Since Sunday

Sunday was a pretty uneventful day.  After the long day Saturday in Grahamstown, I fell asleep at 8pm and didn’t get out of bed until what most would classify as late on Sunday.  I went to the market on the boardwalk just to look, and Taylor and I got our quota of sun for the weekend during the afternoon.  

Monday, service was a bit challenging.  I read to Lisa, a very, very intelligent student at the playschool.  She speaks English very well, can identify shapes and colors very well, and likes to make up stories based on the illustrations in books.  These traits put her head and shoulders above most of the other students at the playschool.  She squirmed around on my lap while I quasi-read and she quasi-narrated.  I asked her questions about the characters represented in the story to expand her vocabulary, count, and compare items.  In my cerebral, detail-oriented mindset, I was suddenly surprised when I could not ask Lisa about some of her experiences that might relate to the story.  I was immediately saddened to realize that Lisa didn’t have any stories about visiting her grandparents, owning a pet, or visiting a farm hours away.  We learned shortly after that some of the kids were going to the hospital to treat some pretty serious infections.  It hit me pretty hard in that moment that these kids that we’ve played with, who have energy to rival a hungry tiger, play hard, test their boundaries (more some days than others), and the desire to just be held, are orphans.  We see them in a daycare setting, so I haven’t thought deeply about the implications of their situations.  They have foster mothers, foster siblings, and live in a faith-filled, caring community which may be much better than the township they likely lived in before coming to the Haven.  They have really well-balanced diets and basic needs met, but I can’t help but consider how the best memories from my childhood would not exist in that environment.   For instance, four-wheeling, county fairs, summers on the boat, weekends at grandparents’ cabins, days at the farm, going to the park and roaming the neighborhood on our bikes alone, and the endless hours at the skating rink.  None of these opportunities are available to most children in South Africa (due to the 80-90% unemployment rates in the townships of the Eastern Cape Province).  And, the children at the Haven are in this position because of AIDS, it has claimed their families and even some of them.  What a blessing it now seems that each day after service I return to Langerry and a university education.

Today, I whiled service away peeling carrots in the kitchen.  Between service and class I put final touches on a paper, emailed it, and took a kombi to class.  In class we hosted SJU alum, Saavo, Bosnian by birth, married to a South African, and studying his PhD at NMMU.   Our discussion topic today was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose aim was to bring closure to Apartheid and face the brutal past of the liberation struggle in order to move forward as a united rainbow nation.  Saavo survived the civil war in his home country as an adolescent, and a member of the SJU Board of Regents sponsored a trip for young students to go to Hawaii as a respite from their war-torn country.  While there, the Regent offered to fund any endeavor each Bosnian student would like to pursue.  Saavo said that he would like to study wherever the Regent studied, so he came to St. Johns, studied abroad in his Junior year on this trip to South Africa in 2005, met the sister of a famous cricket player (apparently this guy knows how to make connections in short amounts of time—haha, but really he won a contest while he was here for dressing up at a game), and came back to SA after graduation.  They were recently married =D awwwe.   

South Africa’s conflict resolution procedures fascinated him, and he now works between South Sudan and South Africa studying the process of rebuilding after reaching peace.  He wrote a book about his experiences in Bosnia as a child, and it was mind-blowing to have his input on our discussion today about what constitutes justice when so many atrocities are committed.  In South Africa, there were no Nuremberg trials, rather the country chose to use what meager resources it had to offer recompense to those victims who came forward with their stories.  Amnesty was granted to perpetrators after submitting applications delineating the full truth of all of their crimes.  Today we undertook questions such as why would South Africa opt to allow brutal killers who burned the bodies while having a braai with their colleagues walk away with amnesty?  How can a mother who knows the police officers who barbequed her innocent son ever have closure?  How can an anti-Apartheid white forgive an organization who blew up a building and killed his son in the name of liberation from Apartheid?  How about a wife who found her husbands mutilated body along with three other’s benefit from knowing that police men committed the terrible crime to make it look like vigilantes, and even preserved his hand in a jar at the police station to scare others into talking?  Or, how can a man who was blinded from acid from being tortured give such words of forgiveness to the criminal?  The book called No Future Without Forgiveness by Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu quotes some of the testimonies of victims and offenders, showing the extremes of human capacity to hate or love.  

After class, we watched a movie for lit tomorrow, and  I stopped at the grocery store on my walk home.  I am exhausted now, so although I would like to write more about today, maybe I can add another time.

Peace