Handsome Boy

I think memory is a strange thing. I think it’s strange how we don’t have much of a choice what is going to stick in our minds. I’m thinking about this more lately when I can’t remember things I would like to. Did I just sound like an old woman saying she had a “senior moment”? Damn. But really, there are things that stick in our minds eye and hold the picture of a memory that no photograph can capture. This is the kind of memory I love. It’s not the kind of involuntary memory of classmates’ names from elementary school that I wasn’t even friends with, it’s not the memory that houses the lyrics to the opening song for Full House or the Paul Abdul song I liked in 5th grade. It’s not the kind of memory that I feel like is taking up valuable space.

This memory is a picture of something I won’t ever forget and reminds me of a feeling from that place. I had one the other day as I was driving down our long dirt driveway. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a boy riding his bike in the reflection. He was chasing me on an old looking black bike and he had a beautiful, young face and red, yellow and black beads hanging around his neck and a royal blue stripped shirt that he wears 2 to 3 days a week. His name is Sibusiso and I don’t have any special connection with him, it was more like a moment where I knew I was in Africa and really felt it as I bumped along the red dirt driveway leaving the farm. And I smiled the kind of smile to myself that is in a category all it’s own. It is way different than a camera smile and it’s nothing like the smile I do when I’m trying to make someone feel like they said something clever. It’s a smile just for me, no one is going to see it, I only get to feel it.

So I hope this new memory pushed something out that I don’t care about. And I’m sure that in years to come when I’m somewhere else in life and thinking back to this time and loving this time in my heart, I’ll see Sibusiso chasing me in my dust, determined to keep up even though he would have dirty boogers later and burning eyes. These memories are the best because you don’t know when they will happen and you can’t force it, they just come to you with all the benefits of a good dream and none of the involuntary forgetting.

Picassa updated!!

I made a layout change on the blog. Our profiles and photo link now appear above the blog archive so they are easier to find. We will be putting up a new post soon. There has been much that has happened in the past few weeks. Our apologies on not posting in awhile. Our photos on Picassa are updated though. Check 'em out. Cheers!!

Picassa updated!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that our picassa webpage of pictures has been updated. Check it out from the link on the left!!!

Just thought I would put this incredible picture on our blog. We went with the Bridges of Hope Academy kids to the beach and a water park called "Supertubes" last week. For many it was their first time in the ocean and for all of them it was their first time down a water slide. Keep in mind that all of them grew up less than 15 minutes from the beach. You can sit in every one of their houses and smell the salty air...if you can pick it out of all the other gnarly smells of the townships. After teaching most of the kids how to body surf in some of the most Great White populated waters on the planet I figured I would take a few turns down the slides with the kids. What a hoot!!!! If you have not been to a water park recently, go now!!! They are a blast!! This one only had two slides and I still lost my mind on them. So all of you who make what seems to be weekly trips to Las Vegas...you have got to stop at one of the many water parks in the area and go crazy for a couple of hours. Watch out for slides I call Wedgie Express!!

Swan Lake Hysteria

Last night I went on a fieldtrip with the 11th graders at the Academy to see Swan Lake on ice. If you are picturing me sitting around something like an Olympic size rink with characters moving around like Disney on Ice scratch that from your mind. We were headed for the performing arts center in Cape Town. I dressed up a bit because word on the street was that the girls were going all out in getting ready.

When I came up to the school to leave, what I experienced was like nothing I have seen. It was like the excitement of Prom, Homecoming, first day of school, first date, winter formal and your wedding day all rolled into one and multiplied by 3. Picture lines and crowds of kids formed for the girls who are going to walk out dressed up the way you might make a tunnel for your teammates to run through. Then, as each new girl exits the dorm room the screams roar and there is clapping and jumping up and down. It is Swan Lake hysteria. All I can do is laugh uncontrollably because I don’t know what other response to give to such a charged moment.

The girls that aren’t going are fake crying and going up to one another fake consoling one another with, “your day will come”. They are giving hugs to each other and begging for pictures to be taken alone and with poses in front of random cars. And each time a new girl walks down the stairs the crowd starts up again with a strange cross between heckling and kind of like yelling, “damn girl, you look good!” I was equating it in my mind to young girls as crazed fans over a boy band. But even the 14 year old boys morphed into crazed fans of their classmates dressed up for an outing into Cape Town. These kids were giving Raider fans a run for their money in their devotion to cheering their beautifully groomed classmates on.

DVL and is an 18-Year-Old Fit to Take Philosophy?

Once upon a time, I took Intro to Philosophy with my trusty friend Anna Luther (she was Luther then, back off!). I was reminded of several things about this class when, in a staff meeting here the other day, a man had a fly land on his upper-lip and begin moving around the landscape of his scruffy face while he remained unfazed by the insect who was becoming intimately acquainted with him. When this happened I couldn’t think of anything else except for the fly on his face and I even had to hold back laughter in a serious situation, which lets be honest, is always a bad lot.

Our Philosophy Professor, David Vander Laan, also possessed this same ability to regularly have flies land on his face and continue unflinchingly to teach us about the limits of reason or the ontological argument for…blah blah, or rather, meep meep, nar nar, as Anna prefers.

After my co-worker endured the fly on his face, my thoughts went elsewhere to early on in my freshman year as an 18-year-old trying to make it through DVL’s class. Let me give you some context for why this class holds so many memories for me. It was the only class at Westmont I would have considered myself to truly fail academically in. I got a C, but I’m not referring to the grade, I’m referring to the level of energy I put forth in the class, my confidence level in the material and my overall proficiency in the ideas I was learning about. I would like to take this moment to place blame for my failure in this class not on the extensive note-passing of Anna and myself, nor on my incompetence to test well in an oral exam. I would like to blame DVL for always letting flies roam freely on his face during lectures. Added to this strange quality of the man was the stare down. If you had DVL, you certainly remember that he would stare at people when he taught and hold his gaze for an unnatural and unbearable amount of time. Couple the gaze with the flies and you must admit there was nothing else for a couple of 18-year-old girls to do but initiate and uphold the best series of notes written between two friends in the history of note passing.

Let us recollect. There was Noel Peepgrass, who Anna kind of liked and he sat near us on most MondayWednesdayFridays. Now Noel went and started dating someone else, so naturally we needed to make up Garbage Pail Kid names for this girl and also any other person who crossed us in one way or another. Then, there was also the letting each other know what to expect for the chapel speaker of the day. This would be something like, “Anna, your mom is speaking in chapel today on her life of recovering from working the streets to sustain you as a small child. It should be touching, but possibly a difficult stroll down memory lane as you might recall some bad memories of your mommy taking you to work”.

To me, this story of my failure as a student of Philosophy is a strong argument for the value of development as a whole person. I did not retain or probably ever gain the intellectual concepts someone was paying a great amount for me to get. But, I did develop socially and emotionally as I grew in my ability to pass notes that made my old, worn out binders well worth saving. And if there is a going away party for Shane and Anna’s oldest child when he or she takes off for college someday I will bring that binder from Intro to Philosophy in hopes of imparting some unconventional wisdom to the college-bound.

Haille Sellassie as god?

I had a conversation the other day with some of the kids from the academy about reggae and religion. Most of the boys seem to be taken by Rastafarianism. They tried to point out that the Rastas are the only people in the community not stealing and killing. They live fairly peacefully and other than smoking dagga (weed) they don't do anything bad. After our conversation I figured out that the Rastas use weed as their sacrament and their god (Jah) is actually a man they believe to be the incarnation of the last four manifestations of God. I further found out that the Babylon they preach against is basically western culture. I said that even though they may not steal or kill they don't believe in the same God and it is only through a belief in God that true transformation and forgiveness can take place. I tried to explain that the Rastas are not trying to make their communities better but are actually making them worse through the use and selling of their dagga (weed).

One of the boys then brought up the fact that under the guise of "Christianity" Africans were taken from their homes and brought to America or other Western Nations as slaves. This was a major point for him and rightly so. I apologized for that dark time in our history and agreed that this period was evil and wrong. I tried to explain that through the Bible and the message of Christ's forgiveness we can see that this "Christianity" was not a true belief and following of God's law. The boy then said that I proved his point of Christianity having evil views by acknowledging this past and he was through with the conversation.
I took a look back into African history and it is "white Christianity" that brought the slave trade and Apartheid. Apartheid was created in the theological department of the white university in Stellenbosch, South Africa. It made me realize that to many non-whites Christianity is a white, oppressive religion.
Our conversation ended there for the time being and has made me wonder and struggle with the idea of being a white Christian here in this country. How can I be effective in bringing development, community empowerment, Christ, and education to this community if I'm a white Christian? There is little differentiation between people that call themselves Christians and those that actually live a life dedicated to Christ's teachings (much like Christianity in American politics). In this same way there is little differentiation between Reggae and Rastafarianism for the boys here and I wonder how to bring the true Gospel to these kids given our pasts? I was encouraged though by the message I listened to today about Hope and how since God is who He says He is, our Hope in Him will not disappoint. God rests his promise of Hope on His character and therefore through my hope in the eternal glory of God I know that He will guide me and open doors for me. It is only through Hope in God that we can make sense of our suffering.