“Beautiful Feet” and Community Living! The 2-week update :)

Hello family!

First of all, my deepest apologies! After saying I would update more often, another two-week gap. Please forgive me! The past two weeks have been busy ones. Oct. 4-8 was the Field Coordinators’ Workshop. The week-long workshop was, among other things, a chance for people working in the Service Centers (which is what I’ll be doing) to discuss the various tasks and challenges associated with their positions. On the first day, we did an activity called “Who are you?” during which we discussed who we are as a follower of Christ, as part of the Hands global family, as part of a Service Center team, and as volunteers/field coordinators/whatever our position is. Hands loves to use the verse from the bible, “Beautiful are the feet of the one who brings good news” to describe what we are called to be, above everything else – Beautiful Feet. So we spent a long time discussing how we can be beautiful feet in each of the roles that we play.

At the end of the first day and into the second, we discussed the six CBO Steps, which is the framework that Hands uses when they enter a new community to begin working. These consist of identifying the right community (“poorest of the poor”), getting to know the community, getting the local church involved, forming a team of care workers, and implementing the three essential services for children (food, education, health). We had learned these on a theoretical level during orientation, but now I had the chance to hear, practically speaking, how each of these steps actually play out in the communities, from my coworkers who have years of experience in the field.

An interesting discussion that came up during this process was the issue of providing high-quality services versus saving lives. Something one of my coworkers often mentions is that “the house is on fire,” and the goal of Hands is to save the children from the burning building, and then move on to save other lives, because as soon as the community is mobilized to address the needs of the children, other resources will come their way, and Hands can move on to the next burning house. While it is obviously a difficult decision to make, Hands’ commitment to the poorest of the poor necessitates this.

On Wednesday, we discussed ways in which we can mentor and encourage community-based organizations and their care workers after the week-long training (which I had just experienced an example of last week.) It was a very important and relevant conversation to have, as these trainings are being done for the first time in many of the communities I’ll be working in. Follow-up and mentoring is essential so that the message of the training is not lost on the care workers, yet Service Center staff alone are not able to mentor care workers from so many villages, spread out across the two major areas in which Hands works in South Africa. We discussed the importance of the Service Center influencing and facilitating the community-based organizations, without forcing ideas but also without allowing a free-for-all with no guidance. We also discussed a number of situations that have happened, or are currently happening, in some of the communities we work with, which was another great way for me to learn about the practical application of our principles.

On Thursday, we discussed project management, how to walk with a community-based organization to plan, implement, and report on a “project” such as a feeding point, borehole (from which to get fresh water), care center, etc. It was actually quite a fun day, as some of my coworkers acted out some entertaining skits about how many things can go wrong at each step of the process. Then, in the afternoon, George (the founder of Hands) came to share a powerful word with us. He and others have been prophesying difficult times ahead, and he was basically encouraging us to search our souls and, to put it biblically, to make our calling and election sure. Challenges are coming and we must be sure that we are truly committed to this cause of caring for the orphaned and vulnerable children, no matter what it takes, or else we won’t make it through. As George said, “we can’t say we want to walk with Jesus if we won’t go the way He went.” His path was one of suffering, persecution, and loneliness. We must be willing to endure pain and trials if we really want to follow Him, and it was definitely a wake-up call to all of us. He spoke against being lukewarm, and encouraged us to continue to pour our whole selves into what we do, to sacrifice my own time, energy, and resources, and to not just move on when my 9-5 day is done. It was a profound word, and one that I will definitely carry with me.

On Friday, we finished up the training, but first there was a huge, 3-hour session in which we said goodbye to two Peace Corps volunteers who have been with Hands for 3 years. They also have the distinction of being the ONLY other Americans, so now that they’re gone I have to hold down the fort for my entire country!! It was so sad to see them go, but in an interesting way, the morning was actually such a beautiful example of love and true family in this Hands community. I have never seen so many grown men cry in one room!! Everyone spoke such beautiful words over their lives, and shared many funny and intimate memories. The whole morning just made me feel so blessed to be a part of this community, where the concept of being brothers and sisters in Christ is not just in name. After training, I had dinner with the man in charge of the Hands service center in Zimbabwe, who was visiting for the workshop. He is such a funny, charismatic, wise, and caring man of God, and it was such an incredible opportunity to get to know him. I will definitely be visiting his service center in Mutare when I go to Zim in January! It sounds like they are doing really incredible things there.

The weekend was absolutely lovely, too! Saturday was Canadian Thanksgiving, which (luckily) is very similar to American Thanksgiving in terms of the food. It was a blessing since I’ll obviously miss REAL Thanksgiving this year! Eating turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. surrounded by my beautiful Hands family was amazing, but it made me miss home at the same time! Even still, it was a perfect evening. I was being forced to hold my tongue, as I had been talking junk the whole week leading up to it, about how Canada stole Thanksgiving from us and that’s why when people ask where it came from they can’t really answer… but to my surprise and delight, the American guy who was leaving the next morning stuck an American flag on the wall for the occasion! He then passed it on to me, saying that I must keep the flag waving in their absence. In a sea of South Africans and Canadians, I have never felt more patriotic! Church on Sunday was also great, as usual, and I’m bonding even more with some of the guys my age at the church. They even invited me to be a part of the choir!! I won’t be able to practice with them for next Sunday, but I definitely plan on getting involved, as right now their main praise team is all guys and they want to bring up some female singers by starting this choir to sing a song or two every service. It will definitely be a challenge to learn some of the songs in SiSwati well enough to minister, but I’m really excited for the opportunity!! So that was my weekend – a great one!

This past week was my first week living in the community of Bushbuckridge, where I’ll be working for, most likely, the rest of my time here. As I may have mentioned before, Bushbuckridge is a huge municipality (I think the equivalent of a county in the U.S.) which consists of many different villages and small towns. Hands has a Service Center in Bushbuckridge which helps five community-based organizations serve about 15 different villages. The staff consists of a Service Center coordinator, who’s basically in charge, a Field Coordinator, who is assigned specifically to reach out to the various community-based organizations and see how they’re doing, a bookkeeper, who takes care of the finances between Hands, other donors, and the community-based organization, and me! My role is to help the community-based organizations handle administrative and organizational tasks, to basically be an ally walking beside them to help with whatever they may need. As of right now, obviously, I’m doing a lot more learning then teaching, but in a few weeks, after becoming more immersed in the community and getting to know the coordinators and care workers at each of the community-based organizations better, I’ll be taking on more responsibilities.

So, this week was essentially my unofficial “orientation” into the Bushbuckridge communities. I arrived on Monday night to stay at the bookkeeper’s house, a lovely 23-year-old woman with a baby girl and 3 sisters: one 20-year-old and two 10-year-old twins. They are the sweetest family ever!! I am really enjoying staying with them. The twins absolutely love practicing their English on me, telling me stories about every detail of their day. And every night they have a time of prayer where one of the sisters chooses a scripture and reads it aloud, then we go around and take turns saying what the scripture means to us, and then we decide a topic to pray on that relates to the scripture, and then we all pray. It’s been so amazing to be a part of their family routine! I wake up around six, take a bucket bath (my favorite! LOL in case you didn’t know that’s sarcastic), have some breakfast, and then head to the Service Center, which is about an hour away from where we live.

On Tuesday, I spent the day out in the villages with the Service Center coordinator, a guy in his late 20’s from Masoyi, the community in which Hands started, which is right across the street from the Hands hub. He is so interesting because he is one of the most laid-back, easy-going people I have ever met, yet he has a strong work ethic and is clearly passionate about serving these communities. It’s been great to get to know him more this week. Tuesday was so much fun because we spent the whole day driving to all 5 community-based organizations, some of which are up to an hour’s drive away from one another! The Service Center coordinator doesn’t believe in taking main (tar) roads, so we took back (dirt) roads the entire day, in this white pick-up truck (bakkie, in South African-ese)! Needless to say, it was an adventure. Riding around snacking on apples and carrots, meeting the community-based organization coordinators and care workers and the children they look after, dodging what seemed like hundreds of cows, goats, and chickens on the dirt roads… it was definitely a memorable day!

One of the best parts of the day was stopping in Belfast, where I did my community stay a few weeks ago. A family who’s visiting Hands from Cape Town for the week wanted to go on some home visits with the care workers, so I joined them to tell them a little bit more about Hands as they saw the community for the first time. We just so happened to be walking around the same area where my host sister lives, and while I didn’t get to see her since she was still at school, SO many people from the community remembered me and came up to greet me, give me a hug, and say how happy they were to see me again! I even ran into my host sister’s aunt, the pastor of the church I spoke at! It was such a blessing to see everyone again and to be received so well. And there was something about walking around with these visitors from Cape Town and juxtaposing myself with them that made me realize that in these past few weeks, I have taken the first step from being an outsider, to beginning to be known and trusted in the community. Of course, it takes many months to build true relationship in any community, but I felt a definite shift from the first time I walked into Belfast, and it made me so happy to realize that I am growing in this way. Even my Shangaan is improving, as a couple people commented! So all in all, it was a beautiful day.

I spent Wednesday in the office with the bookkeeper and field coordinator (who is a lovely woman, the “mama” of the service center, who’s married with 3 kids and is the most loving, friendly person you could ever meet!) I basically just helped out with whatever they needed, and we spent a lot of time just chatting about God, and giving, and being “beautiful feet”… it was a great day! Then, Thursday was spent running around with the Service Center coordinator again, to get some things organized for the Care Workers’ Appreciation, which was yesterday (Friday). The Appreciation went so well! It was a time for all the careworkers in Bushbuckridge, from all five community-based organizations, to be celebrated. A pastor gave the keynote speech, and a couple Hands people spoke as well, thanking and encouraging them for all that they do. I mean, these women are struggling themselves; they are busy trying to put food on the table for their own children, yet they have answered God’s call to look after the orphaned and vulnerable children, sacrificing their own time and energy. It’s really incredible to see what they do, and it was so wonderful to honour them yesterday. Each of the community-based organizations was called on to perform, so most of them went up and sang traditional church songs, dancing and ululating and having a wonderful time!! It was a celebration in every sense, and it felt great to see people from so many different villages and churches coming together with a common purpose. After the appreciation, I said goodbye to my Bushbuckridge family and embarked on the 2-hour drive back to Hands for the weekend. So that’s where I’m at! Enjoying my shower, toilet, and running water, but missing everyone already. Living out in the community will definitely be a challenge, but I think it is definitely where I’m supposed to be during my time here at Hands.

I hope everyone at home is doing well! As an important side note, I think all this pap has been making me gain weight! Yes, even more weight than last time I came to Africa, LOL. I really need to get on a work-out plan! (A diet will be pretty much impossible at this point, as I’m living out in the community now.) Although there’s the complication of not knowing the area at all, and being a Mlungu… going running seems out of the question… but I can at least run on the weekends when I’m back at Hands! Let’s see how this plan works out. Maybe I’ll just come back from Africa fat ‘n happy… nothing wrong with that, right? Love you all!

Apartheid discussions at youth camp, careworkers training in Bushbuckridge, and a great weekend!

Hello everyone!
So, I got a phone call from one of my avid blog-readers (shout-out to the one and only Ms. Brittney Marie!) and I have decided to commit myself to updating much more regularly.

So what has been going on this week? Well, we finished off the children’s camp last Sunday. It was so sad to see the kids leave! One of them has been calling me almost every day – what a sweetheart! They are so sweet and need so much love. It feels so great to know that we as an organization are doing what we can to restore their hope and to give them guidance in their futures. The session on Sunday was great – it was all about their dreams and what they will have to do to get there, so they were able to ask questions of each of us, about our career choices and why we decided to pursue them. It was so interesting and really helpful for them, I think. Then, at lunchtime, I sat with a group of kids and had some really deep conversations with them! One of the more outspoken girls at the camp began asking me a lot of questions about race, because obviously they do not get to talk to a white person that often, if at all. In fact, it was probably the first time she was able to have a candid conversation with a white person and ask whatever she wanted. I had told them that I studied sociology and defined what it is, explaining that my focus was on how people from different racial and socioeconomic groups interact.

One of the first questions she asked me was, “Why do black people rush?” I didn’t understand what she meant, and then she explained herself: she was wondering why, in her observations, do black people have kids so early and do things like have sex and use drugs and alcohol at such an early age? The question was interesting because the black-white dynamic here is so different, yet so similar. Obviously, black people are the VAST majority (we’re in Africa lol!) but due to colonization and apartheid particularly in South Africa, many of the same socioeconomic problems we have in the U.S. in terms of black communities exist here in South Africa. I explained to her that because such a great number of black people live in poverty here, people have less hope for a bright future. Whereas most white kids have the comfort of expecting to go to good schools, to graduate, and to head on to higher education, black kids living in poverty do not have this luxury. Because they can’t foresee a positive future for themselves, they are less likely to consider the negative consequences of “rushing” into things they shouldn’t be doing yet (or at all), because why would it matter if you have a baby, if you didn’t think it was possible to finish school or pursue higher education anyway?

Then, because we had opened up the conversation about racial disparity and poverty, she asked, “Why is it like that?” So then we got into a huge discussion about discrimination and apartheid, how black people had been held down for so long, and freedom only happened 16 years ago, so even though more opportunities are available now than before, most people are still stuck in the rut of poverty that they were placed in under apartheid. Thus, her next question was: “Do you feel sorry for what the white people did?” I explained that “feeling sorry” was a difficult way for me to put it, because the connotation is that I feel pity, like I am looking down from a higher place. I explained instead that I feel a righteous indignation (I used simpler words than that, of course), that it angers and upsets me that anyone would treat another one of God’s creations differently because of the color of their skin, and that the atrocities which happened during apartheid, in pre-Civil Rights America, and other countries, are horrible and sickening. I explained to her that that’s why I do the work that I do, to work to restore what was so horribly broken during that time.

That statement led to her next question: “Are there no poor people in America for you to help?” This question absolutely hit me to the core, because as I mentioned in my last post, I have been feeling this fierce tug inside of me between serving here, and going back home to serve in my own community. It’s felt very strange for me to be here in a sense, because most of the “international volunteers” from Canada, UK, etc, come from more privileged communities where there is not nearly as much of a need as there is here. I, on the other hand, was born and raised in the most economically depressed metropolitan area and state in the country… why, then, am I spending a year serving here in South Africa instead of there? As much as this question bothers me, I remember that God called me here to South Africa for a purpose, and I know that this is where He wants me to be at this time. I suspect that He is going to use what I learn here to equip me for His plans for me back in Detroit/Southfield. So I explained this whole messy situation to her. I explained that America is not full of rich people, as the South African kids I work with usually perceive, and we are not all living like they see on TV. Although the poverty in the U.S. is not nearly as dire as the poverty here, it is still very real, very painful, and very destructive. I told her that my heart is torn in two, not knowing where I can best use what God has given me to serve the human family, that maybe I will never be fully settled in one place. It’s something I’m struggling with, and her question put me at a standstill!

After I explained to her that, while I grew up blessed in many ways, I in no way come from the riches which she perceives all Americans have, she asked me what she could do, even as one of the “poor helping the poor.” What a profound question, which made my heart smile! I gave her some examples of things which don’t cost money, which people can do to serve their communities. I told her about how one of my favorite things is to tutor and mentor young people from my community, and that she could do this spending only time, not money. She was so encouraged to know that it’s not about people with privilege coming to help those without, but that we can all use what we have to serve. And it was so beautiful, because this is the central message of Hands at Work, and this is the biggest message which I plan to take home with me. We can use what’s in our hands, what God has given us, no matter how “poor” we perceive ourselves to be.

So that was Sunday. What a deep and profound day! Then, from Monday to Thursday of this past week, I have been observing foundational training for the careworkers who look after the orphans under the care of Hands’ partner organizations. It has been such an eye-opening experience! This training is so important, because oftentimes the careworkers are struggling themselves to make ends meet; they may be widows, or young mothers, or taking care of parents. But despite all this, they have decided to give of their time to serve the most vulnerable children in their community, so this training is very important to help them understand even their own hurts and pains, as they prepare to minister to children who are dealing with a lot of pain as well. A deep moment came on the first day, in the morning, when we did an activity to get to know each other. We had to ask a partner several questions about themselves, and then introduce them to the group. One woman, when asked what makes her happy, answered “nothing.” She was a widow working hard to take care of her children, and her mother had recently died. She felt like she had no one, and nothing to bring her joy. My coworker who was leading the training pointed out that many people who know this woman may never have known that she felt this way, because we oftentimes do not take the time to really get to know the people we encounter each day. She challenged us to sit down with those people we are constantly interacting with, and to really get to know them and understand where they are coming from.

On Tuesday, one of my coworkers was leading the devotional time, and spoke about when God called Moses to lead His people. God told Moses to “use what was in his hand,” and my coworker used this to motivate the careworkers to give out of what God had blessed them with, even if they think they may have little. The message really spoke to my heart as well! For the rest of the day, we talked about Hands’ core values, which I listed in one of my earlier posts. It was so interesting hearing about them from the perspectives of the careworkers instead of the staff, though. So eye-opening, just to hear what it means for them to love their neighbor as themselves, to embrace local community ownership, to serve the poorest of the poor. For many of them, they had to realign their ideas of what kids they should be serving, because naturally they want to serve all of them! However, because of limited resources, they have to look closely and determine which children are the most vulnerable. On Wednesday, we talked more about how to do this, and I think it really began to break through to them. Thursday was our last day, so it was a bit more relaxed, and that evening a bunch of us from Hands went out for a lovely dinner. What a great way to end a week of training in which we were waking up at 5 am every morning to drive the two hours to Bushbuckridge!

On Friday, we had All Hands on Deck, which is a monthly meeting where everyone comes together and shares what is going on in the different areas of Hands. A pastor from Australia who is here with a visiting team of missionaries shared a deep word, and then I went for my one-on-one with my volunteer coordinator. It was a chance to check in, as the month of orientation is officially over and now I am really settling in to my role here at Hands! Then, I had to go to the dentist (I’m having this jaw problem) and although the issue didn’t really get solved, I didn’t have to pay – praise the LORD! In the evening, we had a really fun game night with two fellow volunteers, one of my coworkers, and her two children. I really love the sense of family and community here at Hands, and I know that this is a place where I can really thrive.

This weekend was great too! On Saturday, I went out for milkshakes with one of my coworkers in Hazyview, a city about 30 minutes from the Hands Village. It was just month-end, when everyone gets paid, so the mall was PACKED and it was so fun to people-watch! Then we had a braai, which was really nice and relaxing, and then I went with my roomie and another co-worker to go to the movies to see Salt. (Yes, we do go to the movies in the country… we just have to travel almost an hour to Nelspruit LOL!) It was a really exciting Saturday because usually I just spend all day at the Village… I felt like I had a real social life this weekend! Then, today was church, back at Eph’phatha, which I really loved last time I went because of their thriving youth ministry (“youth” being my age.) It was great again today!! Such a deep time of praise and worship (and they looove to praise and worship at this church – for over an hour, I think!) Youth was great… everyone is so welcoming and friendly. Even though there’s a language barrier and someone has to interpret for me and my coworkers, one who’s Shona-speaking and one who’s Tswana-speaking, it’s definitely worth it, and I think it may become my home church!! : ) This evening, I just plan to chill and watch a movie… then back to work tomorrow!