Fri. Feb. 7th - Desmond Tutu and Serving 150+ Kids in a Township

Early “Mass” at St. George’s Cathedral today. The small “said” service (as opposed to “sung”) was held in a side chapel with 75 people or so and Bishop Tutu presiding. What a blessed moment to receive the Body of Christ from him and then a hug at the door as we were introduced to him by a local friend. I think we will make this a Friday morning habit!

We spent the afternoon in the township of Westlake, south and east of Cape Town. We were part of the volunteer team for Kids Club – picture a one-day Vacation Bible School with nearly 200 children in one big room (a community center)! Everyone is warm and kind and we hug everybody – kids and adults alike. After large group fun on big carpet remnants rolled out, the kids go to the craft tables for a time. Then we hand out snack and they leave.

 

We spent time with Veronica who runs programs out of the community center – she is a nurse and does home health care in the community; and is also a “safe house.” A safe house is an identified home with a trained/certified “mom” who takes in children whose parents can’t care for them. They are not “orphans” because the parents are known but unable to parent their children – usually because they are drug addicts or prostitutes. One girl who lives with Veronica, sees her mom in the community drugged and prostituting herself.

 

I was taken by her daughter Jodine – a bright and articulate 14 year old who has been accepted to an elite school in the area and has dreams of studying research medicine (in America even!). She knew about American politics – Michelle Obama is her role model!

 

We look forward to returning every Friday!
Check out the Orphan Care Foundation link on the right to learn more. (Martin, the founder, is a volunteer along with the rest of us, and has his own amazing story!)

 

All these people we work with are faithful Christians and they proclaim the Lord as their Provider and Sustainer with a veracity and confidence that is inspiring and humbling.

Back in Cape Town! (Feb. 4)

Summary:

1) Safari - AMAZING

2) Our Cape Town home - comfortable and homey - however the wifi is spotty

3) In general - we're tired from doing so much!

4) Our first afternoon of serving at a safe house for children - humbling and joyful

5) Driving on the left side - not so bad (it's the shifting with the left hand that's hard to get used to!

 

I am sorry it's taken this long to share an update.

While on safari, we did not have wifi for the first three days; and the second three days, we were so exhausted that during our free time, we took naps / showers and barely could keep up with downloading photos to the computer.

 

The safaris were AMAZING!

Our schedule:

5:00 AM wake and be ready to go for 5:30 game drive, stopping for a coffee break (picnic!)

9:00 return to lodge for full cooked breakfast

free time until lunch (1:00 at one lodge; 3:00 at the other)

4:00 evening game drive, stopping for "sundowner" drinks (sunset picnic)

8:00 return to lodge for dinner

to bed to get up and do it again!

The first place we were - Umlani Bush Camp - had no electricity (kerosene lanterns in the rooms). The second place was more luxurious....

The animals were beautiful and we were quite close to them - often venturing off road in our open 9-seater range rovers.

Tons of giraffe, impala, zebra, cape buffalo. We also saw a leopard, cheetah, hippo, rhino (including the rare black rhino), kudu, nyala, water buck, hyena (carrying an impala leg in it's mouth), elephant, warthog, tons of beautiful birds...

 

We said good-by to Mike Saturday Feb. 1st and he headed home (to deal with extensive water damage to our home from a burst pip just 3 days after we left!) We are most grateful to friends and family for coming to our rescue without hesitation - Mike is managing the next steps re: insurance / repairs....

 

This our first week in Cape Town, my mom is staying with Sophia and me at the Renaissance Lodge (our home for these 6 weeks). It is simple and comfortable. Many of the rooms are around the patio which surrounds the pool (which Sophia LOVES having right outside our door of course).

 

On Monday we spent the afternoon at a safe house for children who were placed there because their parent are addicted / prostitutes and cannot care for them. Most of the kids are suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome or other cognitive deficiencies. It is run by a saint of a woman Eliese who lives in this small ranch house with 10 kids (ages 2-10). Sophia was right at home playing with the older girls and caring from one of the youngest girls. She is eager to return next Monday.

 

Today we had no work projects so went to Seal Island out of Hout Bay. Seal Island is an outcropping of rocks covered with hundreds of seals who love to play in the water around the boats that come bringing tourists.

 

We've worshiped at the Hillsong Church which is like attending a rock concert with 1,500 others, but it's all about Jesus! Sophia is quite drawn to it and very moved - doing her best to pay attention to the 45 minute sermon displayed on a video screen. It is inspiring to see so many people expressing their love for the Lord with such passion - but I miss the quiet of our smaller more traditional church. I'll see if I can find a little local place to attend as well.

 

Wifi here at the lodge is spotty and Skype does not seem to be working. Tonight is the first time I've been able to access the internet from our room. Normally I have to go to the dining or living room (or on the patio where the sun is HOT and the wind picks up in the evening.) And even though we can sleep 'til 7:00 or 8:00, I'm still quite tired at the end of the day.

 

I don't know if photos will make it to the blog - I'll try that another day.

 

We are blessed to be here in this great city and serving with these most inspiring people.

 

Cape Town - Day 3

Summary:
1 - City Tour including being present on top of Signal Hill for the "noon shot" of the cannon.
2 - Errands (got a cell phone, dropped luggage at the Renaissance Lodge, lunch....)
3 - Kirstenbosch Gardens
4 - drive up Signal Hill for views of the city in the early evening

Animal sighting:
Guinea Fowl in the gardens

More:
On the city tour, we saw historic buildings, statues and gardens (much like Boston has) throughout. We visited Green Market Square (African artifacts sold in "stalls"; about one city block). The city is so racially mixed, it is hard to imagine the separation and oppression that occurred so recently in their history.

The Kirstenbosch Gardens are HUGE and right in/by the city. 53 hectacres.

Blessings:
Crystal clear blue skies and very warm weather!
Meeting our hosts at the Renaissance Lodge where we'll be staying after Feb. 1st
Mike figuring out how to upload photos here!

Tomorrow:
We leave EARLY to fly to the northeast corner of the SA (almost 3 hour flight) for our safari. We'll be at Umlani first and then Wed. we go to Monwana (see links to the right). We will have wifi at Monwana, but not enough bandwidth to upload photos.

Photos!

Mandela on a city government building in Cape Town 

Sophia receiving a marimba lesson at a cultural center in the township of Langa

 "Private" bathrooms in the Langa township

Papa in front of his two room house in Langa township

 The second oldest church in Cape Town - originally was Dutch Reformed. Now it is a mosque, because the neighborhood is no longer white.

 Bench in front of the court house where during apartheid people were assigned to live (segregated by race of course.)

Kirstenbosch gardens just outside the city. This is the back side of Table Mountain

in the garden....

At the top of Signal Hill (Table Mountain in the background)

The stadium they built when SA hosted the 2010 World Cup (soccer)

The road down from Signal Hill ...

Trying photos...

The penguins!

At the farthest point out on the Cape of Good Hope.

Looking down on the rocks of Cape Hope from the lighthouse.

The view of Table Mountain from our hotel room.

Sophia petting a baby cheetah!

Our lunch spot on day 1 at Simon's Town.

Cape Town - Day 2

Summary:
1 - visit District Six: the neighborhood in Cape Town where homes were demolished by the whites during apartheid because there were people of different races living peaceably. (It is again now a place of mixed and different races.)


2 - drive to three different townships to see neighborhoods, schools, cultural centers, homes, women's health center, artists at work...


3 - lunch in Stellenbosch, the largest wine producing region in SA. (upscale, trendy, Dutch architecture)


4 - Cheetah Outreach (see link to the right) - petting baby cheetahs!!




Animal Sightings:
in the city: guinea fowl (running through the streets)
at the cheetah outreach:
cheetah
meerkat
Anatolian sheep dogs
serval
black-backed jackyl




More:
The contrasts continue. The townships are small areas far from the city with populations in the hundreds of thousands. Families live in makeshift, wall to wall shanties; toilets are rows of cement stalls (picture 5 port-a-potties in a row) with locks on the outside that a family "owns" (has a key to). And the people gather in cultural centers to learn skills (mostly as artists) to sell crafts to make money. Our guide, Norman, says that really it's only those who are children now who have hope of a better life outside the townships.




Cheetah are gentle, peaceful (sleeping 16-18 hours a day) passive animals. And they are quite endangered. The Cheetah Outreach exists to educate people about the issues surrounding their endangerment and to create out of folks like us who visit, more ambassadors for the cheetah. We got to pet two cheetahs - about 6 months old - for a few minutes. They are stunningly beautiful animals (and their fur is not as soft as you'd think - in fact their fur gets softer as they get older).




Food:
Ostrich fillet for dinner (no it doesn't taste like chicken!). It is more like beef, served medium rare, cut in strips. It was not particularly flavorful, but was VERY tender and juicy. (Served with lentil samosas and a warm spicy tomato salsa with a fried banana on top!) YUM!




Blessings:
An unscheduled visit to the Tembaletu School (for handicapped children from all over Cape Town) in the township of Gugulethu where we'll be volunteering - they received us warmly and took us to meet the principal who spent 20 minutes or so with us and then had his psychologist take us on a complete tour. We even chanced to meet Steffan from Hillsong with whom I've been emailing to coordinate our mission work.




People everywhere, upon meeting us for the first time, ALL shake all our hands and want to know all our names. I'm learning to make genuine eye contact, to say my name and to say their name upon greeting and good-bye-ing.




Photos:
I still haven't figured out how to put photos in my posts here. We have FULL days and are exhausted at the end. (And dinner takes a good 2 hours each night.)

Cape Town - Day 1

Cape Town - Day 1


Summary:
1 - Cable Car to the top of Table Mountain (cloud covered, so views were not as hoped)
2 - drove down the Cape Point coast to Simon's Town for lunch
3 - African Penguins!
4 - drove to Cape Point (the farthest SW point of Africa); rode the funicular up and then walked up to the old light house at the top of the point
5 - drove the coast road up False Bay back to Cape Town


Animal Sightings:
baboons
ostrich
penguins


More:
Cape Town is a bustling international city surrounded on three sides by mountains and the fourth side by the Atlantic. This is a beautiful place with many contrasts: sharp mountain peaks so close you feel as if you can touch them; flat open plateaus dotted with rock and shrubbery (no trees); dramatic cliffs rising up out of the ocean with waves crashing like geysers; wide white sandy beaches with surfers and kite surfers galore; heavy clouds and chilly winds atop Table Mountain and hot sun at the beach.


The people are warm and friendly. I have to remind myself that I'm not in New England any more and that it is peoples' nature to share a smile and kind word at every turn.


We are staying in a hotel by the Waterfront - a newly developed part of the city right on the harbor, filled with lively nightlife, restaurants and shops. The restaurants are full of seafood items with a Malaysian influence. I'm looking forward to trying the springbok and the ostrich!


Blessings:
The snafu at the hotel at 2:00 AM upon arrival has been "corrected" and we don't have to change hotels!
Our guide, Norman, is a delightful Christian man and eager to share about his life, family and faith. (And he was assigned to us at the last minute just 2 days before our arrival....)


Photos:
I'll figure out how to upload photos tomorrow.