Say It Now

This past week has been one of continual blessing, growth and encouragement. I have had so many wonderful experiences and met so many people.

Last Sunday evening I attended Doxa Deo, a predominantly white church founded for the Afrikaana culture. The Afrikaana people are descended from the Dutch who brought their trade here. The Afrikaans language is a very interesting mixture of Dutch, English, German and African languages. The church is trying to take steps forward in diversity and having Seth preach was one way for them to do so. Seth preached about “Standing in the Gap” from Ezekiel. The passage calls for a man to stand in the gap between the corruption of the city and the perfect that waits. After the message there was a time of socializing out in the coffee shop area of church lobby. I met a young woman named Danica who is studying theatre. We hit it off right away and went out for coffee together Monday afternoon. I loved looking at South Africa from a different cultural perspective and was surprised that there were a lot of similarities between hers and mine. I really enjoyed her company and hope that I will get to hang out with her again before I go home!

On Tuesday I went to the Hector Peterson Museum along with four students from Duke University who are in South Africa for one of their business classes evaluating the company Heartlines (which is one of the consulting companies Seth does work for). The Hector Peterson Museum commemorates the June 16^th, 1976 uprising that took place in Soweto. During apartheid the Afrikaana regime decided that Afrikaans was the medium for instruction in all of the schools. The black students in the Soweto schools were furious and wanted that to change. They met together, formed plans and took to the streets in a peaceful rally on June 16^th, 1976. No one is really sure what happened or who “shot first” but police opened fire on the young people and chaos ensued that lasted for days and had repercussions that lasted months.

This is a famous picture from the first day of the uprising. The dead boy in the arms of the other boy is Hector Peterson, thought to be the first child killed. The girl is Antoinette Sihkole, his older sister. Because Seth has a connection with her because of the work he has done over the last twelve years, the Duke students and I had the immense honor of hearing the story of the uprising from her personal memories. She told us about the sense of victory the students had upon taking to the streets, the confusion when the police tear gassed them, the fear of seeing her eleven year old brother at the rally when he wasn’t supposed to be there and the desperation when she discovered her brother was dead.

            I was introduced to the story of Hector Peterson years ago by Team iThembabut had forgotten most of it. It was very inspiring to hear it again from someone who was there.

Wednesday and Thursday I spent at Heartlines along with my fellow interns, Elzemeike and Craig, calling NPOs for their contact information for a database that Heartlines is compiling for a corporate company called SASOL. They were long days but the company was great, we had a few good laughs as we struggled to pronounce “Heartlines” so people could understand it (Hot lines? Hard life? Hot life???) and I learned a bit about the lay out of South Africa. South Africa has nine provinces. We called NPOs in the Free State, Gauteng and Mpumalanga.

On Friday I observed three consultations Seth gave over the course of the day to three different groups all involved in the same project. The Seacom Solution Quest is a social mission project that SEACOM, an African internet company, is trying to initiate in the Tembisa High School. We met with the SEACOM peopl in the morning at their headquarters and then transferred to the highschool for the meeting with the teachers and the one with the students. The main idea is to motivate the students to take the initiative for themselves to work for the social, academic and physical changes they would like to see in their school. I met a lot of the young people and they are very excited about becoming leaders in their school. They made commitments to themselves and to each other that from here on out they will keep each other accountable and be the call that will bring about the change they promised their school. It is likely I will return with Seth later during my internship to see how things are going and to continue to motivate the students on towards self facilitated change.

I lead a few theatre games at the Friday night Youth meeting. They were pretty well received. We played around with getting your body engaged and active in different ways by toying with near/far, focus points and connections to each other. We ran out of time for the exercise that was going to explore self-esteem and self-confidence, the items we are focusing on with the young people, but Nakita had a wonderful exercise that dealt with the subject even better. First we wrote on a piece of paper how we felt about ourselves. We taped it to our backs, covered it with another piece of paper and wrote on each other’s back how we thought about them. At least for me, the difference between my perspective of myself and everyone else’s perspective was quite vast. I must keep that in mind when I get down on myself.

Well, that’s all for now! I’m attending a birthday party and baby dedication this afternoon with Seth’s family. I am excited to see an Indian South African birthday party and dedication.

As you are inclined, please pray for my body to adjust to the sleep schedule. I got hit with jet-lag really bad in the middle of this week. Being tired makes it very difficult to focus on the learning and to push myself where I need to. Also, I would appreciate prayer that I would knock down the walls of fear and low self-esteem that continue to mount against me.

Thank you for your support and love!

Alison