were NOT allowed to spend any money but had to make their gifts for people. We thought that they should all have something to open on Christmas as well, since the opening of gifts is a rarity here, if it has ever happened at all. We have each been mentoring 2 leaders for the camp we are all teaching together, so we wrote them each a letter, and wrapped them like a scroll, found some stockings to put them in, drew a fireplace on a piece of paper and hung them over it.

After our feast, they opened our letters and then we did Secret Santas. There were many songs and poems that were written and performed as well as several dances and nice speeches. It felt like how Christmas should be. It was so full of warmth and joy and kindness and love, it was overwhelming.

I had Khomotso who loves to dance and is an unbelievable drummer, especially considering he has never had a lesson. When I first met him, I remembered his name by thinking of a Komodo dragon. (the pronunciation is essentially the same except you don't really say the K, think of just putting a French type gurgly sound in the back of your throat and that's pretty much it.) That's him in the picture on the right. :)

I have written some poems thought this might be the way to go. I was lying in bed last night trying to come up with something and figured I would just go to bed and work on it in the morning when the words just started coming to me. This has happened to me often with choreography, but never with words, in this particular way. I am grateful this experience has gotten me to write and I am starting to think about things in a new way. What came out was part spoken word, part poetry slam and part rap. I would like to share it with you because it feels like a me that didn't exist before i came here. Nope, that's not right. Like a me I didn't know until now...

THE DRAGON

With a beat of my wings

i make thunder crack

rolling over your mind

like a rat-a-tat-tat

you don't know where I'm at

where i've been

where I'm coming from next

you can guess

but I'm faster than that

I'm coming on strong

always right, never wrong

self-assured when i'm on the attack.

Count you in and we're done

never worry bout one

if you're late then I'll meet you round back

I'm the beast they all fear

but you wanna get near to me

tryin to put out my fire.

Inhaling my smoke will teach you to joke

Cuz the beat is my only desire.

Friends call me the dragon

my beats never saggin'

I'll fly you around through your flow.

But if I don't know you

then show some respect

and call me

Mr. Khomotso.

sick as a dog

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile but I caught some nasty stomach thing. I am not sure if it was a bug or a food/water situation but it knocked me out for awhile. I am surrounded by the most supportive team ever which is great but, you know me, the guilt factor kicks in for not being able to do anything. I am better today and up, but still feeling weak and not wanting to push myself too hard having not eaten in a few days. I had some CRAZY dreams though, that were all kinds of wierd.

WHAT ELSE

Jeffery got here this last weekend! You don't know what that means. Tanesha leaves in a week to go back home and Jeffery has come to replace her, so they have a week of overlap. We drove into JoBurg on Saturday to pick him up at his hotel. Then we went to someone's house for a lovely picnic, dinner thing. He is a judge pretty hi up in the South African courts and has a room in his house that is floor to ceiling, wall to wall law books, which I found fascinating. We tlaked about the Constitution of SA and its Bill of Rights (Of which there are 35.) I sat down to read their Bill of Rights and was fascinated by how comprehensive they were. It certainly took them awhilw to get the BoR in the first place, but the don't mess around.

Here is the one for Equality:

9. Equality

a. Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.

b. Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

c. The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

d. No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

e. Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.


Pretty much sums it up, I think. Took us a couple of amendments to get there and we're still not all the way there. Of course, their constitution was chartered in 1996, so they had some examples to look at. 1996, pretty crazy isn't it? I feel like I should have some recollection of that in a memory bank somewhere but I got nothing.


After the lovely dinner we went in town to Melrose Place, which is a ritzy area (go figure) and went to a restaurant called Moyo. It was fantastic! The menu is food from all over Africa and it has many many levels. There was an awesome band playing and people were dancing all over the place. I had some bourbon for the first time since being here and Damien, Will and I split a Cuban cigar, the kind the designed especially for Castro. Since we split it, it was $13 each. I mean, how could we not? Still no cigarettes though. :) It was really nice to get away a bit and just play. The weekend before we went to a water park which was also really fun. Piet and Isaac had never been to a water park before and it was beautiful to see their excitement on the rides.

(OH, I have been mispelling Piet's name this whole time. It is not in fact Pete but Piet even though it sounds like Pete but not really only if we are being lazy. The P is like a P with a little bit of a B in it. Then you take two syllables "pee" and "it" and mush them together really quickly so you hit both sounds but it only makes one syllable. I recommened trying this several times)

I keep trying to upload pictures to the blog but the internet connection is so slow that it takes forever. SO I will keep trying, I promise.

I am so behind

Good Lord. I am behind on the updates.

here is the trick. I got a new computer before I left Atlant. AWESOME!!! Well, new Windowns is confusing to me. What I want to do is be able to write my thoughts in Word every night and then just copy it the blog when I get to the computer room. BUT IT WON"T WORK and so I am behind.

WORLD AIDS DAY- last Tuesday, day 2

The night before, or the end of day one, we stayed up to creat a performance piece for the World Aids Day fesitivities at Refilwe. All of the neighboring communities were involved for an all day event. We ended up creating a piece that was a mixture of dance, drama and music. We used a song that had been created by kids in Port Elizabeth called Crossroads. Mauricio and I were a couple and Damien and Cindy represented our inner selves for the first section. The whole thing started with a poem in Tswana that Pete receited. Then Mauricio, from inside the audience, yelled, "Why, did you not tell me?" Cindy came from behind me to the middle of the stage and danced my emotional response, getting to a place where I was able to say, "Because I was afraid." Damien danced Mo's emotional response until Mo was able to say, "I forgive you." Then D and C did a mini partner duet in between us that ended with M and I standing right behind them in the same position. Then the song started with Tanesha on guitar and Will singing lead vocals. Part 2 was a challenge walk with D holding back Mo and C holding me back as we tried to walk down a road. The chorus of the song is "Supumelela" which means, "we will rise above." When the song got to the chorus, we were able to shake off the things that were holding us back and came together for an embrace. Then, looking around, we realized the journey still in front of us was going to be equally challenging. We both gave up and sank to the ground. Then C and D came and picked us up and helped us on our journey. The song closed out with Pete saying some inspirational words in Tswana.

Not bad for an hour at the end of day one. Our theme was that every day, people have to make a choice. From the initial diagnosis of HIV, to every day committing to choose life and take their ARVs. That when you reach one mountain top, there can be many more that loom ahead. But there is strength in fmaily and loved ones and the people around you and with their support, you can keep going. This is an incredibly strong fiath based community and it was pretty amazing how many people saw God in our piece even though it wasn't inherently part of the message we planned.

Throughout the day there were amazing talks and testimonials and at noon it was "Make noise for AIDS." They passed out these big plastic trumpet things and everyone blew into them and made noise for 60 seconds straight. the whole thing was pretty overwhelming. HIV/AIDS is so prevelant here and yet there is still stigma around it. The overall self worth of people is so inherently low. I don't know if its poverty or apartheid or lack of education or HIV or some heinous combination of all of those things. The total breakdown of the family unit. The complete lack of fathers that almost all these kids have. The high high high reate of teenage pregnancy. There is so much these people have working against them and yet, so many of them have love and joy and warmth and so desparately want it to be reciprocated. It's challenging to not get overwhelmed.

Bit by bit, exericise by exercise, talk by talk, hug by hug, we can make a difference. I can make a difference. There is so much to learn from these people about survival of spirit, the will the continue, to fight to soar.

We have started teaching our leadership camp. We have 20 kids from Refilwe and the neighboring informal settlements. I took a trip to the settlements one of the days last week and it was like nothing I have ever experienced. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of homes clustered in a section of land. Homes. Homes are shacks made out of pieces of tin, or wood that is hollow inside (this community is nicknamed Hollywood.) The shacks are maybe 12 x 12. Families live in this room. Mothers, fathers, all the children and sometimes the extended family. We visited day cares at some of the settlements. The children vary. Some are scared of white people. Some run up for a hug. Some hide. Some want to sing you a song. One of the day cares had a great playground with a jungle gym behind the shack. One was just the shack. It was nap time for the babies, so we just peeked in and they were lying on the floor, some sleeping some opening their wide eyes to stare at us. Some were malnutrishioned and had distended bellies. None of them swatted away the flies that were kissing their faces. Some of the children taught us the Tswana version of "heads, shoulders, knees and toes" which I have promptly forgotten.

After each settlement, I would use anti-bac gel and then have a twinge of white person guilt. Did I treat them the same as I would have kids in a school in America? Was I as affectionate as I would normally have been? Was there something holding me back? The first place we went to, there was a little 2 year old girl. The woman who runs the daycare told us that the little girl was dropped off at 3 every morning so the mother could go to work. The mother used to leave the girl at home with the girl's uncle but then realized the uncle was raping the little girl.

I don't know what to do with that information. I am standing and looking a two year old. A two year old. Some part of my brain protects my heart from fully comprehending what the woman has just told me. Because how can I? How can I hear that, really hear that, and walk away? How can I hear that and not go to every shack and see where else it is happening. Because it is happening everywhere.

Bit by bit, exercise by exercise, talk by talk, hug by hug, we can make a difference. I can make a difference.

The rest of day one (Part Two)

We get back to the house and unload all the groceries (RECYCLERS PAY ATTENTION!!! THEY CHARGE YOU FOR PLASTIC BAGS AT THE GROCERY STORE. they also throw their trash out the window, which is sort of odd) Oh AND its only like 2pm and I've been up since 430am.

Then we go into our first planning session and make a bit of a snack.

Then we go to a soccer game. But not just any soccer game. PHILLIPS, the electric company, has invented solar power lights for kdis to play soccer in areas of the world where they do not have a ready supply of electricity. Do to someone having a connection with someone, they premiered this invention at REFILWE and gave the lighting system on a permament loan basis. Not only that, but the DUTCH LEGENDS (professional soccer team) had recently been in Jo Burg to play Brazil and they came to play the Refilwe kids soccer team. It was a big event for the community. People here LOVE soccer!!!! Everyone plays it and someone is always dribbling something. Throughout the day, the energy leading up to the event was charged and full of excitement. For some of the adults here, they were going to have a chance to see their fave players from their childhood.

The actual event was a different sort of experience. The Dutch players were assholes. they walked in wiht a huge attitude. The kids all ran to sing and welcome them, much like they had us earlier in the day, and the players stopped long enough for the cameras to get shots of them but then pushed past them as if they were annoying. There was a big tent set up with a series of tables and chairs underneath it for the adults and special guests. The tent was fenced off, with someone asking for your name at the entrance. It was right next to the field.

Earlier, there had been some African drummers playing and the Dutch team found them interesting enough to stop and play with them before proceeding inside the tent.

So, let me break it down for you.

Big fancy tent with the team and mostly white people. We are being served by a catering company who is black. We are inside a fenced in area next to the field. ALL of the Refilwe kids are on the OUTSIDE of the fence either bumping around a soccer ball or trying to get the attention of the people inside the tent. Because theoretically, the team came for the kids. who are outside the fence. And being ignored.

THEN, the game starts and the Dutch team trounces the Refilwe team.

I shall pause for your reaction, which I can only assume will be close to what mine was. Don't get me wrong, I believe in fair competition but COME ON!! And their players were like 100 feet tall. And they were Dutch. The whole thing was just very awkward and strange.

But, the kids rallied like champs. Then there was a huge thunderstorm we walked home.

IT's now about 930pm and we are all exhausted. BUT we can't go to sleep yet because we have to perform the next morning at 1030 for World AIDS Day.

SOOOOO, we have to create a piece to perform....

The rest of day one (Part one)

So, our internet is pretty spotty here as you might imagine. I had another beautiful entry about the rest of the first day and then everything crashed before it got a chance to publish.

Perfect.


I shall try again.

Everyone else woke up about an hour after me and breakfast came. Oats, cereal bars and milk out of one of the cows on the farm here. The cereal bard are not the kind you think of but bard that turn into cereal when you add milk. You mush it up with the oatmeal, add some brown sugar and itse awesome.

then we walked down the road and were welcome by the kids who were singing and dancing for us for about 20 mintues. It was pretty great. And most of them are phenomenal hip hop dancers. We mingles with the kids for awhile and then went inside to have a meeting with the steering commitee of Refilwe.

It was preety awesome to see how excited the adults were to have ASTEP back here. Tehy spoke about how great the team was last year and how they hope to see us build on the great work that was started. they watned to know how the parents could be more involved. Tehy loved that ASTEP wasn't afraid to discipline their kids as some organizations are. They really believe in everyone working together for the benefit of the children in the community no matter what that takes. It's pretty powerful.

the meeting lasted about an hour or so and then we waited for a car to go grocery shopping. Will, Mauricio, tanesha and Pete and I went to the store which was about 20 mintues away. and was in the middle of a mall situation. which was odd but cool. I got put in charge of staying in the alloted budget and time limit for shopping.

This porved to be an interesting challenge having no idea where anything was in the store, what was in the store, and everything is in Rand and not Dollar. (if you divide by 7 you get a little extra at the end). But it was a fun challenge and i won and we got groceries with little difficulty.

On the ride back, Will asked Pete if he had gotten contact lenses.

side bar- Pete and Issac are the two people helping us the most. The idea of a youth leadership program came from them in the first place. They are 22 and 24 respectively and grew up at Refilwe and now want to give something back to the communities. SO, Will and Mauricio who were here last year, already have a relationship with them.

Evidently last year, Peter didn't go anywhere without his glasses, couldn't see a thing without them. Refilwe sent him to a leadership training program for the year andwhile he was gone he had an interesting experience. He was at church with his fellow students and they were singing about the passages around "the blind shall see." And he thought a lot in his head about the strength of his faith and the fullness to which he believed. He got swaety in the church and took he glasses off to wipe them on his shirt. When he put them back on, they wer foggy. He took them off and he could see. He put them back on and it was fuzzy. He repeated this several more times until he realized that he could see without his glasses. And he threw them away.

And he has not needed them since.

5:30 am November 30th

Wide awake and have been for about an hour or so. I decided I may as well get up and see what's around me in the daylight. It was dark on the ride home last night and the scenery looked cool. In the dark. There had been a bit of a miscommunication about our ride sitch but we had a lovely cup of tea (Rooibos) and some croissants while waiting for Issac and Mama Anniki to come. When we got to Refilwe, Papa David and Pete came to let us in the gate. We had thought we were staying in a house further up the road but it turns out we are staying in their day care building which is HUGE!!! Two people to a room, but 3 bathrooms, 2 showers and 2 bathtubs!!! There is a really big kitchen (p.s. all my spices got in :) and two large living spaces. We are surrounded by a tile patio on one side otf the house. There are bars on all of the windows and locks on all of the doors including a gate that locks us in at night.

The weather is not too bad. (at 530am) When we got in last night we encountered some mosquitos, cockroaches and a few kitchen rats but we are getting traps at the grocery store today. They had prepared a meal for us upon our arrival and once we got all our stuff in we sat down to our first meal together. Rice, an orange saucy thing that was great on the rice, chicken wings, potato salad and a mystery meat...we have guessed pork but I'm not convinced. Do to the animal situation (and lack of garbage disposal) we scraped our plates into a tupperware container and placed it in the freezer. We made a shopping list for the store today, went over the plan for today, unpacked and went to bed.

And HERE I AM, a little crusty but none the worse for wear.

"Common sense shows that human life is short lived and that it is best to make of our brief sojourn on this Earth something that is useful to ourselves and others."
Dali Lama

I DON'T KNOW

There is an improv game that i sometimes play with students called, "Yes. No." One person is only allowed to say yes and one person is only llowed to say no. At first glance this game seems boring, passe, even easy; but it has produced some of the most interesting scenes I have ever seen. Wehave all had some form of the lesson, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it" and I have seen the gamut of human emotion in this exercise.

This has been my recent experience with saying, "I don't know"

This is not a word I say a lot. I am not afraid to say it. I used to have a bit of fear surrounding the admission of lavk of knowledge but throughout my adult life I have learned that saying, "I don;t know" is sometimes one of the only ways to acquire knowledge.

And, I also tend to know the answers to most of the questions people ask me. Okay, maybe not MOST, but more than the average bear.

At any rate,I think I have said, "I don't know more in the last 2 months than I have in the last few years.
side bar

(I am on the plane right now to Jo'Burg. We are at an altitude of 32000 feet, flying east having just passed Venezula. It's 8:05pm in Seattle, 11:05 on the East Coast and 6:05am in South Africa. I have no idea what time it is on the plane. I do not have internet on the plane. I am making a word document to enter later.)

Back to the topic at hand. The journey of "I don't know"
At first it was sort of cool, and a bit liberating in a wind rushing through your hair while you stand on the beach sort of way. Footloose and fancy free. "I don;t know. I don't have to know.I don't want to know. I don't need to know. it's gonna be great."

I hung out here for quite some time. I mean, why not? It's a great place to be.

Then the trip started getting closer and more real, and the flavor of "I don't know" began to shift ever so slightly. What was once a delightful new flavor of Blizzard from dairy queen started morphing into something else. Something more like...wasabi. Occasionally someone would ask me a question about the trip and it was like eating a large spoonful of wasabi. These really intense bursts of pain, and that panic wasabi gives you that you might experience that level of intense pain forever...And then it magically goes away. But the Blizzard doesn't quite taste the same after a bite of wasabi, now does it.

Then i got to about a week ago, where the real panic started setting in. Which coincided with a trip home, getting my period, a $2000 car bill to fix my car and discovering that I might have to find a new place to live three weeks after I get back. So, as any good procrastinator would do, I entered the denial phase. this phase was key. I simple refused to put myself in situations that would require me to say, "I don't know" It was far easier to catch up on Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters and finally learn who won Project Runway (F**k that Irina bitch)

Sometimes I contemplate the sanity of the decision to be around loved one during trying times. the problem with loved ones is that we know they are not going anywhere. So, when we are FREAKING out, they get the brunt of it. We have now moved forward from wasabi to root canal. Root canal is not quite right. Every so often I pull a muscle in my neck. It runs from the base of my head, down underneath my right shoulder blade. The first time I pulled it was on the roadtrip when I moved to Seattle, and when I am stressed it rears its ugly head. This is the sort of pain that is mind numbing. It makes you want to backhand people. It causes an irrational desire for inflicting pain on others. Sometimes I can find the exact right position where it doesn't hurt, or numb it with a lot of ice, but really it just takes time and a lot of muscle relaxers to calm down.

My friends and family have been the right position, the ice and the muscle relaxers, even as I have occasionally mentally backhanded them.

And so here i am. Having had a great new flavor of blizzard, some wasabi and a round of psychic PT. I am once again comfortable with, "I don't know." It feels more grounded then the first time. My faith in myself, my belief in the rest of my team and the unending support of family and friends makes me pretty full of positive thoughts.

But then again, it could all change again the second I get off the plane.

I just don't know.