Zebra's Bark

Enter the Silence

2011-06-19T17:58:00.001+02:00

Silence,
Empty air hugs my frame
No tears left to cry
Empty arms
No skin to touch
Silence, you wait next to me in the moist darkness.

Empty thoughts, no reason or logic left to explain.
Silence.
Only pain.
Pain from loss and death.
Fear melts into hope
as light trickles through my prison walls.

Breathe in,
Breathe out,
Eat, drink, shit, pee.
Lift your head
Open your eyes
Face the dawn.
Our backs against the cold rock wall.

Nothing.
Nobody.
Just you and me Lord.

(for Elaine - June 2011)

Africa Calling Three

2011-06-16T18:59:00.004+02:00

This piece tells the story of our trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda in 2008. It was written during the planning stages by Kirsty who is now married and living in the UK. Herman has since become a husband and a father. What an amazing adventure the three of us had then!

It is 19:00 on a Thursday evening around a kitchen table in Constantia Park. Maps are studied, flight times checked and budgets calculated around an open Graham Beck 2004 Merlot bottle and four empty pizza boxes.

What do a tall, chemical engineer who owns his own investment company, a young Cape Town born business consultant with a passion for training and development and an energetic servant leader who has devoted her life to serving the Kingdom of God, do in their spare time?

They organise a humanitarian trip into Africa!

On Monday morning of 22 September 2008, three ordinary people who met each other at the previous Alpha Course will board a plane to Nairobi, Kenya and experience the first day of a life-changing adventure.

Herman Lombard, Kirsty Screen and Leani Wessels in partnership with ALARM (African leadership and Reconciliation Ministries—www.alarm-inc.org) will embark on a 12 day journey to Kigali, Rwanda and Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo via Kenya. We plan to facilitate both leadership and micro-business workshops for church and community leaders.

The areas where we will serve have been devastated by colonialism and civil war for decades. Rwanda and the DRC are both in a vulnerable peace-accord. Communities in these areas need support as they try to rebuild their society and regain some of their own identity and self-morale. ALARM has been taking the lead for the past nine year in resolving conflict in eight African countries, equipping and encouraging communities in this major reconstruction of their known world.

Leani studied with the founding member and president of ALARM in the USA and met more of the resident ALARM staff in Uganda at the historical Amahoro Gathering (www.amahoro-africa.org) during in May 2007.

Two weeks later, Leani and her father, Louis returned to Central Africa to help a church community in Rwanda with their building project. They drove four hours west to the DRC and saw first-hand how desperate civil-war survivors were for help and education in this massive refugee population ‘living’ between these two countries on the north shore of Lake Kivu.

That experience became the inspiration for this journey. It has been a dream of Leani to conduct leadership skills training in African realities like these. Her vision for Africa can only come from God. She is a true woman of Africa and this has built a curiosity for our continent in both me and Herman.

I have never been to another African country. I do not know what Africa looks like. Our beautiful country is the opposite to 99% of Africa. Herman has travelled a bit in Lesotho and some of our other neighbouring countries, but he too has never experienced a journey like this.

God has truly blessed us so far in our preparation for this expedition. We thank you—our Oosterlig family—who has given us both financial assistance through the donation of Bibles and soccer balls for the workshop participants as well as prayer and fellowship. We appreciate all the support and encourage you to pray for these communities, ALARM and us.

So, with our Yellow Fever injections completed we will be leaving on a jet plane with our backpacks, 80 Bibles, 80 bound manuals and a bunch of soccer balls. Pray for our trip and that by God's grace we will be able to teach a few people in two countries about Jesus' love, leadership and servant hood.

All three of us will depart knowing that “The LORD your God is with you; His power gives you victory. The LORD will take delight in you, and in his love he will give you new life. He will sing and be joyful over you, as joyful as people at a festival.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

Written by Kirsty Screen, photos taken by Leani Wessels
Join the conversation at www.AfricaCallingThree.blogspot.com

Pretty Dirty Feet

2011-06-16T18:36:00.004+02:00

This project in 2005 is another beautiful story from my Vision Africa site which I don't want to loose in the revamp.

Networking : getting our hands dirty together while serving each other.

“There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to walk through the valley of shadow again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.”
–Nelson Mandela, September 1953 –

March 19, 2005…introducing everyday Americans to everyday Africa
Saturday afternoon. Sunset. The DTS campus lies lazily quiet before the last six strenuous weeks start. Several students approached me about the possibility of going to Africa with me this summer. I dedicate this short story and first international initiative to you. May this encourage you to take the risk and broaden your horizons at the cost of being disillusioned, but also blessed and a chance to direct your personal calling to ministry.

Breath-taking sights and raw beauty will blow your 1st world mind and I pray that you will return with an addiction to finding humble content in simple things and spending time in community with one another. However, do not allow the exciting adventures you will encounter on African soil to still the ancient cry for relief, rescue and resurrection of mankind. Nobody except Nkhulunkhulu* can bring the liberation from intimidation and corrupt powers to Africa. Only God’s children can show the compassionate kindness and love to human souls tortured by centuries of abuse and neglect.

Countless of my African brothers and sisters have relinquished any sense of dignity and purpose as unattainable. Their hearts are so hardened in fear and revenge that building new relationships appear impossible. Despite the resistance, verbal abuse and emotional manipulation you might experience during your visit, remember that ultimately nobody can resist the power of God’s love. Prepare your spirit for the difficult process of remaining humble and teachable at all times, especially when working with government officials.
This visits to Mozambique and Namibia should not be viewed as an outreach from educated theologians in the West to an illiterate community of uneducated people living in the dirt.

Rather see this as an opportunity for us as absorbent sponges, dry from over-exposure to propagandist media coverage and false stereotypes. Let the majestic Zambezi river saturate us by submitting to her violent waters as we glide along toward several rapids, fresh pools and the Victoria Falls! I promise you that this will be wilder than your most vivid imagination.

My dream is that you will come to understand the pictorial language in which Africans communicate. May you return with a default vocabulary of existential images, sounds, smells and movements. My goal with introducing you to this initial contact is to translate African needs and joys into American, in order for our fellow students and church members to hear the truth from reliable sources. My hope is to serve as a catalyst between African and American Christians. Connecting congregations and individuals with each other, sharing our stories of the unimaginable miracles God is doing here and there.

This is your opportunity to become part of His wave of intervention in a spiritually dark continent before it is too late. To do this, I can join your hands with existing groups and initiatives in Africa but I need your words and experience there to connect with a people here.
*the Greatest of the Greatest – Zulu for YHWH

Introduction to 2005 Mozambique-trip:
The explanation of how God had brought all the parties together to join this trip demands a long evening, good food and a big camp fire. Trust me when I say that it has been an unbelievable story…

In order for you to understand the table below, you need to know the following:
• I work from the standpoint of serving under a local church congregation wherever I live in this world and requiring my local church’s blessing on any spiritual initiative I lead as a condition for me to proceed.

• Having lived in three different countries, I submit to three different leadership teams: in South Africa, it is Pretoria-Oosterlig (means Light in the East), in Namibia it is Emmanuel and in the US, it is Skillman Bible Church.

• The church we will be visiting in Mozambique is located in the province of Manica, near the village town, Chimoio just east of the Zimbabwean border in line with the harbour town of Beira – you should be able to find it on the map now. The local pastor there is Thsupi.

• Pretoria-Oosterlig has been working with the church in Manica for several years and has established a strong relationship with the local missionaries and pastor. Church members from Oosterlig have been making annual visits to Thsupi’s church over the years and often goes more than once a year. Since our initial church-plant, the congregation has grown from 50 to 500 and they need a permanent church building to house all the believers.

• The greater vision of our work with Tsupi’s church relates to wonderful relationships forged with several American churches (outside my involvement) and another team of Americans will be traveling the same route as we will with the same team from Pretoria-Oosterlig in the end of August 2005 (part of the camp fire story).

• The purpose for our (relatively small and short) trip would be to confirm needs, expectations and final preparations before orchestrating the more challenging plan for bringing in the manual labor and building materials for the new church next Summer (2006).

So, these are very exciting times and our journey there will be full of unforeseen variations, surprises pleasant and less nice. All of it giving you a real taste of how things work in Africa.

What serves as main motivation for me to feel comfortable to take you guys and girls along on this trip, lies in the very experienced team leader and long-time friend of mine, Fredrick, who has done this a zillion times and is such a pleasure to be around with. He is also the youth pastor at Pretoria-Oosterlig , where his wife, Antoinette, also serves as an ordained minister working primarily with the kids and young mothers.

As you will notice below, the dates of the actual trip is from 1-10 July. I will be meeting you personally at the Johannesburg International Airport (ORT) whenever you arrive. If you are traveling from the US, you need to plan to arrive in South Africa by Monday the 27th of June at the latest. You will need at least two days to recover from jet-lag and we must budget Wednesday and Thursday for the laborious process of getting your visas, for which we need your passports.

We are planning to travel very safely and have ample time allocated either side of the time we need in Chimoio to deal with any surprises. We plan to have a short feedback opportunity in the Sunday church service on the 10th.

Thereafter, you can decide individually what you would like to do. These are my suggestions:

• spend a few days in South Africa (very cheap for US$) and I will have a great excuse to take you too some of the most beautiful part around my province – we could get some game watching in and maybe visit my Godfather’s trout farm a few hours away from Pretoria

• you can fly back whenever you want to

• accommodation will be free, depending on where you want to go traveling in SA, your budget will change

• the costs for the actual trip is US$20/day including everything – thus the total cost (excluding the flight) will be less than US$300 if you want have a few days of fun afterwards

• I have two contacts for cheap flights directly to Johannesburg from Dallas – STA Travel in Dallas, near SMU if you are a student (www.statravel.com)at Raptim International Travel in New York if you are a missionary (www.raptimusa.com)

Skillman Bible Church Motivation:
• introduce teammembers to African mission opportunities
• plant friendships with African ministry teams
• generate interest into future mission initiatives

DTS Motivation:
• introduce African mission opportunities to students
• inform about future plans (www.dreamforafrica.com)

Oosterlig Motivation:
• short prep-trip to confirm needs assessment
• inform Tsupi and get permission for American initiative
• introduce Deon to Chimoio congregation

Manica Motivation:
• receive annual encouragement from our visit
• confirm official progress of building plans

Vision Africa Motivation:
• enable Americans to discover the need inAfrica
• reveal mutual biases - foster unity and friendships
• traveling though Zimbabwe (dictator in 4th term) good experience
• white farms reposed and famine 5 years later
• Zimbabwe after 17 years of civil war against Marxism
• have Oosterlig discover American brothers & sisters
• see South Eastern Africa and South Africa

2011-06-16T18:21:00.004+02:00

Leani kicked off the 1st of her many semesters at Dallas Theological Seminary in August 2004....responding to the need of more knowledge and understanding of the Triune God's revealed Word brought her to committing the next four years to formal training under Christian giants in the realm of Bible exposition and leadership development.

Due to the very demanding load of required reading and writing to be completed by the end of the local Thanksgiving holiday...this webpage will have to wait until Leani is on her Christmas break, lounging around with her parents back in South Africa, to further develop the potential of Givengain's new zooty web-engine!!
Please feel free to contact Leani at the above-mentioned email...she needs your prayers for diligent studies, divine illumination to do everything in English (her second language) and physical endurance of all sorts! She also needs prayer for funds to pay for the next semester which works out at roughly $10 000 including the air-tickets to go home for Christmas.

She is having fun through all the tribulations! Looking forward to hearing from you!
Update: Leani successfully completed her degree and graduated in May 2007 at the Amahoro Gathering (www.amahoro-africa.org) in an original 'gramadoelas gradution ceremony' hosted by one of her DTS prof Dr. Bob Pyne (www.robertpyne.com) in Mukono, Uganda.

Thanks for all your prayers, encouragement and financial support that made this happen...

Why do Zebras bark?!

2011-06-16T18:07:00.003+02:00

Leani grew up in the world of solving problems and the powerful influence of the written word of her parents; Louis, an engineer and Leilani a bookworm. Raised in suburban Pretoria, she discovered the harsh realities of injustice and racism at an early age. During her teenage years, she saw the power of individuals changing the destinies of millions in the turmoil of a young country at the imminent verge of giving birth to what would become known as “The New South Africa.”

Leani’s conviction that one must first live life before attempting to write anything worthwhile lead her to explore diverse world views. After completing her bachelor in Architecture (1998), she was privileged to work with a wide variety of communities in more than 7 countries and islands in and around Southern Africa. Since 1991, she has travelled through 15 countries abroad and is now studying a Masters in Theology and Media Communications in Dallas, Texas.

Through her writing and consequent influence, Leani aims at turning your hearts toward her continent and together get our hands dirty in affecting Christ-driven change across the whole sphere from education, medical, infrastructure, social to business by equipping leaders in appropriate groups strategically located in Africa.
The voice of Vision Africa has been heard in The Glimpse, a quarterly magazine published in the USA with the purpose of creating an awareness of the cultural diversity in that country and abroad.

Interact with her stories at www.zebrasbark.blogspot.com by adding your own thoughts as a comment. Discover more of her published writing and photography at www.glimpseabroad.org. A number of Leani's short stories and poems have also been published on the EIKON website : www.dts.edu/eikon and she regularly contributes articles and photos to the DTS community newspaper called: The Jot and Tittle.

Since December 2005 her first official writers group named The Pages has been born out of a group of fellow writers at DTS. Our purpose is to encourage more people to share their lives with others through the written word.

Leani's launched her most recent initiative in January 2006 in the form of an original screenplay called (working title) A virus called love - about how one individual with a passion can make a difference in a seemingly hopeless world. She hopes to submit at least one novella, collection of vignettes or her memoir by the end of 2006.

Writing takes dedication and time. Nothing comes out perfect the first time and time is money. Screenplays are not published in the same way that books are. For one's screenplay to reach the forum where the industry can consider it for public distribution one enters it into screenwriting competitions and every entry generally costs between US$30 and $75. Like most things in life - the greatest need of any person is the encouragement of somebody who believes in his or her. Thus Leani needs your moral support and prayers more than anything else to persist in this ministry of worshiping God by sharing the stories of His faithfulness and grace to all mankind. Here follows a piece that captures the essence of Africa's success stories...

12 African women
This African story tells about five bloodthirsty harlots, one faithful wife, two sets of twins, one cripple, and one victorious. Hemmed in between them, a stubborn old queen resists her inevitable future while losing her radiance to Syphilis. It’s not once upon a time in a land far, far away, but on our doorstep. Today, in a year, three days old.

2005 begins with promise of peace in Sudan , ending the longest war on this continent. The frightening remnants remain after Tsunamis crashed against the eastern coasts of Ethiopia, where exhausted missionaries and UN food distributors try to tend gaping wounds left by decades of tribal monopolies. East of them, genocide and the West’s greed for blood diamonds and Colton for their cellphones, have raped Rwanda, Uganda and Congo’s future generations. Despite the violent neighbourhood, Kenya’s managed to remain stable with one of her children becoming the first black African women to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Unfold this map some more and draw your finger south. Move toward other peaceful prospects, each bordered by an ocean. Angola next to the Atlantic on the east and Mozambique west of the Indian. Once Portuguese colonies and both enslaved to Communist regimes until recently have finally begun rebuilding their war-torn democracies. Tragically, their peaceful countrysides continue to lethally harvest limbs and income-earning abilities from unsuspecting pedestrians who are forced to cross over active minefields.

More inland, Botswana sports the strongest currency in Africa, namely the Pula. Sadly, also the highest statistic for HIV/Aids infection in the world. Despite this booming epidemic, the country fuels a strong economy simply by their legal diamonds, extensive cattle industry and gorgeous tourism attractions. The beautiful environs extend beyond man-made borders into the once most frequented world of untamed rivers, game parks and lush farmlands, famous for tobacco. Zimbabwe finished singing her swan-song long ago. Today, reversed racism has annihilated her soil’s fertility, murdered any opposition to the present powers-that-be and silenced any public voice pleading for justice. Without any fuel available to transport goods or food anywhere, her people starve as they prey on each other, blinded by a dictator’s promises for more than four decades.

Several factors contribute to Southern African children left behind to fend for themselves. Their main objective is trying to stay alive, let alone enjoying the luxury of literacy or a hope for any change in the future. With harden hearts and suspicion suppressed by empty stomachs, they beg from every white face for sweets and pens. Well-intending tourists respond out of guilt, thinking it a blessing to sustain this humiliating habit while only worsening their dependence on Western charity.

Continuing south, we meet the two lands of milk and honey. The republics of Namibia and South Africa . Both democracies are barely ten years old. Both are fiercely defending their right to independence from European rule in the last two centuries. Both surviving terrible atrocities and sacrifices for the belief in a new integrated future between black and white. Both have defied the international world’s sceptic expectations of civil wars before their re-births. Both have been hurt in the past, abused by self-serving men and her body caries the scars of drastic measures of self-defence against treats, both internal and outside her borders.

Focusing on my homeland, the rainbow nation of the New South Africa: through endurance and forgiveness we have grown into a stunning woman of the globe. Dressed in an indigenous style, making decisions with business savvy and honed survival sense, she has become the popular hostess to many international leaders visiting her estate.

We still have a very far way to go, poverty, HIV/Aids, lack of educational and basic medical services limit the progress of many individuals. Despite our horrific past, the future is shining bright under the final authority of our Lord. While wars rage in other desert countries, this semi-arid world is a testimony to how God’s love still overcomes man’s wickedness by preserving this tip of Africa. Christ’s strange message of loving one’s enemies, leading through servant hood and humility as the chief characteristic of a King has been proven true once again!

“Africa is the place where we will confront our own humanity, our morality, our purposes as individuals and as a country.”

– Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, American Economist

Getting out of the Monastery: memoirs of an escapee.

2011-06-16T17:29:00.011+02:00

I am reforming my website (www.vision.givengain.org)to accomodate 'Global Community Advancement' - our new ministry. So I need to delete some of my older projects, but I want to save the precious history of all the stories and people tied up in them. Chavvah is one of them. MISSING YOU LADIES!!

August 2005:
A year into my studies here at DTS and I felt useless. I had managed to remedy the catastrophic consequences on my GPA taking Greek Honors somewhere in my past. I had committed to a lovely local church and served in the youth ministry for twelve months. Some of the American members even joined me on two of the four different mission outreaches I went on in Africa during the summer. But I still had the distinct impression that I had only been going through the motions.
Something was missing.

I attended (and still do) a weekly SF group which began with a bit of a disturbance. Although we had sorted ourselves out since then I still went because I had to, not because I felt like I belonged there.

Worst of all, I felt like I was beginning another year in the Dallas Monastery…yes, the monastery and not a convent and was missing the excitement of having non-Christian friends and colleagues.

This thought hit me one afternoon when I was buying a cheese burger at Jack-in-the-Box across the street and a local man noticed my accent. He asked me where I came from and what I was doing here. When I told him, he had no idea what or where Dallas Theological Seminary was.

September 2005:
Unless I took drastic action, the fields of my spiritual reproduction would lie barren until I got out of this place and connected to reality in another zip code. DTS training and leadership opportunities aim at a specific demographic into which I did not quite fit. I came to DTS from twelve years in an ungracious corporate world, dominated by bisexuals, rich geniuses and New Age humanitarians but plan to go back there and still affect a relevant impact on their realities.

What could I do? Where could I practice all the good stuff I’ve been getting in since I arrived? Who could possible need my contribution while they were also struggling to find time between classes, reading and assignments due? Taking Creativity with Prof. Hendricks generated several options in my over-caffeinated imagination.

Two easy questions came to mind: who am I and what are my top five needs?
I wanted to feel like;
1. I belong here in Swiss Tower as an individual,
2. I had a family-nucleus to love on and cry with,
3. I could add value into like-minded hearts to reach beyond DTS,
4. Have an excuse to throw a party every week, and
5. Have physical contact with other human beings without breaking any codes of conduct.

Setting off on a localized surveillance-operation, I became determined to flush out other prisoners of our introverted environment of spiritual consumerism. They needed to match the following profile: un-male, un-married, non-ThM and non-locals.

Thus a few Swiss Single Females went underground and founded Chavvah* - the sexy sisterhood after the matron saint of Bridget Jones. Don’t tell anybody but we meet on weekly and give each other pedicures while discussing sneaky ways of infiltrating scary places like Starbucks and other organizations.

In addition to our principle of celebrating cellulite we exist to affirm others and practice contentment in where God has us in life. Our most powerful strategy remains getting together with our designated prayer-partner at a secret location each to pray and encourage one another for the week ahead.

December 2005:
I loved going to school this semester! Especially one class where we numbered no more than seventeen. It freaked me out a bit in the beginning when I had to bare my insecure soul to a room full of married men and the three other ladies. We read our work out loud to each other and receive honest critique and encouragement every time we got together.

Looking back, that will probably be the DTS class that lives on in my heart forever no matter where I go after I graduate. One of our classmates almost died in hospital during last month and our professor needed to get rides from us after class every day because she had also been in a serious accident.

February 2006:
After thorough investigation, I have found that authentic community can exist in the land of the lonely. May God help me finish strong in cultivating hope here in my own home of the needy…

*Hebrew for chique chicks

Tree of Life

2011-03-10T13:43:00.000+02:00

In my new garden
there’s a yellow wall,
it’s high enough to keep the dogs out
yet low enough to share the lemon tree.
Sweet scents
Bright fruit
Mediterranean dreams

In my new home
there’s a bright blue door,
it’s thick enough to keep in the music
yet open enough to share the morning sun.
Yellow rays
Warm breaths
Welcoming friends

In my new year
there’s a green young tree,
it’s strong enough to endure winter’s frost
yet supple enough to take life’s knocks.
Unknown neighbours
New memories
Risking our loves

Mama Mia

2010-10-06T15:33:00.000+02:00

when your time here
becomes a moment in
my fragile melody and poem
you always whisper a promise
of grace forever in thought
my answer a teary breath
imagining your pure being
free of death
whole by his Journey
dancing to reflect his Light

nomads

2009-02-10T19:07:00.000+02:00

always moving
at peace with uncertainty
welcoming change
at a moment’s notice

incessant searching
selfish about freedom
possessing choice
at the highest price

unplanned company
delighted in surprise
being alone
together

in this landscape of loneliness
neutrality disappears
with the lush green distance
between us

dust settles
under summer rain
showers the gift
fellowship

as you offer me
another
gin and tonic
your presence

candlelight

2009-02-10T18:33:00.002+02:00

before you came
I stood frozen in the black
night
wild
hands stretched out ahead
feeling nothing
blue eyes staring
sensing darkness
surrounding me

an unplanned spark
or what was that?
initial
uncertain
flickering
courage growing into regular heart rates
pulsing yellow heat upward
shining stronger
honeyed comfort
delight covers everything I see, hear, think

your calming presence floods
our rooms
my body
mind
future
your careful affections warm me towards your soul
we melt
slow
careful
ending as one

Australia

2009-02-10T18:21:00.002+02:00

ash grey magic
cattle hooves thunder
mountains smoke
orange sunset journeys
you sang me to you
I listened

cold water
bucket shower sighs
sweet pink lips
beer foam smiles
I sang you to me
you joined in our song

sun burnt skins shine
ancient melodies lull
you told me your stories
I gave you my heart
to love you
is to let you go

will you sing me to you again?

angry tears

2009-02-10T18:20:00.001+02:00

my mind’s eye dreams elegance
my mouth stumbles through adjectives:
columns weave together beams
careful design
details proportioned
textured scale
diffused shade
shapes beauty

your eyes drink in my solutions
your brain chokes my early flaws
supreme intelligence:
must eliminate my mistakes
must avoid chaos
disordering my ideas
distills into rigidity
one right answer must exist
not mine

I am process
flowing
you are facts
fixed

I am rough
becoming
you are accurate
obvious

I am stupid
while you feel insulted

grace

2008-11-11T12:26:00.000+02:00

grace
is the name of a girl
in the words of a boy

when feeling content
at the moment of loss

knowing all play was fair
believes all things are possible

it makes me cry in the morning
gives me peace at goodbye

holding you with an open hand
receiving your love without conditions

asking for more on my side of the altar
embracing my solitude just being with you

singing Hannah’s song after giving you up
glimpsing Job’s patience soaked in your hospitality

not getting what I want
yet wanting what I have

still believes the power of hope
and sees the colours after the rain

grace
is still the name of a girl
after the words of a boy

Ode to Willie Nelson

2008-11-11T12:25:00.001+02:00

a concert of choices
composed of desires
scattered across the Canadian prairie

at the end of a season
touring detours of faith
tremors through body, soul and mind

backstage pass leading
to answered questions
new melodies call from the future

six, seven, eight years
along heaven’s score
returning the music to me

birth

2008-11-11T12:23:00.000+02:00

moving into life
crossing the dimension of eternity into flesh
your tiny body known to me
before your first breath outside water

watching you grow and play and laugh
hearing your mother sob next to your hospital bed
loosing her future dreams for her boy
seeing you overcome pain, restraint and fear

struggling to find your balance again

moving into life
crossing the dimension of normal into special
your broken body known to me
before your first step on earth

listening to your music and jokes and cries
absorbing thoughtless words, pitiful stares
growing new visions inside your head of far away places, solutions and life
watching you fly and dive and glide into hearts and mountains and dreams

needing to find space for your courageous chest with its powerful heart

moving into life
crossing the dimension of boy to man
your mature body known to me
before your first kiss on her hand

tasting your lonely tears in the snow
storing your faithful prayers on my timeline for your life
opening your mind’s eye to needs and hurts of those yet unseen
preparing your mind with words and works and wars

creating a hunger in your soul that I will satisfy

the session

2008-11-11T12:22:00.000+02:00

two and a half hours at six units each
two for eyes
two for ears

pixels flash and blur and glow
thoughts of heart and mind and soul

cautious truths and shameless sins
mixed with jest, concern and grace

two and a half hours at six units each
two for cherries
two for lilies

midges bug, dead bears concur
dad pops by to grunt ‘hallo’

questions drift upon the tide
heaving pillows waves ebb and high

two and a half hours at six units each
two for fear
two for faith

spring time sun, falling night
southern light, a northern moon

dawning dreams with passport stamps
searching clues along life’s map

two and a half hours at six units each
two for hope
two for joy

conflicts fly, battles end
blood and love will comprehend

mother moose, Father God
hunter grows from sand and snow

two and a half hours at six units each
one for me
one for you
becoming friends

xeno refugee watch 1

2008-08-05T22:30:00.000+02:00

Three o’clock on a warm winter afternoon. My Woolworths suede boots struggle across the rocks and rubbish along the side of the tarred road. I smell urine and dust. Foreign dialects and babies crying tug at my attention.

To my right, groups of East African men huddle together in front of a brand new razor fence that has been pushed over and now lies flat on the yellow African wild grass. Weary heads nod at us in friendly acknowledgment. Some older men gather their bones and walking sticks to shuffle towards us.
“Mama,” they say to Sister Ané with much respect.
Hands shake, smiles shared.
“How are you doing today?” she asks in her strong Belfast accent.
“OK, today.”
Brows bow in despair.
“Are you really ok?” she asks again.
“No, I am not well.”

On my left, the neglected refugee camp stretches beyond my own horizon. Tired mothers with sick children on their hips queue outside a brand new MSF mobile clinic. As we walk towards the open gate, a bright red van is about to pull out with MSF 8 written on the front door. Doctors Without Borders volunteers greet us friendly yet with well-earned caution. Short introductions follow, with official mandates and concerns shared through the driver’s window.

Inside the car, Nicole, a Canadian psychiatrist expresses her worries and struggles to contain her anger with the situation. On the outside, we know exactly what she is upset about and silently send up prayers of thanks for an international individual joining our forces to get the world’s attention about what is going on and what is not happening.
“This government want the 2010 World Cup to come here, but look at this!” she says in disgust.
“It is almost like China and the Olympics,” I reply.
“We will be here until tonight if you get me started on that one,” she responds.

Inside the larger camp, I meet James, a Rwandan with film-making experience and the local leader for his countrymen. He tells me about how he acted as one of the soldiers in Hotel Rwanda when it was shot here in South Africa some years ago. I share my short stories about the two times I went to visit and work in his home country. I show him a few dance moves of one of Rwanda’s folk songs which I learnt there. He laughs at me.
“I can see you know how to do it,” he says and stares into the distance for a few seconds, “that is a beautiful song’s dance that you are doing.”

James asks me about what I saw last year when I went to his country. I tell him about how peaceful it seemed and he assures me that it will always look like that to visitors because that is part of their culture. Rwandans will always appear very polite and welcoming to each other in the presence of visitors. He tells me the same story I’ve heard from many of my Rwandan friends; how the genocide had nothing to do with genetics but with power and politics.

“I don’t trust the current Rwandan government,” he says with heavy suspicion flashing in his eyes.
“I have a Congolese friend who is married to a South African and he tells me the same,” I respond.
“Did you know that it was a Tutsi leader who started the massacre of Tutsi’s in 1994?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
We talk some more about how superficial transformation can be when a country gets lots of press attention and foreign aid after a tragedy or regime has come to an official end. I try to steer the conversation to a more hopeful direction.
“I have a Rwandan name that was given to me the moment I crossed into your country from Uganda by a Rwandan friend Neshimwe¬¬,”
“Do you know what it means?” he asks me with one broken front tooth spoiling his perfect smile.
“God be praised,” I answer.
“Yes, we must pray. This country is killing me and has taken my future.”
“Yes, I am sorry that you have to feel like this. I am so ashamed at how my fellow South Africans are treating you.”
“Did you know that Colorado Film School asked me to come and study with them? But the man at Home Affairs just told me that I should get into America like I got into South Africa and that he will not give me any papers to go to America.”

He asks me for my phone number before our little group starts to move further south towards the Muslim camp.
“I am very careful to give my phone number to strange men,” I say and move closer to my colleague who visits with the refugees on a daily basis, “I will be back and then we can talk about contact information.”
“I am not a cheater,” he says with a laugh and points to his wedding ring, “I will see you at another time, then. Thank you for coming to visit us.”

We progress slowly. So many people in need that want two minutes of our time and eye contact, a word of hope or promise, a gentle human touch of their cold hands or arms or sad faces. On our way past the treeless field where the UN had promised to put up a tent which still lies in a store room to date, I see an empty cartridge case lie in front of my feet. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. When we reach the tar road we have to stop three times to visit with small gatherings of men before we can turn left again into the Muslim camp.

A young man walks up to us and greet my friends by their names. With their sleeves pulled over their hands preventing them from touching the skin of infidels, he reaches out to us fighting back tears.
He shows the left side of his face to Sister Ané where the fresh burn wounds are healing. He caught alight while he was asleep when a candle fell on him. He did not loose anything valuable to the fire, only his mattress.
“Luckily, only me got burnt,” he said to me.
“Does it still hurt?” I ask.
“No.”

I am wearing a corduroy pants with high heel boots¬¬ not the ideal Islam dress code for a blonde woman walking into Somaliland. There are no women to be seen behind the row of plastic portable toilets. The men seem not to upset about three white women walking into their afternoon.
“What is your name?” I finally ask the young man.
“Farrah.”
“Where are you from?”
“Somalia.”
I listen to his precious story of how he started a business in Port Elizabeth and was forced to leave his family behind after similar violence occurred from local South Africans and he had to flee to Johannesburg. Pointing to his bare left foot I see the scar of an old bullet wound.

One of the older men along the road who caught Sister Ané’s attention with his asthmatic chest joined in my conversation with Farrah. I admit that I had not yet been to their country but that I did taste traditional samoosas prepared by an Ethiopian friend of mine who runs a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas.
“Oh, but have you tasted a Somali meal in one of these mansions?” he asks with a shimmer in his ancient eyes. Pointing to the tiny shacks made of blankets and wooden planks behind him.
“No, I must admit, sir. I haven’t,” I say smiling.
“You should try it someday. With all the nice chilies and spices.”
“Hmmm…,” I answer, “I have been meaning to ask you about some decorating tips, though. I have never seen anything so breath-taking before.”

We joke together some more and after Farrah discovered that I am older than him, he stretches out a bare fist to touch my knuckles this time in camaraderie, Rasta-style. I assure them that they are not alone in this struggle and that we will be back to visit with them soon.
“Next time I will wear something different,” I promise.
“Yes,” the short, grey, gourmet cook replies, ”you must not wear those shoes again.” Pointing to my heels he elaborated with more fashion advice, “with your length they are too high and next time you must wear a loose dress with slits on the sides.”
At that moment a women and presumably her husband walks in from the street. She is covered from head to toe with not even her eyes showing.
“I apologise if I offended anybody,” I say as we start moving towards the gate again. They all shake their heads and smile.
“You should pray that we have much wisdom tomorrow when we work on the proposal for government about your situation,” I ask.
“Yes, five times a day, we will,” the unofficial clan leader replies.
“You are very reliable in that aspect, aren’t you? We will also pray.” I say.
“Yes, God will listen to you, even when you are women.”

With that we said goodbye and was delayed for another thirty minutes between our car and them less than a hundred meters away. We spoke a few words to a Congolese woman in a wheelchair who was injured in Angola on her way to South Africa. Probably by an old, Russian landmine.

As I reached my home, in a posh suburban neighbourhood on the Eastern side of town, I couldn’t wait to get into the shower. I walked through my own bedroom that would fit six of the Somali mansions I saw earlier. With bare feet on clean cool tiles I turned into a corridor which leads to my personal bathroom. Simple; only a shower, basin and toilet squeezed into the minimum space. Actually quite dated compared to what the magazines would proclaim as stylish, yet I had running warm water at the turn of a tap.

Just after I stroked the first few shaves off my wintry white calves, I noticed that my nail polish on my big toes had chaffed away from my new boots. How beautiful were those ‘scarred’ feet to me now.

As I type, I remember that I left that cartridge case in my pants pocket on the floor where it still lies right now. I think of Farrah’s healed left foot and James’ chipped left front tooth sitting with them around a small fire in that camp tonight. Hoping to survive the darkness and unknown morning that awaits them after I shut down my laptop.

I wonder who cares about these 1300 people sleeping on the ground a few blocks away from the Roslyn rubbish heap. I wonder why it took me three months before going there myself. I wonder what I would say to the lady in the wheelchair when she asks me the same question again when next I see her; why is God letting this happen?

And I think of a quote that I heard from a South African farmer somewhere on 50/50 last night saying; the way that we human beings live, demands that we have to experience a crisis before we will change.

groen geel appels

2008-03-10T17:20:00.001+02:00

groen vlaktes in die verte
geel gerwe naby my
grasse waai
lewe dans
vrede groei in my binneste

mosambiek se see roer
water skommel teen die dow se planke
eenvoudige vissermanne wag
oranje sonsakstrale kleur
ou geskeurde lap seil voue

grenslose spasie skep-skep sout lug teue

marmer appel lyf
gekou gevorm
rug lyn glad gekurf
mooi skoonheid kyk vorentoe
vrouwees boude boobs gesond

waiting for breath

2008-03-10T17:08:00.000+02:00

divine breath
exhaled, over a Windhoek Light
from dirt we come
in dirt we live
fragile

breathe out fear
breathe in light
breathe out pain
breathe in love
breathe out shame
breathe in grace

sanctified mud
purged from within, let go of
left behind hurts
failures forgotten
peace

breathe out fear
breathe in light
breathe out pain
breathe in love
breathe out shame
breathe in grace

divine flesh
smiling at me, closeness
friends by accident
friends by choice
intimacy
forever

dark light

2008-01-30T01:27:00.000+02:00

I am the rain
I am the desert
I am the Lake of Tranquillity
“I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it…”

Wet, red, saturates African soil
Summer cloud, banks, screwed
Crops rotten, criminals reign
“I believe in the sun, even when I don’t see it…”

Abandoned horizons, quivering
Hope asphyxiated, freedomless
Justice stumbling through this wilderness
“I believe in God, even when He’s quiet…”

Lifeless fountain, nourishing dust
Promises wax and wane, eclipsed
When will your rainbowpeople rise?
“I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it…”

a poem for Jaco

2008-01-27T04:57:00.000+02:00

this page so small,
your impact so great,
you patiently keep guard
with your dark calf-like eyes,
beyond my busy-ness,
unkept house
and thundering thighs
seeing spontaneous beauty inside,
hidden in the fog
of cautious calculations,
invisible expectations

despite your three degrees
you make me feel like a genius
you give your undivided attention
to my private fears,
pointless remarks,
about raindrops,
snails and stars
yet you seek my opinion
on matters of importance,
trusting my gut
and what my spirit eyes see

fighting your insistent analysis
and accurate assumptions
you take time to talk
to my cats
as you rush
to another appointment
yet I know little
of your family story
only that your mom raised you godly
and your dad died too early

you lavish love on so many
spending time,
money
and prayers
on AIDS orphans,
searching teenagers
and my parents when I’m gone

traveling across continents
and cultures
too many to count
riding on camels in Middle East dunes,
skiing in the Rockies
and sailing around Sydney
still,
desert colors
and textures
in your home
remain confusingly formal

Mendelssohn soars
over your new suede couch
hovering over a hand carved bowl
of wood
hugging the purple
of dried passion-fruits inside
how fickle the heart
how hopeless the fight
when heaven declares
the time is right

patient painter

2007-11-18T05:08:00.000+02:00

sensitive fingertips guide the pathway of his eyes
drinks in the coloured contours of a body bared for his discerning
limbs arranged on standard white canvas planes
searching for the main theme
collecting the fundamentals

ancient observations create the spectrum of his palette
dedicated determination achieves confidence in his strokes
emotions temporarily restrained
seeking order from chaos
remembering exact proportions

skilful love heals souls inside broken vessels
restoring dignity to forgotten forms and functions
cast aside once the work is finished
passionate shades of red on green
once again life spilt and lived
your glorious beauty

(thanking God for creating you)

nie te min

2007-10-17T08:31:00.000+02:00

ek is wie ek is
net myself
hier
nou

nie te min

is hulle wie hulle is
oor wie jy was
toe

nie te min

kan ons kies wie ons word
oor wie Hy is
vir altyd
genoeg

die DIT van alles vir MY

2007-10-07T07:26:00.000+02:00

die kuns van kuns lê opgesluit in harmonie
die harmonie van kuns lê opgesluit in balans
die balans van harmonie lê opgesluit in eenvoud
die eenvoud VAN ALLES IS DIE WEG
die weg bring mens tot skoonheid
skoonheid is kuns
tot waar kuns ophou
alles sal eendag ophou
as alles ophou, word alles nuut
ook skoonhei in eenvoud
skoonheid as eenvoud
verbeel dit NOU?!
verbeel JOU nou?!

deur Theodor Bredell
vir my Spring Poetry Evening
8 September 2007

lente seën

2007-09-27T07:44:00.000+02:00

September reën oor die droë Hoëveld
Meng skoon stof met gister se verbrande as
Jong broodboomblare rek ver agteroor
Glans groen glad soos warm bietjies was

Oostewind kielie-koek my hare teen my wang
Swaar palmtakke stamp kop teen die rand van my dak
Warm beker tee stoom keelaf op my lip
Mannetjies-kat liefie-liefie teen my trui en kennebak

Wie hou hierdie aardbol, skeef aan’t die draai in sy sagte omgee hand?
Wie roer die seegetye telkens klokslag met die maan?
Wie glimlag oor my drome in stil gedagtes elke aand?
Wie belowe hy’s langs my deur die seisoene van my toekoms - altyd saam.

Taantjie skat

2007-09-14T11:44:00.000+02:00

Taantjie skat
Jou liewe kind
Blinkoog slim
Vol vrae en grappies

Taantjie skat
Jou liefste kind
Ligte lyfie vloei in my arms in
Sodra ek kniel of buk of sit

Taantjie skat
Jou pa se kind
Vol vlermuis streke
Sand en springtou slaap saam in jou bed

Taantjie skat
Jou ma se kind
My gebede vou om jou hele wese
Haar geloof en hoop en lewenslus

Taantjie skat
Jou liefling kind
Ons vriendskap sku
Skaars twee weke jonk

Appelkoosbloeisel

2007-09-05T03:08:00.000+02:00

Salomo sing sy liefde oor die wingerd uit,
haar songesoende hare wip in die wind
en laat hom aan sy spogmerrie dink.
antieke geure
gedink
gedroom
gefluister
gebloos
Sedert Adam se droom smag die mens na sy rib.

baba duifies kruip in die witstinkhoutboom se takke weg
winter volmaan loop leeg met elke swaarkry traan
eerste Afrika lente in dertigveertigmaande
lanternlig asem jasmyn en lelielug
kampvuur vlamme lek
klam houtstompe suis
rooiwyn herdenk
sterre skiet
Kaalvoet oor die koel kleiteëls.

beloofde nuwe lewe druk deur ou geharde bas
gebede smeek vir dapperheid teen bekende vrese:
maak ons naak voor U verkose keuses
opgebruikte hoop
gesteelde skaamte
gestorwe lywe
herstel in heerlikheid
keel nog vol rooi skaliestof
klam palms skraap steeds moed bymekaar
onverwags verras hy my
Mooiste wilde blom.

evolution

2007-09-05T03:06:00.000+02:00

Entropy reigns on a cloudy Saturday morning.
Continuous question: will she make it to the toilet on time?
Latex gloves separate,
luke-warm water,
cold on mom’s receding nappy rash.
Late night conversations about men and sex and life.
Silent surrender: did I deny myself in vain?
Mom’s husband married a virgin and so will mine.
Natural selection has pre-destined that I will not.

I don't understand the question

2007-08-09T08:45:00.000+02:00

This was written for another blog in response to the following question:
"Where are the Christian hang out spots?"...

What I'm about to say must be seen in the perspective of one recently out and back in the world from three years at Seminary in lalaland in the southern districts of the North American Oilfields...where I had to sign a piece of paper promising not to use tobacco or liquor nor wear flip-flop sandals or jeans on campus while feeding on God's Word and centuries of male dominated church history...

To quote some popular wristbands and other fridge magnets:
"What would Jesus do?"

If you don't like smoke or intoxicated people, then the botanical gardens sound like an option. Personally, I welcome the patrons' original conversations and lack of pre-rehearsed excuses for their unbelief in the locations you've described above, precisely because their intellectual fears and need for social acceptance seems to be taken care of by beverages served in the hang-outs where they choose to go to...as a follower of Christ, I often enjoy being a fly against the wall with a whiskey on the rocks as I spy on the reality of those who I feel drawn to love for His sake.

As a non-smoker (ever) myself, I really start praying when my sinuses are protesting but generally the challenge of making friends in communities where saints fear to go over-ride my personal preferences for convenience. Ironically, every time I pull on my leather jacket and pick up the faint scent of last weekend it fires up my determination to be pleasantly surprised by a future conversation with a fellow mortal who doesn't know all the answers...

If the music is making me aggressive or too flirty, I leave.
If the guys enjoying their beers are singing rugby-songs, I don't even enter the building.
If I have to dodge balloon-swinging-face-painted-toddlers at the salad-bar or listen to non-stop bitchy comments about horrible office colleagues, I consider watching a movie instead.

I admit: I don't check before hand if I have sufficient shampoo/washing-powder/hot water to deal with the price of being alive/able to spend time and money on activities of leisure/whether I am determined to win a soul for Christ today.
I just dump my smelly clothes in the laundry bag and crash in my comfy bed.

With my ears still ringing from sternum-throbbing-music, I find my favourite position amidst an ocean of pillows and duvet-waves smelling like fabric-softener. As blood returns to my shoeless toes, I am dumb-founded by the fact that despite several layers of clothing, smoke can still find a way to the item of underwired underwear I planed to wear to church tomorrow...

Why do you want to hang out?

If you need a break from wherever the week's demands consume your energies - by all means hit the coffee bars' non-smoking section as Roger suggests...or go to the theatre for movies, dance or drama...or just have a milkshake at a nursery and enjoy the quiet beauty of God's creativity.

If you want to avoid offensive, lonely and often selfish people who need God, stay at home, take a bubble bath and read very selectively.

Like I say, I don't understand the question....

If we're serious about being what this blog/conference/conversation is about etc....we need to:
ask the right questions and be willing to adjust the parameters which determine our personal concepts of comfort when we find the answers.

My default-guide-to-wisdom-question as asked by a fellow traveler to Amahoro:
"...why were the prostitutes, tax-collectors...(fill in your preferred choice of outcast-demographic here)...so comfortable with Jesus?" - Bob Pyne -

...I am still trying to figure this one out...

Easter Blessing

2007-04-10T08:36:00.000+02:00

He made the stars
He measured the seas
He breathed his wind into man
and conquered death by his Love.
May you know the Hope
that Easter-morn brings,
who invites you to call on his Name
and live in his Light.

TIK

2007-02-10T10:16:00.001+02:00

I destroy homes,
I tear families apart,
take hold of your children, and that’s just the start.
I’m more costly than diamonds,
more precious than gold.
The sorrow I bring is a sight to behold.

If you need me, remember:
I’m easily found.
I live all around you – in schools and in town.
I live with the rich,
I live with the poor,
I live down the street, and maybe next door.

I’m made in a lab,
but not like you think,
I can be made under the kitchen sink.
In your child’s closet,
and even in the woods.
If it scares you to death, well it certainly should.

I have many names,
but there’s one you know best,
I’m sure you’ve heard of me,
my name is Crystal Meth.
My power is awesome,
try me you’ll see.
But if you do, you may never break free.

Just try me once,
and I might let you go,
but try me twice,
and I’ll own your soul.
When I possess you, you’ll steal and you’ll lie,
you'll do what you have to – just to get high.

The crimes you’ll commit from my narcotic charms
will be worth the pleasure you’ll feel in your arms,
- your lungs and your nose.
You’ll lie to your mother,
you'll steal from your dad,
when you see their tears, you should feel sad.

But you’ll forget your morals and how you were raised,
I’ll be your conscience,
I’ll teach you my ways.
I’ll take kids from their parents,
and parents from their kids.
I turn people from God, and separate friends.

I’ll take everything from you,
your looks and your pride.
I’ll be with you always
– right by your side.
You’ll give up everything;
– your family, your home, your friends, your money,
then you’ll be alone.

I’ll take and take, till you have nothing more to give.
When I’m finished with you,
you'll be lucky to live.
If you try me – be warned – this is no game,
if given the chance, I’ll drive you insane.

I’ll ravish your body,
I’ll control your mind,
I’ll own you completely, your soul will be mine.
The nightmares I’ll give you while you’re lying in bed,
the voices you’ll hear, from inside your head.
The sweats, the shakes, the visions you’ll see,
I want you to know – they are all gifts from me.

But then it’s too late,
and you’ll know in your heart,
that you are mine, and we shall not part.
You’ll regret that you tried me,
they always do, but you came to me, not I to you.
You knew this would happen,
many times you were told,
but you challenged my powers, and chose to be bold.

You could have said no,
and just walked away,
if you could live that day over,
now, what would you say?

I’ll be your master
You will be my slave
I’ll even go with you,
when you go to your grave.

Now that you’ve met me, what will you do?
Will you try me or not?
It’s all up to you.
I can bring you more misery than words can tell,
come,
take my hand,
let me lead you to hell!

(this poem was written by a young girl who was arrested for possession of illegal drugs - she was freed from jail but as her vivid words reveal, she was still a captive to this deadly substance)

I found it in the Christmas edition of our church's monthly magazine without any names to accredit. As a community, we've lost several young people to suicides resulting from the hopelessness they reach from their drug-addictions.

These families are our responsibility and God has provided us with his church to live in authentic vulnerability among one another:
to be honest about your child's alcohol problem and admit your sense of failure as a parent,
to ask for help when your wife is slipping into depression and you don't know how to fix her any more,
to confess your obsession with pornography to a caring brother that can help you carry your burdens toward recovery,
to admit your fledgling affair to your confronting sister who can pray for a new job away from your tempting colleague.

Real Christianity involves more than believing the true doctrine, living the moral lifestyle and staying busy with holy activities:
it is about showing non-judgemental love toward those of us who make it hard for you to stand our sad company,
it is about loving those immoral people around you who have messed up our own chances through our unwise decisions,
it is about having time to befriend the hopeless loved ones of such relational hemorrhage.

True Christianity demands that we look at other human beings through the eyes of Jesus Christ:
who drank wine with materialistic government officials,
befriended lonely sex-workers
and hugged repugnant HIV/AIDS patients.

To help those humiliated creatures feel as comfortable in your gracious presence as we do in His.

Mission Impossible

2007-02-03T06:17:00.001+02:00

“What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” – Micha 6:8

God-willing, I will join twenty-five fellow South Africans from over ten different denominations on our way to Uganda for the first international conversation Towards a Post-Colonial Church in Africa in May 2007. Dr. Bob Pyne told me about Amahoro*-Africa while I was finishing my last semester on American soil. This is why I continue to go where Hummers fear to tread:

“12/7/2006: Well, this is my second-last day in Africa, and I’m actually sad to be leaving the country...I have had a phenomenal experience in Moz (Mozambique), primarily thanks to you. You were the first person to tell me about Africa, nonetheless to invite me to come. You were the first to make me aware of the hunger and needs of Christians in Africa – and I will always remember you for this outstanding gifts.
On the outreach itself, I felt like you prepared me as best you could, and I was somewhat comfortable from the start because of the things you told us. I don’t want you to think you failed us at all. While I’ve been here I’ve learned so much from you and your dad. Not just facts, stats and history about Africa – which you know are very important to me, but also about emphasizing what REALLY matters and putting down what is not important.
You and the rest of the group were good at focusing on the essentials – Christ and leaning on Him. Also I think you were a great example of being sensitive to cultural differences and making me aware of them. I appreciate your investment in me very much.
I also think I’ve learned a little about what Evangelism is and about not being pushy and colonial or arrogant on the whole, the entire process of coming and voyaging north with your church has been a wonderful growth experience. I haven’t even said anything about how the people there impacted me. I will miss you very much in the future. Thank you again. Very sincerely, Jesse “

Two years ago in September of 2004, when I first came to Dallas to start my studies at DTS, I taught Jesse and his youth group with a fellow DTSer, Jonathan at a Skillman Bible Church. He is still a mentor to this phenomenal young man.

Jesse was one of the brightest teenagers, always concentrating and asking intelligent questions about life beyond his own world. In 2005, Jonathan and two other Americans joined me in South Africa on a few reconnaissance trips into two other African countries, Namibia and Mozambique.

The Bible records a story, in the ninth chapter of John’s gospel of a blind man who had trouble seeing life for what it really was. He begged Jesus to heal his eyes. God restored his sight and everybody in the region knew that a miracle had occurred. The educated, high society of the day had many explanations.

These skeptics argued that his disability was just consequence of his parents and/or his own sins. Jesus disagreed. When asked to explain the reason for this poor man’s suffering, humiliation and pain during all of his life, the God-man responded: “No, it was not because of anybody’s sins but allowed into his life with the purpose to be set free from it, for the sake of God’s glory…”

On the last Sunday before I left South Africa in August 2004, this passage was branded upon my soul. It defined the unspoken question confronting me as an African leaving for a foreign land in search of greater understanding.
Is Africa poor, hungry and left desolate to suffer alone because of her own sins or those perpetrated by her colonial parents?

I believe Jesus’ reply would be the same: “No, but that the glorious power of the Living God might be revealed to all the earth.”
How will I respond to this challenge?
May each day of my life tell His story of sacrificial love.
May I never cease to inspire every mortal He sends across my path to put their trust in Him.
May I grow in skillfulness and influence to mobilize more souls as part of His supernatural solution to the need of Africa!

“Sixty-five hundred Africans are dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease. And it is not a priority for the West: two 9/11s a day, eighteen jumbo jets of fathers, mothers, families falling out of the sky. No tears, no letters of condolence, no fifty-one-gun salutes. Why? Because we don’t put the same value on African life as we put on a European or American life. God will not let us get away with this, history certainly won’t let us get away with our excuses.
We say we can’t get these antiretroviral drugs to the farthest reaches of Africa, but we can get them our cold fizzy drinks. The tiniest little village, you can find a bottle of Coke.
Look, if we really thought that an African life was equal in value to an English, a French, or an Irish life, we wouldn’t let two and a half million Africans die every year for the stupidest reasons: money. We just wouldn’t.
And a very prominent head of state said to me: “It’s true. If these people weren’t Africans, we just couldn’t let it happen.” We don’t really deep down believe in their equality. I can’t say...but it was a head of state who was ashamed. It actually scandalized him. We have written off Africans. So the next step in the journey of equality is to get to a place where we accept that you cannot choose your neighbor.
In the Global Village, distance no longer decides who is your neighbor, and “Love thy neighbor” is not advice, it’s a command.”
– Bono, November 2002 –

Mission impossible?

In the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Mary responds to a supernatural challenge proposed to her by the angel of the Lord: “ For nothing will be impossible with God.”

In Africa we have a saying:
“If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together”.

The church in Africa needs the church in America to become informed about how their country and her decisions affect African lives and become godly stewards of that responsibility.

Do you have the faith in our God to become personally involved in revealing God’s glory to the entire world, right where you are―in the land of the free?

* means peace in many Bantu languages. When Africans from different tribes greet one another with a hand shake, hug or kiss and say “amahoro”, they are professing their hope for a better future.

Mentor memo one: Saint Paul from Ireland

2007-01-11T18:19:00.000+02:00

BONO IN CONVERSATION:
Introducing another Saint Paul (Hewson aka Bono) [1]:

Born: May 10, 1960 in Dublin, Ireland, second and youngest son to their Protestant mother and Roman Catholic father. He lost his mom at age fourteen when she collapsed after coming home from her own father’s funeral. He attended an Ecumenical school, the first of its kind in Dublin.

Family: Bono married his high school sweetheart, Alison Steward in 1982 in an Anglican ceremony. They have four children: two girls: Jordan (1989), Memphis Eve (1991) and two boys: Elijah Bob Patricus Guggi Q (1999), and John Abraham (2001) and they are based in Killiney in south County Dublin and spend their ‘family month’ in Eze, France each year.

Occupations: Bono became the lead vocalist and song-writer for the rock band U2 started in 1976 (two years after the death of his mom). They believed that Rock ‘n Roll could change the world and they set out to do just that.

World changing mechanisms started by Bono and his team:
...2002: establishes DATA (debt AIDS trade Africa) with Bobby Shriver and other Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt Campaign activists
What does DATA do?
[www.data.org] DATA publishes international policies affecting Africa and hold the world leaders who make them accountable to their promises regarding;
1)Debt,
2)AIDS, TB and Malaria,
3)Trade,
4)Development Assistance and Millennium Challenge,
5)The Global Fund,
6)US Federal Budget,
7)Commission for Africa,
8)G8 ,
9)the IMF World Bank and
10)the World Summit

...2005: joining in a venture with his wife and a New York based Irish fashion designer began EDUN (‘nude’ spelt backwards)
What does EDUN do?
[www.edun.ie] EDUN shifts the focus of the international world on Africa from aid to trade.
EDUN aims to create/highlight existing factories in Africa, South America and India that serve as examples for employment to developing countries by practicing fair wages, good business ethics which will encourage investment in those and other countries.

...2006: most recently Bobby Shriver and Bono teamed up again to launch another initiative called Product Red
What does Product Red do?
[www.joinred.com] PRODUCT RED raises money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
They have collaborated with companies such as American Express, Apple Computer, Converse, Motorola, The Gap and Georgio Armani who have created products with the Product Red logo and so channeling a percentage of their profits to buying medicine for Africa.

Most recent recognitions:
• nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, 2005 and 2006
• awarded the Pablo Neruda International Presidential Medal of Honour from the Government of Chile in 2004
• named by Time as one of the “100 Most Influential People” in their May 2004 special issue
• named by Time as a Person of the Year along with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2005
• named in the annual honours list as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 as he could not be knighted because he is Irish.

A bird’s eye view through this dialogue between Bono and Michka Assayas and how it reveals Bono's leadership style:

This book tells the story of a young boy who grew up with a frustrated father who lost his wife too early. They lived in a country torn by religion and politics enforced by a colonial regime in poverty which drove most men to alcoholism. This boy joined a band at the age of sixteen and expressed his frustrations through music and art.

One day their band played in a concert that collected money to pay for food needed in Ethiopia. Bono and his wife of three years decided to visit this foreign country and worked in an orphanage together for a month. They discovered that this poor country paid back double of the money their concert generated in old debt to the First World while their citizens were starving.
This experience changed their lives and they started investing their subsequent celebrity status (which they call ‘currency’) to get the reality of Africa into the hearts of the rest of the world.

Bono uses his fame on two basic levels: first on the least spectacular level through all the various groups and organizations they support, they empower individuals by educating them and giving them opportunities to get involved on a personal level. Secondly on the public stage, he works through the various public figures he has come to know through his ‘rock-star-status’ to gain access to world leaders on all the different tiers involved in solving the wide spectrum of challenges that Africa face by introducing them to Africa first-hand and encounter the realities he wants them to help him with.

Bono on his passion: “ You become a single-issue protagonist. You represent a constituency that has no power, no vote, in the West, but whose lives are hugely affected by our body politic. Our clients are the people who are not in the president’s ear. My mouth, because of it, belongs to them.” (p104)

Bono about changing attitudes: “It turns out that a lot of things that you learn from being in a band are analogous to politics, even the so-called nasty old world of commerce, anywhere you’ve got to get your message across. I know much more than you’d expect about these things, just from trying to keep on top of U2’s business. We like to say our band is a gang of four, but a corporation of five. I understand economics. This is not all so difficult. U2 was art school, business school. It’s always the same attitude that wins the day: faith over fear. Know your subject, know your opponent. Don’t have an argument you can’t win. On the African stuff we can’t lose, because we’re putting our shoulder to a door God Almighty has already opened. We carry with us—this is something that’s important—the moral weight of an argument. That’s much bigger than the personalities having the debate. I might walk into an important office and people are looking at me as though I’m some sort of an exotic plant. But after a few minutes, they don’t see me. All they’re hearing is the argument, and the argument has some sort of moral force that they cannot deny. It’s bigger than you, and it’s bigger than them. And history has God on its side.” (p105-6)

Bono about himself: "I'm not saying I'm not good at the penthouse life--but I'm also good at the pavement. That's a source of pride for me, that I'm good at both. I'm good at the high life, I'm good at the low life. It's that middle where I lose it...No, I'm not a celebrity. I'm a scribbling, cigar-smoking, wine-drinking, Bible-reading band man. A show-off [laughs]...who loves to paint pictures of what I can't see. A husband, father, friend of the poor and sometimes the rich. An activist traveling salesman of ideas. Chess player, part-time rock-star, opera singer, in the loudest folk group in the world."

[1] Information assimilated from Kevin Byrne’s biography available at www.atu2.com, Wikipedea and the relevant biography by Mischka Assayas entitled 'Bono in conversation with Mischka Assayas', published by Riverhead Books (2006), 388 pages.

Dear Mr. Assayas and Mr. Hewson:
thank you for speaking this book into life,
it has changed mine forever,
for better.
Leani

Leani's Light

2006-12-12T17:50:00.000+02:00

Out of Africa she came, her thoughts

Wrapped in film, vision imparted at age ten,

Emboldened to risk and to write—

To take arms against a sea of indifference

To sound alarm for her people

Esther again, “If I perish, I perish”

Before King America, trembling, kneeling

Interceding for her tribe

Mother inclusive, stretching to put arms around

Faces that have names

Bodies warm but worn

Heroic woman, no longer the girl

Symbol of a Dark Continent consigned to occupy shadows

Barricades to block, seas that separate

Strokes across maps, man’s boundaries etched on earth

Divisions invisible with visible effects

To segregate and relegate

Midday sun erases shadows; the world flattens in glaring light

To reach every hidden place

Theater images pale, celluloid details recede

Words fall off scripts, dialogues cease

Reality revealed at the Son’s Appearing

Whose breath sucks pride from heartless foes

Whose hand reaches for the least of these

Whose heart holds the whole weary world

All at once

Uneven, leveled

Life more than here or there

Mysteries of human connection, faint but real

Tethered to Beyond, centered in One

One Lord One Faith One Baptism

And for now, one friend who embodies a nation

Who personifies love reaching beyond the cinema

by Carol Fruge’ 2006

frozen roses

2006-12-01T23:49:00.000+02:00

I saw my first real snow flakes yesterday
faerie stars blowing around my face
like watery seeds waiting to find the soil
dying as they landed on their destiny
– each one unrepeated for eternity.

I saw my first global dream take flight today
random faces introduced
dialects sharing secret ambitions
alike but now owned by all
American and African pilgrims
drawing their experiences together
– expecting crops next year.

I see my first place belonging with the lepers of today
forgotten souls
orphaned children raising families
without guidance or moral reference
God turning Africa’s fate around
needle by needle, pill by pill, hug by hug
– bearing fruit until we see Him again.

Ice-cube Jesus still in tact

2006-11-28T05:20:00.000+02:00

'Ice-cube Joseph has lost his staff but Ice-cube Jesus is still intact.'
She stood next to the candy shelves in the book center holding what looked like a miniature swizzle-stick in her hand.
Staring perplexed from the unsuccessful packaging to Ice-cube Mary's husband.
Soon-to-be Christmas time in Texas.
November 2006

'They predict a wintry mix for Thursday!'
They skip past the front desk to the back where textbooks and winter-school-class-notes wait.
Boxes stuffed with fake orange leaves tower in redundancy.
Soon-to-be-forgotten Thanksgiving in Dallas.
November 2006

'A few days, not a few weeks,' Arthur reminds me.
Yesterday we ate Jesus in the church, KFC on the road and cream-cheese in Houston.
Drinking in every conversation like the last swallow from our hike-battered-water-bottle.
Soon-to-be-missed South African in Dallas.
November 2006

America's most powerful day

2006-11-07T04:31:00.000+02:00

"By voting on November 7th, every American can get involved in the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty, by exercising our most precious and fundamental right," said DNC Communications Director Karen Finney. "We're pleased to join in support of such an important issue and encourage every American to vote and make their voice heard on Election Day."

"This is something all Americans can do together," said RNC Spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. "We are happy to play a part in the critical battle to eradicate poverty and global AIDS."

"ONE Vote" brings together Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Don Cheadle, New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady, singer songwriter Toby Keith, Alfre Woodard, journalist Nick Clooney, faith leaders Pastor Rick Warren and Bishop Charles E. Blake, Democratic and Republican Strategists Mike McCurry and Jack Oliver and even Shayne Moore, a stay-at-home Mom and ONE supporter from Wheaton, Illinois.

"This is a first step toward making fighting global poverty a growing priority for American voters," said Damon, who narrates the spot. "It's not a Republican or Democrat issue, that's the great thing about it. When I was in Zambia recently, I saw faith-based, non faith-based, far right, far left, all working side by side. Everybody is working together to try to solve these issues because there really is only one side."

In the spot, all join together with over 2.4 million supporters of the ONE Campaign to "pledge ONE vote" not for a candidate or party - but instead to help fight global AIDS and extreme poverty and make a better, safer world for us all.

"I feel that we're all called to make a difference in this world." I've been blessed with so many opportunities, and I think about all the things that we as Americans take for granted -- not many people are as fortunate as us," said Tom Brady, Quarterback of the New England Patriots. "Not only sports fans, but all people, all Americans, can get involved - go to ONE.org, pledge your vote, and pledge to learn more about what's going on and see what more you can do."

"AIDS and poverty will never be solved by one group alone, it takes government, it takes churches, and it takes business - and each of them have a role," said Pastor Rick Warren and author of "Purpose Driven Life" "The ONE campaign is mobilizing people to vote and to start to show that we care, so that it gets on the agendas of the people who make our laws and decide how to spend our funding."

"In every village, in every city, and in every nation that I've visited on the continent of Africa, I've observed people who have the ambition, the desire, and the longing, but they don't have the resources," said Bishop Charles E. Blake. "We must join together to make some of those resources available to people who want to do better, who want to help themselves, but who don't have the ability to do so because of lack of resources.

ONE supporters sneak previewed "ONE Vote" at over 676 local events and "house parties" in all 50 states on Sunday, October 15th. As airwaves are filled with campaign ads asking Americans for their vote, ONE is coming to American voters with a bipartisan, hopeful message that ONE is a campaign in which Americans do not have to take a side - there is only ONE side in the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty.

America's greatest strength is our compassion and willingness to be engaged on the world stage," said Oliver. "ONE's 'base' is really both bases--Republicans and Democrats can come together to make sure that the voices of the billion people who live on less than $1 a day are heard both in this election and the 2008 presidential cycle."

"This is something all Americans can do together across party lines,"; said McCurry. "For the first time, we have real solutions that work in the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty, and America can help lead the world in saving and changing lives."

ONE: THE CAMPAIGN TO MAKE POVERTY HISTORY is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans -- ONE by ONE -- to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. ONE is a coalition of over 2.4 million people and 100 of the nation's leading relief, humanitarian and advocacy organizations. For more information, please visit: www.one.org

(all of the above are selected clips from their website)

free market my foot

2006-11-05T23:54:00.000+02:00

looking

2006-11-05T23:50:00.000+02:00

red

2006-11-01T03:13:00.000+02:00

Angry gut-reaction. Flesh is weak. Assuming, misjudging, weary of giving, giving, giving. Cutting whispers creep from dark corners, “You get what you tolerate. Stand up for yourself, because no One else does.” Swirling vortex of circular argument. Biting, tearing, drawing blood. “I do not do what I want. I do what I do not want. Who will free me from this body of death!?”

Red-flashing prayer signals, “Help!”
Red-letter Bible says, “Come to Me.”

His blood encrusts the rough-hewn beam—poured out to save my neck from sin’s guillotine. Viscous liquid douses my fiery mood; smoothes the tatters of my war-torn heart; assures me that One does stand up for me, died for me, lives in me, rescues me.

Red, not white, means peace—with God, with man.
Praise the name of Christ, our Redeemer.

...written by my long-suffering roommate, Rose Ann, after having her first bridal breakdown yesterday...

(she looks stunning in red by the way...
...as does our living-room)

Africa Calling ONE

2006-10-27T09:31:00.000+02:00

Experience the Truth for yourself…

“There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to walk through the valley of shadow again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.”
– Nelson Mandela, September 1953 –

for Aaron and his new baby Leani in Zimbabwe

2006-10-26T16:19:00.000+02:00

Today, a telephone ringing at 7:00a woke me to a clean, rain-washed morning in Texas.

My mom's excited voice could barely contain her joy - "dad has something to tell you" - Aaron, the builder from Mutare, Zimbabwe, and his team of four had finished the new little church building in Manica, Mozambique so far that they could start on the roof this week.
This was almost too good to be true!
I had one tick-bite and my dad - two to show, from setting out the piece of wild veld together with these men in July this year. Shoooing cattle and curious goats away from our boundary markers, I chopped out weeds and dead branches with my manchetti.
Aaron came to look for work in Mozambique almost a year ago in hope of providing better for his wife and little child still living in Zimbabwe. He got to see them perhaps once in every two weeks if things were going well enough for him to travel.

But there was more to rejoice about this morning:
My dad received a phonecall from this meticulous artist with the quiet smile and gentle voice, that works magic with clay and cement when given a chance.
Fourty kilometers away from his small, rented room, probably by candle light in their humble two-room-home without running water, in a country strangled without any medical services under the tiranny of a mad murderer, his precious wife gave birth, alone, to their new baby girl and they named her Leani.

I saw God today

2006-10-26T06:29:00.000+02:00

Axel screeched about needing some time alone
as we drove south before sunrise in our own October rain.
Michelle was early and my omelet late
but we still shared it with smiles
along with her prayed-for-raise she heard about last night.
Lisa from Main had lunch with me today
she had something to say, so she finally said:
I apologize on behalf of my country to you,
for not really caring about Africa and her people like you do.
You see, we still believe in this dream,
that if they just work and learn and try hard enough,
they will get to live in heaven, just like we get to do right now.
“Thank you,” I said,
“I’ll cancel my appointment with your president.”

Turning north on the seventy-five,
alone in my eighty-eight Civic at half past nine,
the four-lane highway toward the holy of holies shone slippery and wet
Passing through this first-world Parthenon
their sky-scraping-statue-colonnade, fed by blind fornicators,
exhausted, hungry, missing dinner with their wives and their kids.
A red sign up ahead beckons: hotel.com
two eighteen-wheelers pass me at once, from both sides,
offerings to impatient idols,
transporting more temptations to choose lesser loves.
Their square, rigid gods, barely noticed around here,
only seen from their navels downward,
their feet planted firmly in once-oil-drenched-clay-ground.
All heads and shoulders will eventually bow to this cloud.
Beyond the high-five, I try to stick to the limit, but can't
now at sixty-seven miles an hour, we pass beyond the outer court.
Chinese car dealerships display cheap birds, perfect for a ransom sacrifice.
Far away and all around I see, invisible lampposts casting their cones of yellow light,
hovering halos shine brightly beneath the heaviness of this mist,
like angelic beings leading me along in rapturous delight.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come.

Who am I to recognize His glory?
What am I?
A mere white, woman, formed form red African dust?
That the One who made the stars
should remember me tonight?
If I should receive that most treasured of gifts,
a father for and from him,
a sweet baby girl,
to feed, to bathe and to dress,
smelling of lavender and chamomile tea,
rocking her down-feathery-soft-head in my palm,
swaddled warm against my breathing chest,
I shall choose this name for her;
Lena Emmanuelle.

lunacy

2006-10-07T08:00:00.000+02:00

20:27

Friday night

Still out of milk

Met with God, my roommate and I

worked through some familiar fears

reminding ourselves about our dignity

Putting on mascara side by side

She’s cooking Mexican,

mediating prenuptial misunderstandings

Alone at peace at 40 miles an hour west down Legacy Lane

Solitary parking space on level three kept just for me

Live Cuban tunes hug my shoulders as I cross the street

Same place, another time, I’d sit myself down, have a Pink Martini.

21:09

Lost in Bono’s teenage memories of Dublin

“Because my definition of art started with:

you put your hands under your skin, you break your breastbone,

you rip open your rib cage…”

Determined to dedicate my blood to the word

Asking strangers for the time at the Angelika

“…If you really wanna write, that’s what you ought to do.

Are you ready for that?”

Chilled beers beg me to take them along for the movie

I opt for a hotdog

and a cherry red cupcake with whipped cream on instead

Bloody Bible belt.

23:52

Credits roll over the Isle of Man

Rowan Atkinson quotes Solomon as the music begins.

Leaving last

tarry in the darkness a minute longer

Dreading reality outside on the sidewalk

I pass a Muslim father walking five steps ahead of his wife

She tightens her black silk scarf beneath her lifted chin

Her young son holds on to her bright orange cuff

Solitude screams when she looks me in the eye,

wordless exchange, I search for the moon

Almost completely full, but not quite yet.

“Desire comes out of wanting what is yours,

and still wanting it even if it’s not there, but it is not envy.”

Good night to U2

And we still have no milk.

message from pluto

2006-09-15T04:57:00.000+02:00

houston - this is zebra - come in - over

zebra - this is houston - we copy - over

houston - negative on communications - I repeat: NO INTERNET IN PLANO - please confirm - over

copy that zebra - confirm life-support-system ready to go? - over

affirmative houston - departure date still 14 december 2006 - status of tap-water, granola bars and sleeping pills according to schedule - any news from home? - over

negative zebra - over

oh - over?

negative zebra - maintain standard procedure - pack for summer, loose 30pounds, remember bug-spray, read 6000 pages and finish 12 papers - send for light literature if boredom results - over

affirmative houston - wasting time when doing laundry - requesting any biographical material on winston churchill or bono or eve - end of message - over

affirmative zebra - dehidrated version en route - UPS routing number 123456 - now go to bed!

africa rides a bicycle

2006-08-17T16:37:00.000+02:00

Her ankles elegantly crossed, her spine upright
Frelimo skirt flaps bright reds, yellows, proud liberty
Sitting behind her husband she faces east, he peddles south
Nursing their baby rocking at her breast they travel to the market
Carrying an empty plastic can for 5 litres of kerosene to light their lantern tonight

His pearled brow squints against the sun with every stride
Korean trucks stir dust toward the morphing road works
Tied to his metal stallion he returns to his children with this catch
Tiger fish from the Rio Reveu for sale to ladies carrying bundles on their heads
Smiling to tourist cameras, surprised by a hand full of Metticais, shouting:gracis Deus

His legs barely reach the ground on his father’s steel chariot
Negotiating peak-traffic in Chimoio, he weaves across paved arteries of humanity
Slowing down in front of our parked cars, he pulls in behind the other bike
He’s early too, thirty minutes at least before the pump-attendant shows up
Two ten year olds, patiently in a grown-up life at five’o clock in Mozambique

joy wat wyk

2006-08-16T11:42:00.000+02:00

vanoggend was ek swanger
twee maande ver
vanmiddag is ek nie
vroeë bloed onheilspellend
vreemde doktervingers vroetel

“piepie asseblief weer in die bekertjie, mevrou…
…dit is mevrou, nê?”
urine sê “ja”
sonar sê “nee”
verwys na die en dan na daai
ek ryg deur groue grys gange wat eggo as ek loop
verdwaal in die buise of dalk ‘n gewas?
die gyne se oë kyk myne mis
drie steteskope bondel om my baarmoeder
“ek sien dan niks nie, mis ek iets?”

terug op die plastiek laken met my bene oop
sneeu lê ge-ys op die pieke deur die venster
koue jellie bied min verligting
alles skeur
sy’s weg
of was dit dalk ‘n laaitie?
my menswees verdwyn in ‘n silver bakkie
weggespoel oppad rioolplaas toe

Wie maak die berge wat om Ceres troon?
Wie besluit of ek mag ma wees of nie?
Wie laat die varkore langs die vrugteboorde blom?
Ag Jirre, my hart en lyf is stukkend!

(vir Joy Van Wyk op 7 Augustus 2006)

departing joy

this morning I was pregnant
two months along
this afternoon I am not
premature blood bad premonition
foreign doctor-fingers fidget

“please wee in this little cup for us, Mrs…
…it is Mrs, isn’t it?”
urine says “yes”
sonar says ”no”
referred to here and then to there
I weave down dreary hallways that echo when I walk
lost in the tubes or perhaps a tumour?
the gyne’s eyes avoid mine
three stereoscopes convene around my womb
“I can’t see anything, am I missing something?”

back on the plastic sheet with my legs open
snow lie frozen on the peaks through the window
cold jelly provide little comfort
everything tears
she’s gone
or was perhaps a son?
my humanity disappears in a silver kidney bowl
washed away toward the sewerage yard

Who makes the mountains that reign around Ceres?
Who decides if I may mother a child?
Who allows the wild flowers to grow next to the orchards?
Oh God, my heart and body is broken!

patat

2006-08-16T11:09:00.000+02:00

Patat se hand hou myne vas
as ons saam verby die wingerde jaag
Ons loer na die son wat oor miswolke dans
dan volg ons weer die maan wat uit sy broek se sak wil val

Patat se spens hou wag in die nag
langs die Witzenberge swoeg hy as ander siele slaap
Smôrens ry hy zoep-zoep oor die dorp se rivier
na waar rye mense langs Namakwa-Daisies vir hom wag

Patat se hart is so diep soos die hemel
met miljoene sterre wat vir siek kindertjies brand
Met sy glimlagte en inkleurboekpersente
hou hy einas en erge uiteindes so lank as moontlik weg

Patat se oog sien mooigoed raak
waar sneeuklokkies teen die winterreëns buig
Hy verf sy spoke en drome teen groot doeke vas
maar verberg dit onder sy wasgoed en onoopgemaakte pos

Patat se skouers hou myne regop en sterk
as my rugstring wil knak en my moed begin sak
Saam hoop ons vir genade en nog sonskyn in die môre
want Hy hou ons gipsbesmeerde hande elke oomblik in Syne vas

cereal communications

2006-07-17T15:45:00.000+02:00

Two friends floated down a current one day—Snap and Crackle.
They ran into a third later that afternoon—Pop.
After months of drifting in a sea of organic 2% fat free milk Snap found the elusive silver spoon.
“I’m taking this break,” he said and hopped out.
Still trying to stay afloat, Crackle and Pop wished him well and blessed him on his new journey.
Shortly after their friend’s departure, Crackle and Pop got separated in unexpected white-water.
Soon they could not see each other any more as the rapids won the battle for control.
Crackle fired one of her two flares in hope of a rescue.
Seeing Pop’s signal fade in the distance she grew terrified.
“Hang on, Pop!” she yelled but couldn’t do anything for herself either.
Suddenly Snap appeared, tossing a life-jacket, calling to Crackle from the edge of the spoon.
“Here…grab this!”
Crackle caught the bright orange floating device, calming down as Snap reeled her into safety.
“Good,” said Snap, offering Crackle some glucose and a space blanket.
“Thanks,” said Crackle “what about Pop?”
“He’s fine by himself. He’s a strong swimmer,” and up he ran along the spoon.
Revived but sad, Crackle zipped up the wet cushion vest and dived back into the white swells.
Swimming as hard as she could, she edged toward where Pop’s LED flashed now-and-then.
Tying him to the life-jacket, she fired her last flare from whence she came.
Snap came running down again as soon as Pop pulled himself out to sit up on the edge of the spoon.
“Why did you waste your last flare like that?” Snap asked Crackle.
“Because I wanted to let you know that I found him.”

●●● — — — ●●●

in praise of an ordinary guy with an extraordinary heart

2006-06-25T00:33:00.000+02:00

Dear Mr. Cooper,
I discovered your existence last week Tuesday. A fellow writing-student gave me your book as a gift to enjoy during my summer back home. Not knowing anything about you, I wanted to verify the source of this enticing story, so I researched all I could find out about you. While calling in to my parents between connecting flights, I recognized you in action for the first time on a quick trailer of this interview from a public phone on Concourse B in Hartsfield, Atlanta.
This trip home was my third since I came to the States to study the art of story-telling two years ago. I exchanged my life as a licensed architect building clinics, school and border posts in rural Africa for the First World with the hope of exposing more people to Africa’s needs as well as her courage.
I manage to arrange for the recording of your interview (4:00CAT) before I hit a jet-lag-coma and watched it on the 20th—how appropriate—I felt like I saw my wildest dream come true listening to you and Ms. Jolie share your experiences. Last night, I read an unflattering review about it on the web that lead me to respond on this blog-entry.
It doesn’t take a genius to criticize somebody, but I wanted to tell you how much I respect your work and admire the guts it took to expose your heart in your book. I’m only on p151, past the pictures and I don’t want it to end. Next week Wednesday, I leave on an outreach mission to a community in central Mozambique—barely 15miles east from the Zimbabwean border. We won’t drive through Zim like we did last year because it has become too dangerous but I’m taking my still and video cameras along and plan to document stories of braver people than me when we get there.
Today I received a phone call from a friend in Namibia who also gave birth to a girl last week. She only had praise for Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt’s discreet visit and charity work to the medical facilities in her country.
Your work inspires me. You have blessed Africa and her people in so many ways already and personify a motto in my life: do justice, love kindness and walk humbly. Hang in there and keep moving!

D-day: a day for sunflowers

2006-06-07T06:34:00.000+02:00

for the eleventh time in my eleven years of school, I missed school that day, it was a Tuesday too
I stayed at home because I had a silly cold
he lay coughing in our parents’ bedroom reminding mom about his afternoon medication
she asked me to bring it to her in the family room keeping my germs away from him
complaining that today I was the patient and that he should bring me something
I fetched the infamous box clutching his deathly drugs

by sunset I had wrapped my sore throat up in a white scarf
matching our school uniforms demanding skirts despite June’s freezing chills
afraid that he might throw up while I try to hug him or get sick because of me
I stood at the door, my heart aching, the metal frame stinging against my left cheek
‘sien jou more*,’ I whispered, he strained to look up from the pillow, smiling
nodding at me with his eyes only, we said goodbye in silence

lining up outside the spooky school buildings our entire class waited in the dark
I climbed on the bus for the compulsory attendance of Animal Farm at the State Theatre
the story was over too quickly and Mr. Owen left me feeling sad and depressed
stepping off the bus I saw mom waiting in the silver Mercedes
walking towards her, I knew Derek was not at home any more
dad would never let her wait out here so late unless there was trouble

we drove the four kilometers home in familiar sighs accepting the unknown again
the one point six litres of bone marrow I gave on Good Friday did not help him
dad would be sleeping on an extra gurney in the ever-recurring isolation ward tonight
instead of waiting three days until the weekend and I could make the visiting hours
I immediately wrote Derek a long letter for mom to take to the hospital tomorrow morning
telling him that I’m tired of this too I tried to encourage him for our nineteenth month under siege

I got to school by myself with mom leaving for Johannesburg before I woke up
I decided to skip assembly and my loyal friend, Marisa, hid out with me in the art class
confessing my selfishness to her, I told her that something’s wrong about this time
hugging my shoulders where we sat on the table, her comforting words painted hope around my heart helping me into the day
after three hours,in the second period of 'library-use' the dreaded announcement fell through the wall into my classroom
somebody was waiting for me at the office to take me to the hospital

family friends tried to smile and look brave as we all piled into the Volkswagen Kombi
driving the same sixty odd kilometers mom, dad and I had done for four months on end
I lead them through the giant buildings without thinking, oncology, turn left over there, smelling the pink sanitizing soap everywhere
walking past the nurses’ station to the isolation wards, I didn’t see my sobbing parents
he lay perfectly still, his arms folded on his motionless chest, like a pharaoh, immortal
I put my hands on his, laid my head down on the linen sheet, feeling sad but joyful

through the huge north-facing window the morning sun cut a strong single ray into the room
‘jy kan my sien jou bliksem!**' I thought, smiling back at his innocent face, I rejoiced
at his funeral, the church packed to its capacity filled up with praises to our Triune God
wearing his favourite colour, yellow, I stood singing, joining him with heaven’s chorus
his body died after thirteen years on earth but his soul went ahead to meet Christ face to face
this morning I asked God to hug my folks for me and a stranger brought them an armful of sunflowers

*see you tomorrow
**you can see me

...lees vir my, Mamma

2006-05-15T02:55:00.000+02:00

Donderdag
min het ons geweet dat ambulaansmanne my vyf ure later na die hospitaal toe sou moes ry, maar al wat ek wou hoor is haar stem teen my oor, ‘n bewussyn van haar gebede,
soos kleintyd se maagkrame in die middel van die nag,
het haar soet woorde weer al my vrese kom weggejaag

Sewe tydsones wes van haar skoot,
lê my kop in kouekoors geweek,
alleen in my woonstel stoei ek teen onsigbare spoke wat al my are leeg tap,
“psalm-een-en-negentig”
“ek het nie my bril op nie, skat”
“maak nie saak nie, lees dit net ‘seblief”
stadig fluister sy tydlose smekinge

Moedersdag vandag
volmaan in Dallas, sy maak reg vir die eerste oggenddiens in Pretoria, bel die drie-en-twintig-nommers om weer dankie vir alles te sê
“hi mamma, dis ek”
“hallo, pop”
ek hoor haar glimlag
vrede
sy maak alles beter

essay to Mr. Kristof

2006-05-07T16:59:00.000+02:00

UV15 minimum sun-screen, white-gold * and a good sense of humor…

Africa has a heart like a minibus-taxi in Johannesburg, always space for one more.

My heart was consumed by her at the age of ten when I watched Out of Africa until the bloody part where the writer-lady went bezerk with her whip on the lion trying to get her oxen. Twenty years later, I have also taken a few shots at government officials and business men who cared more about protocol than the people dying of Malaria on donkey-carts outside locked clinics.

Three years ago, I traded my blue-prints for words. Today, I have completed four of my six semesters of a graduate degree in Media Communications in this alternate universe called the United States of America. I do most of my time travel in the shower or movie theatres. Amid the torrents of wasted water or the smell of synthetic popcorn, I transport myself back to the burnt reds and ochre of my Mother Continent.

Kenya protected Karen Blixen from death-by-boredom in a potential life of civilized femininity. She began writing her stories trying to survive the long draughts on her farm. I began writing mine after my brother died and my mom’s genetic disease (Muscular Dystrophy) launched its relentless coup on her body. Fighting seems inevitable to my fellow Africans, but equally indigenous is our storytelling.

I migrated to the northern hemisphere in search of mentors, technology and learning from the giants how to dream big. Texas proved the pinnacle of God’s irony but I have grown beyond my wildest imagination amidst this sprawling concrete jungle without any natural forms of oxygen or chlorophyll. My peculiar accent still peaks interest but at least every American friend of mine knows that we have paved roads and internet in my hometown.

It proved easier to switch from the Queen’s English into another version of my second language than accepting my own ethnocentrism and global ignorance. I possess the unique vocabulary to translate Africa into American with a heart knitted to people in both spheres and existential knowledge of their current worldviews.

On a practical level, I am addicted to making life difficult for myself and have a unique knack for storming in where Hummers fear to tread. As a matter of fact, I am actually sneaking into Zimbabwe this summer on my way to building a community centre on the Mozambican side of the border in the province of Manica. I worked on the border post between Namibia and Angola in 2002 when the contractor dug up a live mortar bomb where the storm water drain was supposed to go. I have slept in almost every conceivable position, temperature and precipitation combination and strongly believe that one can judge the level of one’s contentment in life by how much joy the sound of running water can produce.

Individualism has paralyzed the developed world, people long to discover meaning and purpose in their efficient lives. Africa’s humble people have taught me what courage looks like. I would like to go on a reporting trip with you and share it with the rest of the world.

*an extra roll of twin-ply toilet-paper

waking up in the wrong country

2006-05-07T06:54:00.000+02:00

Today was Saturday.
Tomorrow will still be May.
Yesterday I woke up in the wrong country.
(Did I take my laundry out of the drier this afternoon?)

Disclaimer: two days from now I start finals-week of my second year of a Masters degree on a foreign continent across the Atlantic and north of the equator in another language. I suspect that my mind has reached the limit of its RAM.

8:27a: after six hours of cold-meds-induced-sleep a telephone interrupts my coma. Expecting my parents calling from another time zone, I greeted Jennifer-from-the-tenth-floor in Afrikaans instead of English. Without opening my eyes I shared a brief but rather bizarre conversation deliberating if Pauline-from-the-ninth-floor would be available to baby-sit Jen’s two kids that evening or not.
I had no clue.
Instead of talking more than was absolutely necessary and waking up in the process, I volunteered to watch them. We said goodbye.

8:30a: I dissolved into my mattress under blue tranquility smelling like fabric softener. I reset my alarm to 9:15a leaving enough contingency-time to get ready for our Senior Chapel at 10:30a despite my limited wardrobe options in dress-code-abiding outfits as I have moved halfway out of my apartment into another home.

9:12a: I wake up with Michelle-from-the-sixth-floor standing next to my bed waving three different denim-type items in the air―no jeans allowed at school though.
Without a word she starts tearing through my open suitcase and cupboards diging for more suitable attire.
I get up.
I shuffle my way to the window past boxes and class-notes to open the blinds. Instead of our main campus in Dallas, I see those familiar hills surrounding Windhoek where I stayed for three years.

“We’re going to be late, get dressed,” Michelle says and tosses a horrid-but-tumble-dryable-wash-and-wear-floral-below-the-knee-cut-dress at my feet.
"Get dressed. We have ten minutes to get to the bible study.”
“What about the Senior Chapel? Aren’t we going anymore?”

9:15a: The alarm-clock goes off scaring away the untamed wilderness of Namibia as I emerge from this parallel universe.

I am in America.
This is the third floor.
I don't own any floral dresses.

(I did baby-sit the kids, but that's another story.)

after Pauline's wedding shower

2006-05-01T00:42:00.000+02:00

Six months after Thanksgiving:

Writing on the first crisp page in an unused diary
reminds me of waking up on New Year’s Day.
It signals the birth of dreams to reach and hopes to believe.
Leaving behind a dead history in a growing stack of written prayers on my book shelve.
Forgetting the mistakes and failures contained in tear-smeared paper leaves.
I choose to depart from bad habits and expect endorsements of inching growth inside myself.

Having more authentic conversations in a fledgling friendship
reminds me of birthday parties on Valentine’s Day.
Weeks pass and good intentions postponed due to urgent busy-ness and factual priorities.
Pink hearts and red decorated window fronts portray perfection and unrealistic ideals.
Reminded of sad endings in the past I feel incompetent yet again.
I hide behind what seems acceptable on the outside and feel lonely with him watching my confusion.

Talking to God at breakfast this morning
reminds me of Christmas and the fact that He made the stars.
Years of vulnerability to You and still You choose to sit with me every day and listen to my ramblings.
You see all that has wrecked my broken heart and still You love me despite what You know about me.
Reminding me that You chose to forget my shame, still smiling at me each morning with fresh mercy.
Hold my trembling hand dear Father! Take away this fear of being known by man because I know You know me already.

Fighting with this foe for twenty-four hours
reminds me of Easter Sunday and the concept of grace.
All I can offer to anybody is this new creation I have become because of Your patient loving-kindness.
Like a chrysalis, Your empty tomb is proof of my new life and beautiful future.
Inside this mortal body glow the jewels You made within me, through my eyes they shine.
Confident I walk toward this gift You still offer us, trusting You to open his heart to mine.

the passion - to see or not to see

2006-04-25T20:52:00.000+02:00

Passover 2006 equates to my memories of the New Year’s Eve of 1999―it will always remain in a class of its own. Watching Mr. Gibson’s The Passion after experiencing my first Jewish Seder lead by a family of Messianic believers dramatically affected my perspective on the events portrayed in this film.

I have never eaten horseradish in my life before, not to mention straight up on a tiny piece of Matzos. I had tears running down my face before tasting the bitter herbs just at the thought of how God instituted this unique menu in the time of Moses with the purpose of revealing Himself to us. Like a mom giving her little girl her first doll to “play” with―on the surface it seems insignificant, but on a deeper level she intentionally prepares her daughter for an important purpose later in life. The mother steps out in faith from her perspective, based on several assumptions that she will have no control over; will she grow up to see the age of puberty and adulthood, will she find a husband who chooses her to become his bride, will God grant them the gift of children?

As I switched on the DVD I braced my heart to look upon the most significant event in humankind, still lost upon most of God’s chosen people living in the Holy City today.

Hearing Christ pray ancient Psalms written by His human predecessor, David, in vulnerable cries to His Almighty Father under the full moon, my thoughts raced back two thousand years from that point in time to the moment when God called Abram from his moon-worshipping culture to become the first Jew. How sad Jesus must have felt there in the garden to see the suffering ahead for the Jews who would not understand His sacrifice and consequent salvation. Why does He allow some to see and some not, I wondered. When He wakes his disciples for the second time, they don’t get it either. They respond in human logic at His arrest and think that swords will solve this misunderstanding and preserve Jesus for his destiny to free them from Rome’s oppression.

I found two motives repeating in my mind throughout watching this film; Christ’s human submission to human abuse despite His divine dominion over all creation and the irony that the least likely human souls who began to understand His true identity were gentiles who knew nothing about the Passover Lamb but still Jesus treats the misguided Jews involved with loving forgiveness.

Some of the moments that I recall the best are these:
● When Judas and the mob shows up and asks Jesus to identify Himself, he answers before Judas points Him out, almost as if He wants to protect His betrayer from committing that sin.
● When Peter cuts off the ear of the Sanhedrin’s soldier, I see Jesus rebuking His own disciple for wanting to interfere with God’s plan for His life and responds with gentle love to the frightened man who listened to the wrong religious leadership.
● The inquisition before the Sanhedrin tore my heart apart as I thought of how easily we judge the disbelief of Judaism today. When the most educated scholars of the Law and the Prophets asked Jesus if he was the Son of God and He responds with the same Name that Moses spoke to the Pharaoh―I AM―the Sanhedrin tore their robes as a sign of obedience to their understanding of what Yahweh expected from them when somebody blasphemed His precious Name.

At that moment I was sobbing over every Jewish man and woman on this planet who did not recognize Yeshua as the Meshiach. I still don’t understand why God showed me-a selfish nobody-the grace of seeing who He is. I still don’t know what I can say or do or pray that might reveal the God of Israel to Israel today. “Lord, have mercy on Your people! Use me!”

Watching the Roman soldiers rip Christ’s human body apart I felt the Spirit touching my own in a gentle reminder that I do exactly the same through the words I speak and write. When this torture ends periodically, these men who were given life through the Word of His drags Jesus' limp body across the white marble paving, smearing His blood like a brush stroke before the dirty sandals of the feet He came down from heaven to wash.

I remembered the drops of wine against the white of my plate next to the striped and pierced matzos. With my pinky finger, I lifted out dark red drops resembling the plagues of Egypt from my cup during the Seder. Every harmful word I have spoken or written in my life and every one I will after this moment lay splattered on the stone of that courtyard two thousand years ago.

love

2006-04-21T08:07:00.000+02:00

architecture

2006-04-21T08:04:00.000+02:00

people

2006-04-21T08:01:00.000+02:00

animals

2006-04-21T07:59:00.000+02:00

colour

2006-04-21T07:56:00.000+02:00

light

2006-04-21T07:54:00.000+02:00

water

2006-04-21T07:50:00.000+02:00

I want to serve those who serve

2006-04-21T07:38:00.000+02:00

Have you ever considered volunteering with a relief agency that serves in places where human need is so bad that everybody is just trying to keep those people groups alive to begin with?

Imagine joining a team of non-religious doctors, mechanics and councilors who need your testimony and Christ-driven encouragement to sustain a feeding program in a refugee camp in Uganda, or counsel a thirteen year-old prostitute dying of AIDS after a failed abortion necessary while she tries to earn enough money to feed her younger siblings after losing their parents to landmines or genocide.

I don’t want to be a missionary.

Working on my main project for one of my classes here at DTS, I have done three month’s worth of research on the current reality in Africa’s refugee camps, the statistics of health-related epidemics and the inter-connectedness between political unrest, violence against women, and the blood-diamond-trade paying for small arms that (stolen and enslaved) child-soldiers use. “What are Christians doing about this?” I wondered.

I studied at a secular university for seven years. Today the Christians who have the most fruit hanging on their trees planted among corporate business decisions and political reform were not the tokkelokke (nickname for theology majors who always had to wear ties to classes) but the guys doing medicine (most of them took up smoking to get the smell of formalin off their fingers), counseling (some of them also spending time in the dark valleys of depression) and the engineers (either the wild party-animals who liked extreme sports or the socially evasive ones who never left their desks).

The athletic physiotherapists who invested long hours helping African kids who had never walked properly because their moms carried them on their backs since birth and their hips never recovered or their insufficient diets prevented them from developing completely. The aspiring teachers who sat under trees in the dust to encourage exhausted nurses from a mobile clinic that had to send patients back untreated every time.

Dr. Pocock requested a response paper to our annual World Evangelization Conference and the only vivid response that rang in my mind was: I don’t want to be a missionary!

I have no personal desire to preach and the idea of handing out tracts to strangers and never seeing them again does not appeal to me either. I have endless hang-ups with the stereotype of how a “missionary” is supposedly different from any regular Christian. I avoid recruiting agents from mission agencies who try to psyche me up with opportunities to manipulate Christ’s return by reaching x numbers of people groups somewhere in the jungle or 10/40 window. When I find myself forced to hear sincerely missionaries speak and still leave with the impression that missionaries are the only faithful Christians obeying the Great Commandment, I cringe.

Who are we (yes, I do consider myself a sent-one into foreign cultures) to proclaim that we know the only solutions to stop the world’s sickness, violence, and immorality? Where are the mission agencies at WEC-week who support our incarnations to reach prostitutes or drug-lords in our own suburbs? Who teaches the new languages of post-modern executives stuck in the chains of first-world economies?

Maybe my skin color (white) and citizenship (South African) contributed to an early disillusionment with this coveted ministry description when I ventured as a teenager into poor black settlements during the Apartheid years giving away Bibles in their local dialect.

After everybody (whether they could read it or not) had received their free copy, basic explanations about who Jesus is were often interrupted by someone’s wheezing cough from TB lungs or an urgent request for a new borehole with a water pump to replace the dangerous well in which a toddler almost drowned again last week. Granted, our outreach usually included shared meals, gifts of books, clothes and pens for the kids going to school but we paid taxes and voted for government officials to deal with the long-term needs of these grateful souls or the hopelessness of their unemployment.

Please hear my heart on this: nothing is worth anything in life without knowing Christ.

While reading the DTS statement of purpose during spring break I found myself asking the next question: if training those of us who choose to remain in our professions (outside the church?) is considered a secondary purpose to those who plan to do vocational ministry (inside the church?), are there other DTS students with specific passions, gifts and perhaps even professional qualifications who also feel suffocated by the prescriptions of many mission agencies about who draws the boundaries concerning Christian involvement as appropriate, or not?

I want to serve those who serve; by working alongside non-institutionalized teams of relief-workers albeit feeding displaced Israelis or distributing medicine to Palestinian patients, or drawing Christ’s parables with my finger in the red African dirt to entertain forgotten orphans dying of malaria.

Perhaps these affiliations forfeits any chance to recount my good works before financial committees and apply for tax-deductible donations, God owns all the cows on all the hills in every capitol on this planet.

I want to share the Truth behind my eternal source of hope who helps me love even machete-bearing mercenaries and zealous car-bombers.

pretty dirty feet

2006-04-21T07:22:00.000+02:00

There’s a story in the Bible, in John’s gospel around chapter 9 of a blind man who had trouble seeing life for what it really was. He begged Jesus to heal his eyes. God restored his sight and everybody in the region knew that a miracle had occurred. The educated, high society of the day had many explanations. These skeptics argued that his disability was the just consequence of his parents and/or his own sins. Jesus disagreed. When asked to defend the reason for this poor man’s suffering, humiliation and pain during all of his life, the God-man responded: “No, it was allowed into his life for the sake of God’s glory…”

On the last Sunday before I left South Africa, this passage was branded upon my soul. It defined the unspoken question confronting me as an African leaving for a foreign land in search of greater understanding.

Is Africa poor, hungry and left desolate to suffer alone because of her own sins or those perpetrated by her colonial parents?

I believe Jesus’ reply would be the same: “No, but that the glorious power of the Living God might be revealed to all the earth.”

How will I respond to this challenge?

May each day of my life tell His story of sacrificial love. May I never cease to inspire every mortal He sends across my path to put their trust in Him. May I grow in skillfulness and influence to mobilize more souls as part of His supernatural solution to the need of Africa!

being an alien in Texas ain't for sissies

2006-04-21T07:12:00.000+02:00

This is the first year in which I’ve had the privilege of seeing winter set in TWICE! It’s only Fall according to the locals, who’re still walking around in short sleeves (mostly migrants from the North) while I have already reached the limit on polar items in my wardrobe. Stuck in bed with a Texas-size cold, I’ve time to ponder life in America again…

11.5.2004, Friday : sick but warm with all of life’s luxuries

Toast with apricot jam and Earl Grey tea… Just over four years ago, I emigrated for the 2^nd time into uncharted territory. I took all my belongings that could fit into “Wittes” (white one) my ’62 Series II Land Rover and settled in a magical land of endless horizons where I discovered freedom in simplicity. Living in a rugged desert country the size of Texas with only 1,6 million individuals to crowd one’s space brought the assumption of having drinkable water, immediate electricity and shelter into a new light.

In Namibia, I decided that toast is the ultimate artifact of the civilized world.

In order to enjoy a slice of warm toast with butter and apricot jam the following blessings are implied : I have enough means to have bread, I am living in a dwelling with connected electricity, I own a toaster or any other sophisticated appliance to grill my piece of bread. Adding the excess of putting butter and jam, implies that I have some means of keeping my butter cold and the added lavishness of a good rainy season protected from pests for my apricots to be edible and the time to make jam. Making tea in the bush is less problematic, but still, it relies on a few critical parameters that are not a given to my fellow Africans.

So…let me raise my mug and celebrate another splendid day of basking in my Father’s sufficiency! A toast to Thomas Edison, to Tannie (auntie) Rita Rautenbach, a lady on a farm in Mpumalanga (where the sun comes from – in Zulu) who could make the best apricot jam in all of Africa and the clever people working at Zicam LLC Phoenix in Arizona, for making this funky “in your nose” medicine that enables some of my taste buds to participate in this grand occasion! To ya’all!!

11.3.2004, Wednesday : long lives the president (again)

“DRUG FACTS : When using this product – drowsiness may occur….excitability may occur..” How can this be true in both cases? Am I drowsy or am I excited? My eyes avoid the prescribed text books as I reach for the sponsored toilet roll on the floor where a small colony of used white bundles are resembling what I suspect snow could look like. Amidst (not too unpleasant side effects of my Tylenol Cold) my theory is proven again : Americans must have a genetic resistance to this stuff induced by many years of use. If they knew how potent it is on an unsuspecting central nervous system I might be required to sign an agreement not to use medication containing Acetaminophen while I’m a studying representative of this seminary.

11.2.2004, Tuesday : election week seen from the southern hemisphere

“Do you know who’s boss yet?” asks my dad in his good night email before I get into bed.

Will this man be God’s instrument in the AIDS crisis of my continent? Will his voice remain silent about our neighbor’s insane dictatorship that is preventing placement of the last peaceful puzzle piece in Southern Africa? Being the boss isn’t easy, but somebody’s got to do it…

9.29.2004, Sunday : Mormons under cover

Still shopping for a local congregation, one of my 3^rd floor neighbors and her visitor from Austin offered me a lift today. Getting lost has become a given on our journeys about town, as neither of us have ever lived here before. We finally found the friendly building and received a warm welcome at the door.

Assuming that my neighbor and her friend was married, the lady made a comment implying different sermon, Sunday school and seating possibilities for the various visitors. Simplifying all the choices the Austin man responded “They’re both my wives, we’re Mormons”….she remained hospitable after a shocked silence and invited us both to their next women’s retreat. I loved the place and the people but it’s to far away…

9.2.2004, Wednesday : online shopping for idiots

After spending four weeks investigating the different options in laptop computers, I have decided that I have to put an end to this non-stop argument in my mind : Mac vs. PC, PC vs. Mac…all the fancy functions plus the software for making movies at twice the price for six years or half the price for all the fancy functions with the software to edit videos at half the price for four years.

The final verdict is as follows : PC, HP (no support for Dell back home) ASAP!!

I stumble into the basement where my AV hero works. He knows how to do all sorts of clever tricks with a computer and has been the patient soundboard of endless technical enquiries. Today I shall spend the most money on a single item ever!

He confidently waits for the telephone sales operator somewhere on this continent to complete all the necessary details. My palms sweat and I want to cry for not being able to do this on my own. I am trusting a stranger who is speaking to another stranger to get my thousands from a strange bank in order to have a piece of equipment I don’t know how to work, with a plug that will never fit in the wall sockets back home!

9.20.2004, Monday : farewell to the men with their green meal trays

I have been the happy employee at the cafeteria for more than a month. Since school started, and real life dawned plus reading requirements, assignments due and trying to learn Greek from scratch, my RAM has been exposed to unmanageable levels of intensity! Thus, I am terribly sad to say, that I resigned today.

No more fashion-statements in my hairnet, no more sauna sessions in the kitchen with my cooking colleagues, no more last minute chance of orders to the ever popular and safe but boring choice of “grilled chicken sandwich” with some curly fries on the side to my friendly customers after a long, hungry afternoon.

What memories do I take with me from this lavish career in the catering ministry? You get apple-stick-lovers, adamant veggie-sticks-lovers, undecided eaters that couldn’t be bothered by either seasoned or unseasoned sides, the explosive sports channel watching crowd who always go for the whole spectrum of prepared beans and hot tortillas, with appetites the likes I have never seen before!

10.8.2004, Friday, : chamomile tea amidst geraniums at midnight

A kind group of warm hearted Americans invited me to join a social sacrament where authentic hospitality leaves a sweet scent everywhere you go. Pizza’s and Friday nights seem to go together in most households here and this one gave me my very first taste.

I was staring at the star studded night sky with some American girlfriends on the hammock. We were completely carefree for a few hours. Talking nonsense and pretending to be back in our own home back yards, wherever “home” was for each of us. Hearing the dog muffle for attention and the screen door open to get orders for the after-meal tea and coffee. The candle lights were beginning to flicker more rapidly as a soft breeze picked up. Kind hands offer a lovely big mug, prepared just for me and served with the love and dearness of a father. For a brief evening I was feeling safe at home…content.

10.9.2004, Saturday : lovers and friends, bubbles and chocolate

My first American wedding! What a rush…a whole mass of classy black dresses and suits lined up in front with three little angels slanting down like organ pipes in white. A proud dad and teary mom, a grinning groom and a peaceful bride with her Spanish eyes locked onto her man, staring dreamily and floating through the ceremony. I sat next to the two grandmothers of the party, ancient, wrinkled and powdered. Both of them wearing screaming pink and lime green somewhere in their sophisticated silk scarves and Jackie O outfits…what a treat!

The reception was at the top of a very tall building with bright orange fall colors sprinkled over the tables. Even the bathrooms had a view over the entire city, like the dining room in three directions. The room buzzed as the couple entered and I stood in awe at yet another miracle completed before my eyes. Two human beings chosen from different corners of the world, being friends for years and one day seeing each other for the first time. I cried and I smiled as Sting sang his beautiful song : I must have loved you…

10.14.2004, Thursday : drumming black America all the way to Africa!

The pastor and his wife at my local church are great “normal” people, in the sense that their heaven centeredness do not disable their earthly use to God. They invited me to join them for a performance of the first female troupe of djembe drummers all the way from Guinea in West Africa. At the last minute, it became clear that the pastor and his wife would not be able to go and I tried frantically to get two other culture vultures to come along. Everybody seemed very busy and I was beginning to wonder why I thought I was available to go in the first place…what homework was I not aware off!!

Well, the show was incredible! We were about twenty white people in the packed audience and everybody was clapping and dancing at the end. I felt like I was back in the dust covered markets where live chickens and goats wander among the merchant stalls. The musicians’ bright costumes shone like textile turquoise with tiny shells and beads dancing at the ends of their cords to the rhythm of ancient ancestors. I was missing my black brothers and sisters…but proud to be an original from the precious reputation of drums and dance they’ve given to Africa.

10.15.2004, Friday : my first Halloween

Pumpkins everywhere and straw stuffed scare-crows guarding front doors along the hallways of our apartment complex. Halloween masks and costumes crowd the stores and I still can not believe that people actually want to have their front lawn look like an unearthed graveyard with skeletons emerging from below…what exactly is the point? Our Fall Fest at school presented a more digestible flavor of celebrations…providing endless amounts of food, drinks and entertainment for old and new. I sent an unexpecting baby boy crying hysterically when I unknowingly put my dark glasses on while making smiley faces at him. Oops…

10.29.2004, Friday : home alone

I was sad today. Yesterday was my brother’s birthday. Had he been on earth, he would have turned 28, but he’s been in a state of glory for fourteen years. As a family, my parents and I always go out for dinner on his birthday, celebrating the guy he was. We speculate about how he’s worshiping in heaven and smile about how close we feel to him in certain places where we used to spend time together. Mostly we recall how faithful the Triune God’s been in the remainder of our earth years together, affirming our faith to each other and remind ourselves not to hold back any expression of love and appreciation to anybody, not being certain that all of us might be around to do it later.

Two wet loads of clean laundry lies in anticipation beside the couch and I’ve just been invited for an ad-hoc ladies night up stairs with my two pregnant girlfriends…decisions, decisions!

- White Chocolate -

a moment in the life on an legal alien

2006-04-21T07:11:00.000+02:00

29 July 2004, passenger plane entering, New York, JFK
“ …please ensure that your seats are in the upright position and…”
I am offered my last taste of biltong (dried raw meat) by one of four young guys in the middle seats to my right as they try to stuff down a month’s supply of a traditional snack before reaching this port of entry, forbidding any perishable foods from foreign countries.

1 August 2004, Sunday! What does a church look like in North America?
I pull the dark green towel over my face in an attempt to filter out the day-and-night light and droning of yellow cabs crawling along the Avenue of the Americans, The Village, Manhattan. So this is what jet lag is like: feeling brain-dead when the sun-shines outside and getting a head-ache as soon as your nose hits the sticky humidity outside the freezing air-conditioned buildings.

2 August 2004, my 1st Starbucks coffee under code orange
With gratitude for waking up after my first experience of a Korean diner with my hosts, I inspect the collateral damage inflicted upon my winter-white skin by the local colony of mosquitoes. Hmm, the locals appear addicted to my applied Peaceful Sleep (indigenous insect repellant). Two more days of surviving the city with its dirty sidewalks where fellow pedestrians don’t look you in the eye. I still do not understanding why I am supposed to go downstairs, across the road and then pay someone else to get me my first cup of tea for the day. Don’t Americans use electrical kettles at home?

3 August 2004, in transition…with the entire Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir!
Flying over suburban Chicago, I am relieved to see some “natural” vegetation again. Upon arrival I am frantically sent from one point of a very large U-shaped building to the other. The load of my earthly treasures are protesting against my shoulder blades as I consume three open chairs waiting to board a plane to Texas. Everybody seems to be chewing gum. I am dizzy and tired. On board I’m seated besides a thirteen year old boy all dressed in pink. He’s on his way home after visiting with his dad for the holiday. The practical jokes end as the movie screens fold back before descending into Dallas.

…still 3 August 2004, waiting for the shuttle with a soldier from Arkansas
Recognizing the Beach Boys in the air outside the terminal makes me feel welcomed into the South. My heart is sad as I wave to this young father as he takes a mournful drag from his cigarette. It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon, as he leaves for another desert country. I like the heat and openness down here. I would never have survived the winters had I decided to go to Moody!!

4 August 2004, landing on planet DTS…
“…Huston, this is Tranquility…”
I must be early. There’s nobody else to be seen outside.
Student services are amazing and I am ushered into the smartest dwelling I’ve ever been privileged to live in. I’ll be sleeping on the floor and eating out of a mug, but I feel like the Queen nevertheless. The living area looks out upon a pool ,shimmering in peace before the on-slaught of bopping babies, tired mothers and tanned girls.

17 August 2004, boot camp : immigration laws, identity theft & free wallets
The annual gathering of American visa holders for Fall 2004 is now in session : official representatives round up the sheep and explain everything before two ’o clock. Tomorrow the sheep will be driven to the social security office and we’ll become part of the manual-mass-monitoring-machine. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to apply for phone lines, electricity services and a banking card in two to three weeks. For now we should just be patient in our disconnected, dark little world until further notice.

19 August 2004, it’s raining people!
Excited, they’ve come from all the corners of this country! We’ve presented ourselves as western as possible with the outfits available this side of the Pacific. Everywhere you look, you see arms, food, drinks and confused people. We hear awe-inspiring messages from giants who’ve gone before us. We learn songs and names I’ve never heard of and we are sent home with the anticipation of a tomorrow, drenched in tests of all sorts…

two weeks somewhere in 2004, “…two lost souls swimming in a fish-bowl…”
It seems like class started half a year ago and I’m still trying to decipher the titles of my text books! Only eight days of formal training and I’ve learned much about myself, the orbiting sub-cultures of Satellites: Swiss, Lincoln and Sterns, and that with only one eye open you can see further than most people do with both.

- White Chocolate -

pass over legal aliens

2006-04-20T03:59:00.000+02:00

Wearing blue jeans and white T-shirts

Mexican protestors ignore the red pedestrian light

Carrying toddlers on their shoulders―strengthened by years of cheap labor

Running across Live Oak waving their Stars and Stripes smiling

Hosanna to the kings of America

Safe us!

I AM

2006-04-09T01:54:00.000+02:00

youthful beloved

2006-04-09T01:51:00.000+02:00

Jewish

Lion, Lamb, Liberty

how do I love?

at any cost

Love

Forgiveness, Friendship, Ferocity

how do I love?

in all ways

Suffering

Distance, Days, Delays

how do I love?

under every circumstance

all your heart, all your soul, all your might

our thoughts, our prayers, our hopes

sustained obedience, determined completion, enduring patience

pleasing You

Who is Israel?

2006-03-29T07:53:00.000+02:00

are you the moon-worshipping nomad who ate lunch with the One who prepared the universe?

are you the son of two senior citizens laughing at your first word spoken―A-b-b-a?

are you the adulterous caravan who missed the right turn-off from Egypt 2078 times?

are you the amnesiacs dancing on the edge of a fiery furnace with thunder rolling down the hill?

are you the screaming refugees who raided the Middle-East deserts under constant shade?

are you the new tenants of twelve fully furnished states with instant crops and running cisterns?

are you the fat farmers who refused to let the soil rest insisting on a visible sovereign instead?

are you the mighty men fighting for a murderer who married too many wives in the end?

are you the silent singers crying rivers in a foreign land where you finally began to remember?

are you the seed from which all creation came who grew inside a teenage virgin?

are you the perplexed fathers who sat learning from a boy twelve months before His bar mitzvah?

are you the desperate followers of a vegetarian hermit who showed up from nowhere to preach?

are you the proletariat guarded by Latin mercenaries and Greek philosophy who saw the dove on His head?

are you the angry militia waving palm leafs and throwing rocks in the same week?

are you the faithful few baking bread and drinking wine while fighting over His crown again?

are you the generation who saw dead people walking around for three hours during an earthquake?

are you the group locked away on top of the roof dispelling rumors and seeing Him holes and all eating fish?

are you the enemies of the Roman State who made peace and order impossible to maintain?

are you the illegal aliens stowed away on ships between purple cloth and Turkish Delight?

are you the secret societies hiding in tombs and singing on the inside hearing Paul’s letters read?

are you the family who designed the world’s first printing press?

are you the tragic victims of the Reformers’ Arian insanity?

are you the brave chameleons blending in to every tribe and tongue across the globe?

are you the clever merchants, eating Chinese take-aways and pizzas once a week in New York?

are you the defending Rottweilers who were forced to become lap-dogs to Allied colonialists?

are you the unspoken envy of every aspiring scientist dreaming about apples and relativity?

are you the genius behind science fiction and merchandized action heroes?

are you the forgotten first-born who is running out of land?

are you the icon of hopelessness violated by journalists, archeologists and seminarians?

are you the point of my heart, the centre of their prayers, the choice of our Father?

Amen

how old is a soul?

2006-03-27T07:27:00.000+02:00

your unwavering stare dissects my heart
eyes concede, baring my repaired soul for your inspection
shamelessness at last
when I least expect comfort, your grace untangles my defenses
bearded smiles dissolve my fears

your patient ears draw crowds into the room
hugging, kissing, praying against your hairy chest
old and young find solace in your counsel
maturing a youthful spirit beyond your earthly years

innocence radiate from your palms
every creature crosses your path
drenched in generous blessings

your quiet confidence tests me
shy

jugling excuses yet secure in our unusual companionship

original praise

2006-03-24T07:18:00.000+02:00

I will praise You forever, Lord of my life, my loves, my hurts.
I will praise You in this moment until the day I die.
You breathed me into existence from the commitment of my faithful parents,
they trained me in Your ways even before they knew You,
how Your grace amazes me Lord.
They have revealed Your face in loving one another through death, health, and sickness.
Let all who have ears to hear and eyes to see, discover You in their enduring marriage!

I will praise You forever, Keeper of my body, my heart, my tears.
I will praise You in this moment until the day I die.
You formed my solid bones from daily plates of healthy blessings,
You strengthened my heart through tragedies,
how Your mercy protects me Lord.
I have discovered Your faithfulness when I had much, less and just enough.
Let all who can read, discover Your love for them in my words!

I will praise You forever, Author of my story, my song, my memories.
I will praise You in this moment until I die.
You intended my dreams to bring me to this country full of surprises,
how your generosity sustains me Lord.
You have uncovered my thirst for conversation, my need for human companionship, my hope.
Let all who can speak―shout,
Let all who can walk―dance,
Let all who can love―surrender to You!

the flood

2006-03-22T02:52:00.000+02:00

Reading I Will Praise Him played an unexpected part in resolving one of my most difficult weeks during my studies here at DTS. Experiencing my first flash flood in Dallas, Texas at the same time probably engraved this revelation in my memory for the rest of my life.

As an African, I grew up with a lot of vivid impressions connected to particular emotions. In my culture we laugh, cry and argue loudly. When we feel happy or angry, we dance. When we mourn or remember, we sing.

Ironically, in coming to America to study Yahweh’s Word and search for more of His personhood, I systematically had to close my ears to the deafening silence of my Christian colleagues whom endure a crisis, loss, or even happiness without an outward sign. Apparently it was none of my business.

I became more isolated by the meaninglessness of polite conversation that avoids any vulnerability or access to my searching eyes when I know the person speaking to me carries frustrating pain inside but will not allow me to care for him or her.

Equally disappointing and theologically far more disrespectful is our lack of sharing God’s faithfulness or timely intervention during circumstances where we would have had no chance otherwise, sucked me into this isolating cycle of living a hermit’s life.

Three days before the flood, I wrote my own psalm of lament. Crying as I typed the hurting truth to myself. I saw my dear friend who began this scary journey to the USA as a single international student alongside me twenty months ago, prepare for her wedding seven weeks from now. Her consistent friendship confronted me about lying to myself if I thought that I was truly content with my single-hood.

The next day I fled from this zip code and took refuge in the warm home of a Jewish family in Plano. For two days I loved on their pets, pot-plants and home-cooked meals. Dr. Allen’s being the only book I read while the other seats in the family room were covered under Hebrew charts, vocabulary cards, and nervous Labradors frightened by the growling thunder.

On the evening before the flood, I sat outside under the verandah with a huge ginger cat named Caleb on my lap just staring at the rain falling on the plants and grass. We spent close to an hour listening to God’s drumming omnipresence and smelling His faithful love as the heavens did not relent in their chorus. When I closed my eyes, I could imagine David sitting at the mouth of a cave thousands of years ago, watching the ancient desert drink in the heavy rains, sighing in relief. Knowing that Saul’s men would not pursue him this night as they were somewhere waiting out this storm too. Praying that by the time it ends that they might have come to their senses and realize that he is not trying to kill Israel’s king.

Getting permission from this humble little book to shout out when I am reminded that everything is going to work out well because my God stays the same, was an equally special gift I received under the dripping roof edge on Saturday night. On Sunday morning I worshipped in an unfamiliar congregation with my surrogate family. Rocking and smiling to the rhythmic tunes when the same David’s words were repeated endorsed the importance of sharing the details of how I see God’s character revealed in simple ways every day.

I saw God provide for my needs once again when I was prevented from returning to my apartment overlooking the campus, unless I posed for a photo with the whole family. This gave me another reason to praise God and tell you in this piece that God is good and that He loves us and that He hears our prayers; I might not have my own mom and dad near to me and both my siblings are already dancing before Christ’s throne in heaven but after this weekend I know that I belong to four loving people who live passionately in their home with a verandah overlooking a garden on which God poured out His love for me.

And today I can declare with joy to everybody who reads these words that as for me and my house, we will praise the Lord who made heaven and earth while we are still alive on this beautiful planet!

original lament

2006-03-21T02:15:00.000+02:00

Oh God who made the universe and crocheted DNA,

why did You fashion these moulds of mud to still long for another?

My Lord and my Commander, whose orders direct my lifeline,

will these ever include the duties of a wife and maybe even a mother?

Have you forgotten me?

I wake to see toddlers carried off to day-care on the sidewalk below my window.

I drink my tea at ten when the spring grass swarms under blankets and strollers.

I hear schoolyard stories retold to parents rushing past my front door in time for lunch.

I smell aftershave in the empty elevator after sunset as the temperatures pick up.

You know I desire to please You, yet fused to my core―remains this taste of emptiness.

Selfish sustainability drowns out the screams of bath and bed time rituals next door.

Christianized contentment justify my loneliness, cementing my heart in cynical self-denial.

Blind beliefs that You delight in this type of suffering feeds my pride, nurtures contempt.

Faking faith in Your provision when the last of my friends flaunts that dreaded ring.

I remember your Words―a high calling indeed.

They joke about saving the costs of the first wedding and later divorce settlements.

They preach about Your community in becoming one flesh and the joys of matrimony.

They patronize my nomadic life for Your sake, preventing him from catching me.

They hurt me with words and judging looks when I choose Your bearing across the sea.

Have You just been keeping me from the wrong choices, I came so close to making?

O Father of my fledgling offspring and Lover of my forgotten continent,

why must I struggle in a foreign land without one human that knows my language?

You who turned nothing into paradise and brought life from death,

why do You hear all my prayers except this one?

But You do hear it! You have filled my heart with a fullness of just loving You alone.

You have wedded me to Your faithful work and divorced me from my past mistakes.

You have surrounded me with caring friends and shown me the unity of Your body.

You have protected me through countless adventures snatching me from harmful men.

You have rocked me in Your arms, cradled by day and by night on boats and planes and trains.

I will look into Your eyes one day and tell all the world that You made me choose wisely.

remembering the rain...

2006-03-01T17:15:00.000+02:00

“Something broke the place where the rain is born
Something stole the promise from the light of dawn”
– Johnny Clegg and Savuka

I am an African and I am white.

I am the fifth or sixth generation of Afrikaners living in a unique land as one of eleven people-groups affectionately known amongst ourselves as The Rainbow Nation. When Americans see my braided blonde hair and hear my mother tongue they often insist on seeing me as either a Dutch, German or British immigrant but I am African. I know no other home than where the thundering summer rains envelope tall office blocks and rolling hills of grasveld alike in the late afternoons.

Walking home barefoot from our primary school to the same house where my parents live today, my brother and I were caught in just such a storm as we had the last ten of our thirty minute walk to go. Part of our public educational system included regular evacuation-drills in case of fire, bombs or terrorist attacks. Up until the early-nineties, two of the four countries which bordered us―Angola and Mozambique―had Marxist governments and our dad spent time away defending the border during the Bush War when we were much younger. At the age of four or five, Mom and I went to fetch him at an airport where I drank chocolate milk from a yellow plastic cup that looked like the head of a cow.

Seeing military vehicles on a regular basis wherever we drove to far places kept my innocent mind safe. I remember crying whenever I managed to stay up until midnight watching the television broadcast end with our country’s anthem playing while I saw the same bronze statue with our flag in the background. I must have been older then because I could recognize the endless words scrolling across the flickering screen as names of men or boys.

Dad showed us how to wave a special hand-sign to the uniformed soldiers to make them smile, as they walked with their big brown bags over their shoulders along the road on our way to visit my mom’s parents. They lived three hours’ drive from us half way to the Zimbabwean border. Grandpa Phil quit going to school in order to work and pay for his younger siblings’ education. When he married Granny Max he adopted her two disabled sons and took care of them at home for forty years. In this family, I learnt how to write stories, feed wild birds and speak English. When we were eating a meal at the dining table, she used to ring a little bell to call the black lady who helped her cook in the kitchen. When she died, that copper bell ended up in our kitchen cupboard but we have never used it.

My dad was a civil engineer and designed roads and bridges. In our family, we covered a lot of distance into all sorts of uncharted territories. For the first fourteen years of my life, I had never driven over a bridge crossing a river with any water in it. South Africa suffered its worse draught during the twentieth century from the mid seventies to the late eighties. We seriously needed some rain.

My dad’s dad was an important policeman―a giant with silver white hair and light blue eyes who solved murders and was one of the State President’s bodyguards. They lived in the same town as we did and we would visit them often. He used to play the piano and sing many songs about our forefathers and their folklore. He spoke Afrikaans, English, and two local black languages called Sotho and Zulu. Not even the black policemen could tell if it was a white man talking or not. As head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the country in the fifties, he had earlier arrested the leader of an underground, Pro-Nazi resistance group but after being involved in the Rivonia Trail during the sixties where Nelson Mandela was found guilty of treason, he resigned.

His wife wanted to become a lawyer but the university informed her after her first year that women were not allowed to learn anything except how to be a nurse or a teacher. So she became a teacher. After having her three boys she continued to study sociology and later rebelled against the system by means of her doctoral thesis in which she argued for working women to be taxed separately instead of keeping them from employment by adding their income to their husband’s, increasing their taxes.

Besides the weekly reminder to pray for rain, the reality of my childhood existed within the boundaries of international sanctions, living in houses where steel burglar bars covered all window-openings and remembering not ever to leave clothes outside at night on the washing-line to dry because it would be stolen. I was not shocked by black mothers nursing their babies in public or seeing black men relieve themselves against the neighbors’ walls because it happened all the time. But still, I have so many fond memories of sitting together on the grassy sidewalks outside our home listening to the foreign clicking-sounds and musical rhythms of our domestic servant visiting with her friends from the neighborhood. Feeling safe wherever I walked with her to the café making sure we were back by five o’clock when she had to start preparing dinner for us.

The general impression in my mind of that time in our country was that everybody in the world hated us for some reason. This prevented us from participating in the Olympics and any international sport-team who visited us had some variation of the word rebels in their name.

“A desert is a place without expectation.” – Nadine Gordimer

As a budding adolescent, I realized that something far more serious was wrong in my country when I discovered the reason why my favorite band―U2―did not want to tour our country at the time when they released their Joshua Tree album. Before that moment, I had never registered the word Apartheid.

Considering the hostile history between Boer and British, perhaps my unusual mix of family lineage made me less sensitive to differences. Maybe becoming a teenager was just far more important than why black people were blowing up power lines, setting each other on fire in Soweto and going to work in separate busses every day.

Growing up under such social tension and militarism engrained in me a great respect for discipline, rules and general order. At the same time my rebellious gene pool stemmed from stubborn bloodlines running down into my heart all the way from Germany and Holland. Somehow Africa had seduced me more than what conservatist propaganda could frighten me with. I loved my country and wanted to behave like a patriot but it felt like I was missing out on something important.

The thunder had begun grumbling very softly in the distance but you could smell the rain in the air already.

By the time I turned eighteen, I had read several works of banned novelists that I dug up on my father’s bookshelves. I joined the editorial team of our campus newspaper as a first year architecture student at the University of Pretoria―a traditional white Afrikaans institution where both my parents had studied. As a press photographer I had access to many forums and public events where multi-racial interaction occurred. During one lunch hour we climbed up on to the roof of our building and watched a black student organization protest down below, terrified by the sound of pounding feet and ululating voices.

It was 1992 and the undeniable signs of a miracle shone everywhere. Mandela was free. Communism had failed. CODESA―Convention for a Democratic South Africa was working. The Old South Africa stood divided about ceding white control to a volatile group existing of nine different black tribes. The result of the first election I participated in, gave all South Africans the right to vote. My tiny voice rang out in the 68.6 percent of white Afrikaners who wanted to be integrated with the rest of our countrymen and women who shared so many aspects of our daily lives, yet remained strangers, humiliated by our arrogance.

Two years later I felt God’s hand still working this miracle as I stood inline outside the gate of my primary school―side by side with many of the same black faces who visited with me as a little girl on our sidewalk―at our local voting station. Torn between mixed emotions of fearing radical sabotage and the euphoria of finally experiencing an unimaginable liberty in stepping into the unknown together as a newborn nation, we patiently stood sharing umbrellas and cold drinks. We felt proud but unaware that our separate hearts could endure far more extreme passions before they would be forged together into one.

This miracle continued as we celebrated President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. I suspect that everybody secretly held their breath for the next four years to see if what was happening would last beyond the brightly colored ceremonies. We had a new flag and anthem: Nkosi Sikelele ‘I Afrika―God bless Africa. Each of its four verses sung in one of our nine official languages.

I think I finally exhaled in relief when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup in 1995. My new black president, wearing a green and gold rugby-jersey looked exactly like the most conservative Boerseun would, showing up for this sacred ritual in the Afrikaner culture. He danced over our victory with a smile that refused to leave his gentle face. He associated himself with the one part of the white culture where no black man had ever dared to go. Amidst the smell of spilt Castle Lager and boereworsrolls, he exemplified African community to every South African on that unforgettable winter afternoon, called Ubuntu―I know who I am because we know who we are.

We had become one people. Simunye―we are one. But our unity would soon endure a baptism of fire as The Truth and Reconciliation Commission induced a two year labor of confession, forgiveness, and an irreversible loss of ignorance.

I stayed on the sixth floor of our apartment building and my bedroom faced north toward the residence of the presidency and government―the Union Buildings. On one particular afternoon as the relentless African sun moved past my window into the west, I listened to the live court hearings over the radio. Hearing a Zulu mother beg a policeman to tell her what happened to her teenage son whom he had dragged from her arms many years ago, I stood staring at those buildings blur until there was no more orange light over the capital.

I believe that every South African mourned a loss of some kind during those years. If ever fallen humanity came close to looking evil straight in the eye, we did. In exposing the lie so many believed to be the truth behind government-indorsed policies and religiously-supported abuse, we took ownership of our sins. We stopped demanding rights and took up our responsibilities. We committed ourselves to one another as we started walking together―barefoot again, along a new road heading toward healing and hope.

A decade later I still watch films like In my Country and Red Dust weeping through most of their familiar sights and sounds. But now these tears are like the summer rains that fall while the sun shines. They are necessary to make the rainbows appear that remind me of my country and a promise never to allow such evil to ever destroy us again.

“And before your very eyes the sun breaks through. You see wild bushwillows bursting from banks and fluitjiesriet flittering out finches. In still hippo-pools, soundless rings slip from fish leaping into the sun. The rain clutches you tightly. It holds you. It hurts you. As if the rain has snipped the wire that draws your insides together.” – Antjie Krog

My name is Leani Wessels and I am South African.

hope resurrected

2006-02-11T00:19:00.000+02:00

I heard about Doctors Without Borders for the first time from my friend Ralf whom I met in a dance club outside Johannesburg in 1998. On this particular evening, my fellow architecture students press-ganged me into taking a break from another twenty-hour day of producing blue-prints.

My exhausted body enjoyed the intoxicating energy of the crowd and the smoky smell of a normal life outside the sterile design-studio felt like something sacred, an undeserved moment of liberation to consciously appreciate. My mind however continued to haunt me about how much time I was wasting by being here instead of making my own deadlines. Graduation lay only four months away and I looked forward to escaping from my hometown.

While my mates were dancing off the side-effects of caffeine and lesser known sleep-depressants to Insomnia I decided to take it easy. Sitting alone amidst a tangle of bodiless arms putting down empty beer cans and indecisive hands holding used cigarettes in desperate need of an ashtray, I enjoyed the simple delight of watching ice cubes roll around in a single tot of J&B whiskey.

A stressed out female voice to the left of me caught my attention confirming that this table had reached its capacity. A dark haired man profusely apologized in a strange accent and looked up at me with his bright eyes begging for assistance in this cultural misunderstanding.

I interrupted the situation and distracted the Stetson-wearing lady into directing her toward the restrooms. That was how my friendship with Ralf began. At first I played along with his introduction of how he studied medicine in Germany and had flown into the country the day before. Still skeptical about this original pick-up line, I believed more about his expectations to complete a four month of surgery-internship at the Kalafong Hospital outside Pretoria. We ended up exchanging phone numbers on bright red Brutal Fruit coasters using a borrowed pen eagerly offered by one of the two gay guys who also shared this particular table in the room.

This surprise connection with daily stories of emergency room procedures, unhelpful nurses demanding their tea-break and getting lost in the supplies store looking for IV’s resuscitated my passion for relieving the suffering of people under desperate circumstances.

I had applied for Med-school seven years earlier without success but sneaked into the Pathology Museum whenever I found access to the medical campus just to disappear into the mysterious world of physiology and human composition for a few hours.

On Sunday afternoons I joined a group of medical students from our church in visiting the Pretoria Academic Hospital’s children’s ward―just smiling at or holding hands of some of the more serious patients and playing games with the healthier ones.

My most treasured memory about this unobtainable fantasy related to participating in an anatomy class one time. I was the first of the class to identify the one-way heart valves because they resembled a typical cable-design-principle which she had studied under the Structural Engineering department. At that moment she resolved to accept that destiny did not agree with my aspirations of becoming a physician and conceded to a life of dusty building sites and rude contractors.

Eight years later in a downtown apartment in Dallas, Texas, I still felt restless as I stared at my laptop. Pressing the send button below the online-application, I opened the door once again toward fulfilling an almost forgotten dream.

the family tree

2006-01-30T15:16:00.000+02:00

Vannana uJesu Vannana, Vannana uJesu Vannana!

The sound of drums and a small crowd singing with all their might drones through the unplastered walls. Outside, three confused dogs scramble for peace upon a heap of straw next to the corrugated roof sheeting that cordon off the vegetable garden.

It is late in the evening on this Saturday, but we are having church. We have fasted for the whole day in preparation for the few days we will be living as part of this household. The cocks’ crowing of this morning will not be heard again. Only one of the six chickens is still in this life while the other five will provide dinner for the small congregation after the service.

Fredrick, our mission leader preaches about John 15 and the gas lamp hisses on evenly. I sit right at the back against the wall and watch the black faces as the message is translated into a home-made Shona-Portugese dialect.

“We are not slaves any longer, but we are family members of Jesus Christ. We are all part of the same tree.”

Indeed, this is my family who live here in the hills of Manica*. Who cook under the grass roof among the banana trees and sugarcane fields.

Sunday brings more church services - a whole bunch of them after one another. The most gripping moment occurs during the harvest-offering. Two tin plates on a grass matt anticipate wrinkled Meticais (local currency) – earned at a very high price in manual labor in their small fields―given back to God as a testimony of a dependant community who exist out of His sheer grace. A few coins sound on the floor and then the dusty bags of dry corn are brought forth. A month’s worth of food for this specific family is offered. The congregation will sell it at the local market and will deposit the money in the church’s bank account.

Voices sing louder and louder and faces shine radiantly as the humble contributions increase―so much joy amidst so much need. My family here understands “having enough to give away.” White Westerners look upon this moment through tears. If we could only expose more of our fellow believers to this! It is too indescribable to convey in photos or words.

Monday through Thursday fly by too quickly. We paint and mix concrete outside the building while little children learn more about reading the Bible on the inside. We have to rush cooking dinner to have enough time for packing the off-road vehicles. We hurry across treacherous terrains to reach the wild locations in order to set up the equipment before sunset. The savannah begins to tremble from eager feet that carry bodies to watch the Jesus film. Without flashlights or candles, following barefoot for miles over sharp winter grass they respond. Following after the sound of Jesus’ translated invitation to come and drink form the Living Water.

In awe, they wait patiently while we exchange the heavy rolls of film in the darkness. Do they wonder if Jesus understands the flavors of bananas and sugar cane?

Just before bedtime, I discreetly visit the newly painted cubicles around the long-drops, headlamp securely fastened around my head and toilet roll under the arm. Tired and covered in dust sticking to my Peaceful Sleep, I climb into my K-Way sleeping bag. The local pastor loaned me his blanket all week because I was so cold on the first night.

We thought we came to mean something to them, but then they showed us what unconditional caring and sharing looks like.

Hannana uJesu Hannana, Hannana uJesu Hannana!!
(we are all children of Jesus)

*The rural town of Manica is situated in central Mozambique a few miles East of the Zimbabwean border

insomnia

2006-01-29T21:20:00.000+02:00

Above the earth, the clouds I see

in heaven, God the Father be

From whence He sent both thunder and the rains

to save our wretched mortal remains

Then He poured down to this earth one day

a human flood to Evil’s dismay

Drenching earth with crimson tears

Christ’s broke our draught of cursed fears

While all the time sweet vapour loomed

Refreshing the saint but unseen by the doomed

By this dear Spirit I can become

the proof of my God – the Three-in-One

Stilbaai sunrise

2006-01-20T02:26:00.000+02:00

writing

2006-01-20T02:25:00.000+02:00

Writing results in birth pains, through persistence despite many unsuccessful attempts to conceive, derived from invisible incubation of thoughts and hopes put away for another occasion. It drains all energy and desire from your body, soul, and mind just to appear unannounced like a nagging child wanting milk in the middle of the night.

four months later

2006-01-20T02:17:00.000+02:00

I stand confident, my eyes turned toward the sun, feeling the thermal updraft shifting its direction ready to lift me higher, refined in my craft, grueling lessons mark my heart as the plum-blue-brown bruises heal where precision claws held me safe when I crawled along the edge prematurely.
Reminded of my purpose, hope surges through my outstretched wings.
I can fly anywhere because I know where I belong.

Belonging brings contentment when freezing rain rattles against double-glazed windows at night when nobody came out all day in this unpredictable weather.
Begets an invincible spirit in my heart that I will survive the unknown details of my future among native family who shower me with kindness and sits down on my second-hand couch to drink a mug of warm Rooibos tea.

when we were four

2005-12-14T22:59:00.000+02:00

At twenty-seven dad married mom aged twenty-three
Two young adults in love with life without God
One year after I arrived, fourteen days late, healthy and hungry
Another year on, Mia, my sis, showed up but died an hour later
Photos smelling like Tabu among mom’s jewelry, nobody smiling except me
Then we were three

Closing down the factory after bearing my brother―fearing genetic defects might increase
Thirty-two months my junior, beautiful, gentle Derek
Faithful companion in the crowded Portuguese cafe buying warm white bread when school got out
Garden-bound-camping adventures, dramatic Christmas productions, and dressing up the pets
The blonde Wessels-clan shared nine caravanned summers down by the sea
Once when we were four

God moved in with us three months following the February I turned thirteen
He sent people, meals, and flowers three years later in June to Derek’s funeral and for many weeks there after
Mom’s sadness made her legs get weak which stopped dad from running so much to work and back
He built our simple beach house instead where we spent another fourteen Decembers beside the still waters
I miss the noise of many voices
without ever decorating another green tree with tiny lights since then
Now that we are only three again

Crossing eight time zones in seven planes, one train, one bus smuggling American chocolate in for mom
Christmas Eve winks at me ten days from now, celebrating the life of a Son subsequently lost to a sick world
Smelling the salt in the air, hugging dad’s broad shoulders sitting next to mom’s wheelchair
We smile at the Southern Cross and pray in hope for filling this home once more
With children’s laughter, getting sand inside the bed, received as the ultimate gift on earth from God
If one day we could be four again

let me out

2005-12-14T22:55:00.000+02:00

Help!
Weight unbearable,
lungs unheaveable.

Awful smells suffocate, pinning me down to the third floor carpet.
Asian recipes, old oily fish, used diapers imprison me in this building like the unwashed smell of sweaty shoes.
Academic demands press down on my chest, colorless shadows suck up remaining heat inside―no escape.
Asthmatic panic seeps in beneath my front door, crawling over my motionless lips , chewing into my skin.

Help me Lord!

Close eyes,
pretend to fly,
huge wings rustle nearby,
stirs air across my face,
waving sweet scents into my burning lungs.
Dark shapes move away from eyelids still shut.
Warmth softly strokes exhausted arms and tangled hair, pale ochre rays stream into the room.

Looking up,
relief flows down.
Hope.

for jacob

2005-12-09T01:48:00.000+02:00

...just to let you know that my retirement plan makes provision for pets...

I think this brochure said that they allow cats and fresh flowers in the rooms (chiseled-out caves in a mountain range in the south of Spain with heated water and satellite TV...)

..as far as I know we should have clear cell phone reception around noon when they start up the generator for our evening showers and daily dose of The Golden Girls, so you can catch up with me (around 6:00am in Dallas)...for a quick chat...

here and there

2005-12-08T22:20:00.000+02:00

Eleven o’ clock again.

Shut up…Let me sleep.

You should get used to this if you plan to hang around.

Leave me alone. Who says I want to stay anyway?

Alone is exactly how you will end up, weighing 250 pounds addicted to Starbucks coffee and peanut butter.

When I finish school I will start living a normal life. My habits will change dramatically…for the better.

Do you mean that you will start drinking sodas with your breakfast, buy CDs with nature sounds on because you can only hear sirens through these double glazed windows and then decorate your house with plastic plants that survive by themselves?

I will find a place with space to plant a real garden, care for a cat or two, and move around a lot outside. Working with the garage door open, I will hear the squirrels fidgeting in the trees and smell my personal piece of cut lawn. Why do I bother justifying your ethnocentric arrogance with an answer anyway? Get out of here. I must sleep.

You wish you could remember the smell of the lawn in your parents' backyard after the rain. I know…I see your mind trying to feel the hot sun against your face. This place has sucked you in, don’t you see? You have accepted the fact that you hear your neighbors flush their toilets, that the anti-burglar lights burn so bright all night that you have never had a single night’s sleep without dreaming since you arrived. No wonder you need to take drugs to get some sleep here.

Oh yes, I should take some Melatonin and remember to put the pillow over my head. I might as well get up and fill my glass with water again. Staying hydrated with the heater on all the time makes for a busy night.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life over-exerting your kidneys in this insane climate? Back home you at least knew what to expect; one season at a time. You could get through a blistering summer day, easily braving a hundred degrees without any air-conditioning.

I do hate how the freezing wind stings my nose and eyes…I think it shrunk my skull last Sunday. I had a headache all day after going out to the store for some milk, coffee and―

You see! I told you…becoming an addict already. Next you will start cooking for guests from boxes and put chocolate chips in everything. Have you read the content of their so-called low fat creamer? Liquid sugar, I tell you.

I use half and half with real sugar in my coffee by the way. Why do I bother to explain myself to you. Lord? Hallo Lord? Please make this stop!

What about all those hungry people living on the streets without any food to eat while you stuff perfectly edible left-overs down the garbage disposal?

Shut up, I want to speak to God now…Yes, Lord. Hallo?…Can you help me get away from here…would you please show me the beach in Stilbaai again…I want to feel the boat going over the swells toward the ocean…rocking me to sleep.

nearness

2005-12-02T23:54:00.000+02:00

End of the week.

Exhaustion.

Ten days from now I begin my three day journey to reach our family beach-house facing the Indian Ocean.

After crossing eight time zones I hope to regain enough of my faculties to make a mug of Earl Grey tea, open the glass sliding door, inhale the salty ocean air as I step out toward the tiled stoep and find a seat with my feet crossed on top of the wooden balustrades.

Sitting down with my legs stretched out in front of me, represent complete contentment.

Nothing to hide or fear or worry about.

Knowing that God is in control.

Marise, my pseudo kid-sister who grew up three houses up the street from my childhood home, sent me these pictures of her unborn daughter who is scheduled to arrive on my birthday in February 2006. Inside this womb, beats a tiny heart with God’s fingerprints all over it. Divine intentions for her skills and dreams one day.

Yesterday joined Thanksgiving 2005 as the best day of my life in the US to date. I can not remember a day in which I had laughed so much and felt so aware of God smiling over me. Tasting life in its fullness.

Today I realized again that wisdom and faith is about taking one day at a time. Being healthy enough to get up and do what I planned to get done without being physically dependent on somebody helping me eat, dress or walk. Having enough food and drink for this day and being surrounded by enough friends to feel loved for today. God is sufficient.

Even with finals looming and assignments due...through zombie moments when my brain stalls from sleep-deprivation and I stare out ahead in the middle of having a conversation...

People may ask me: “How are you doing?”

I can still answer: “Well indeed.”

God is near.

lioness

2005-12-02T23:48:00.000+02:00

Appearing oblivious, I hear the leaves move under the caress of the wind. Yellow hairs tremble in its breath.
Squinting against the bright light, I keep my head down, yet fully focused on my objective.
Soothing their young, my sisters lull together, affectionately they look out for one another.
I watch the horizon.
Alone.

Thundering declarations of their conquered boundaries grow louder for weeks on end―still no sight of them.
In this lair we draw blood, we nurture, we age.
Scarred muscles and torn skin testify to painful pasts however, perfection comes through practice.
I sense him draw closer.
Soon.

My evaporated gene-pool hinges on extinction―much depends on the Alpha male’s success.
In exchange for his consent, I keep this pride, I raise his clan, I find purpose.
He protects my hunting grounds while I exert all I have for his sake.
Abiding by the rules of engagement, though he must initiate the meal.
I wait.

Together we rule his defended territory while I endure this seasonal separation.
Protecting purring sucklings, I will kill my own kind if I must.
Approaching paws. Instinctively I prepare to pounce. Long awaited reunion delights in his familiar scent.
Fluffy cubs grunt and play, tugging at his fearsome mane always in my view.
Content and surrendered.

Different scenery, foreign sounds, unexpected obstacles try my endurance. I stay strategically ensnared.
Adapted to this landscape now, I lay down my expectations. I welcome help but remain self-reliant, alert.
Repeated patterns settle my status among the females, occasionally still aggressive under threat.
Unretractable clauses rip free from bloodied tissue―wounded by careless words.
Survival of the meekest.

above the clouds

2005-11-28T19:19:00.000+02:00

Last night I sat in a dark space with hundreds of candles flickering around the edges of it.

In the middle a wreath enclosed four purple wax sticks―unlit. Symbolizing the arrival of royalty and peace, the entire design focused on a majestic white candle―to be lit on Christmas Eve.

“…our life of hope is not a guarantee of safety, but an invitation to risk. To live in hope is not to have reached our goal, but to be on a risk-laden journey…” Ken Collins

I listened to a story of a revolutionary Christian named Stephen, who threatened the legalistic traditions of a snobbish club of religious intellectuals in the first century. Many of these stiff-necked old men probably started out with sincere ambitions but got caught up in their own desires to control others and lost their vision in the process. In the end they conspired to kill him rather admit that they were wrong.

Looking at a photograph of the sun shining above a solid cloud bank, I thought about how many flights I’ve taken in my life―taking off on a windy or rainy run-way with lightning flashing across the tormented horizon. Clasping on to my seat (definitely in the up-right position) and watching eating trays drop loose from their clips as turbulence compete with the pilots’ resolve to get this huge bird into the sky regardless of the discomfort. Generally passengers respond in two ways under these circumstances, either cussing in violent tantrums or deadly quiet, trying out prayer for the first time as they consider the twenty odd hours ahead.

Usually the air-pockets and thunder storms occur so low that we get out of them quickly. A few months ago when Hurricane Rita caused havoc in and around my neighborhood, my dad’s flight from Chicago got rerouted via Memphis to Dallas―flying directly across Rita’s path. Needless to say, I seriously doubted the local air-traffic controllers’ intelligence and deliberated with God how this could happen.

My dad told me later how they flew right over the hurricane and the sun was shining brightly, no turbulence or drama at all.

Praying in the ochre candle light, I thought about hope and Christmas and the price of my risk-laden journey to America. Two or three particular names and faces of close friends in my life―also scattered across the globe―pounded in my chest. My heart breaking for them who were injured and humiliated by arrogant, unteachable religious leaders in the past.

Wishing I could apologize for their awful experiences on behalf of my blameless and radiant King.

giving thanks the day after

2005-11-26T01:40:00.000+02:00

The most precious memories of my life relate to food and lively conversations around a big table. Yesterday’s home-made mashed potatoes, apple pie and a never-emptying glass of unsweetened ice-tea (without ice) will trigger my unforgettable encounter with a loving family in DeSoto, Texas. Unable to clean off my gold-trimmed plate, I thought will never get hungry every again.

I joined two wrinkled lovebirds, having recently celebrated sixty years in marriage as the three privileged guests not genetically connected to the McRae-family. Surviving the Second World War as a sergeant in the air force, he sent word from Italy to his fiancée on a farm in Oklahoma to get their wedding bells ready. But their long awaited union was delayed by a sudden onslaught of Polio which left him paralyzed and unable to write to her for three months. Two years later they were finally married in the hospital and began their life together in Dallas where he had a blackberry bush and a feisty German neighbor.

This was my second Thanksgiving in the States and as most American traditions go, it turned out as a very educational experience for me. Last year I was introduced to the New York parade―finally understanding what Ferris Bueller’ was on about―and the bizarre bargain shopping on the following Friday morning. This year did not disappoint. I learned to play a game called Train and that a full-blooded German oma can lose her dominoes and her marbles over American football. The nugget for the day was that a woman who tells you her age will tell you everything.

Riding in the back of the car toward the night time skyline of downtown my face ached from laughing too much all day. I said goodbye to all the beautiful people I had around me for an entire day...what a priceless gift!

My addiction to tea with milk drove me out to the store this afternoon. I dragged my lazy bum across the empty campus lawn toward the enclosed parking lot next to the men’s dorm. While living in the city with the highest crime rate in the US, I am still more safe walking to my car here alone than most single women living in Africa.

Avoiding the unbelievable hazards en-route to Wal-Mart, I thanked God for this faithful old car with the parallel cracks across her windshield, her clutch slipping now and then, her non-existent air-conditioning―my proud chariot. She was given to me two months ago as a gift by a generous couple who lives by grace themselves.

Inside the store I thanked the lady who rang up my groceries and asked her if she was able to spend yesterday with her family. Stopping at the light between Ross and Washington, I watched an old Mexican man cross the street in front of me. On foot from somewhere to nowhere, carrying two plastic bags, staring straight ahead. His gray moustache surprisingly groomed gave his face a thoughtful look. I felt grateful for a fixed street address and the brief telephone conversation this morning with my parents across the Atlantic.

My hungry stomach mocked my short-term memory now for leaving the two carefully packed containers with my left-overs on the kitchen counter next to the African Violets last night. A great excuse to treat myself with a cheese burger at Jack-in-the-Box―remembering it soon enough this time before I drove past it...like last time.

Mercia takes my order while a rowdy customer demands the key to the restroom.

“There’s somebody in there.” An elderly man explains on her behalf, sitting by himself at a table facing the coveted door. Our eyes meet and he returns my nod with a smile.

The service is quick and I barely have time to greet all the hairnetted Hispanic girls working in the kitchen. Probably single moms wishing they could be at home with their kids―I leave with a warm brown bag and a cold milkshake. Not quite what I had yesterday but a treasure compared to what many mouths have to eat today.

I pull out into the street again thinking―Keep to the right woman...remember to stay on the right side of the road!

after watching the Sea Inside - 2004 best foreign language film - about euthanasia

2005-11-19T05:37:00.000+02:00

She reaches up from her mobile prison for a warm hug

Cold fingers, weak arms, aching shoulders, soft scent of Knowing comforting her little girl

Loving words dissolve over the long-distance phoneline from her dragging tongue still trying to speak

Mother of many who listen to her wisdom lying on dad’s king-size handiwork having tea and home-made cake

He curls her carefully cut hair according to his color-coded diagram

Carpenter fingers, gym-trimmed triceps, graying chin still dishing out kisses to his lifelong bride

His humbled words echo when his faith runs low still trusting God for hourly grace to persist

Father of three who buried two, obediently loyal to his Creator King receiving his daily bread

I tell our stories in foreign tongues, singing to aching hearts, smiling at hopeless eyes

Touching the palm of His hand when these memories stick in my throat, my head against His chest feeling our shared breath rise up and down

Pain, suffering, loss―His merciful tools still shaping my sensitivity to the mercies of a full life in His love

Pa, Ma en liefling kind ―available servants to the One who makes gallaxies and babies

yellow roses and in-laws

2005-11-13T17:41:00.000+02:00

Friday afternoon

Middle aged women clad in wisdom from years of hardship and joy in marriage

Mentoring under autumn colored leaves and prayers for anonymous husbands on the lawn

Friday evening

Young Indian bride-to-be browses through American sized underwear to find something special

Tears of anticipation as she leaves for the airport to meet her in-laws in Oregon tomorrow

Saturday morning

My singleton’s prerogative to decide how many times I can get back into bed and pull the covers over my head

Dreams of making two mugs of coffee instead of one

Saturday afternoon

Orange punch, chocolate wedding cake, a jazz trio in black celebrate two friends wowed to provide and encourage together as one

Fresh pedals leave a trail to godly sanction of this covenant in love

Saturday evening

Country Western dancing for the first time, watching wordless grey-heads shuffle in perfect understanding

Perfect harmony in the balanced designed of submission and leadership

ancient girl-talk:according to Ruth

2005-11-10T18:52:00.000+02:00

Resting her sore neck against the window sill, she closes her eyes, trying not to cry. Warm water brings relief to her hard feet and the scent of olive oil soothes slows her heartbeat as she breathes deeper―calming herself mentally despite the panic inside. The everyday sounds of rural life drifts into the room on the back of a Fall breeze. Heavy branches move in the dusk and animals settle into their pens after a day’s work. She hears the door open and swallows her tears before they run down her face, not blinking.

“How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“I thought I’d treat you a bit before your big night.”

Wrinkled hands stir the soapy water in the clay basin. They gently take out one foot and dry it off with a warm towel. The sensation of rough salt mixed with some more olive oil and crushed lavender rubbed onto her feet and swollen ankles helps her forget about spending all day in the merciless sun, sweating, working, praying for relief.

“I finished the hem on your dress this afternoon. You looked so lovely in it this morning. We still have time to wash your hair and fix it up just a little bit. Nothing fancy...just special. What do you think? All the way up or just the top bit?”

“I don’t want to go.”

“My darling...why not? Did something bad happen between the two of you today?”

“No. it’s not him. It’s just the whole situation.” She looks out the window at the day waning into royal blue. Sighing deeply, she drops her chin onto her chest and quietly lets the water run over her freckled cheeks. Massaging ointment into the other foot, the old woman silently prays for wisdom.

“Don’t cry my love. We must trust that God knows what He’s doing. He’s brought us this far.”

“I don’t fit here. I can’t see how this could ever work.”

“What happened? You were so excited about tonight before you went to work today.”

“The local women kept on mimicking my accent and I’m done pretending that it doesn’t hurt my feelings. I get so frustrated when they assume I should like and know everything about their foods and traditions. I miss my family and my country when it seems like everybody else knows what’s going on and I don’t.” Stuck in the chair, she sits up straight instead.

“It’s tough. I know what you must feel right now. I had to forsake my country at one time too...but there you became part of my life, now you’re all I’ve got. That’s worth everything I gave up back then.”

“I know. I know.” Her voice cracks as she tries to speak and catch her breath at the same time. “I’m older now. Life has worn me out. What if he decides that he doesn’t want me? What if he finds me too strange to relate to? It’s been so many years since I’ve tried to make an impression like this. I don’t think I can do it.”

“He’s a godly man. If he’s the one God has in mind for you, he’ll choose you, no matter what the price. Trust God to provide what you need at that moment...remember: courage and faith.”

nature as observed at zip code 75204

2005-11-09T19:44:00.000+02:00

I see the end of the day drawing near through double glazed windows―giant man-made eyes for this exoskeletal shed. Inside this maternally motivated machine, men serve three meals at clockwork precision. Reminiscent of military monotony as green shells move along in the exact same pattern morning, noon and night. Latexed fingers fiddle on disinfected surfaces, condiments stacked individually-sealed for the sake of hygiene and convenience, lightweight polystyrene containers for every conceivable purpose―easy to manufacture, even easier to dispose.

Waste.

I flee from this artificial womb to breathe authentic pollution under the pastel sky. The relentless humming of air-conditioning units pumping heat out into this evening’s humidity compete against the roar of airplanes aiming for Lovefield’s runways. Passing fruitless trees on Apple Street I follow the nervous fluttering of wings across the manicured lawns. Tension rustles through the solitary trees in every concrete courtyard I pass by. My heart resonates with the anticipation of her unabashed display.

Red berries hang like drops of blood from the contrasting green branches forming a natural vault above my head. Dried orange, yellow, brown shapes edged with saw-tooths, others like five-fingered hands crunch beneath my feet as I deviate from my original route. Avoiding the chloride fumes from the fake fountain I turn right into the arched colonnade where I suspect to find raw nature at work despite the perfect octagonal terraces cascading onto concrete.

Stripped tail feathers flash ahead when she swoops unexpectedly in this predatory dance. Taunting her next victim blatantly she flies straight into the center of a gathering of doves―flushing them all out, dispersing radially in a tapping of wing tips and petrified cooks. She whisps over my head, a well-rehearsed ritual before escaping from my line of sight.

I run into the president’s courtyard. Where the bluebird lives―north of the minimalist magnolia trees where the Macadamia tree has a power socket attached to its trunk. She cuts further left and disappears behind the terracotta tiles and leaves me standing alone, wingless―stuck to the orthogonal pedestrian paths back to my cold Cappuccino-coffee-cocktail in the polystyrene cup.

I walk back with itchy hands. Needles pricked at lazer-beam precision. Measured deposits of bio-chemical warfare against me. Strategically preventing my blood from clotting before my assailant could get a could swig of it first. Scratching the tiny bumps where I find evidence of me joining the food-chain at the lower end.

To my surprise, I enjoy this irritation. Like the plucked feathers that lie strewn beneath the green canopy, these marks on my hands testify to inescapable death on this planet. Tragic to some but to me the gateway to discovering nature as it was intended originally.

Je suis belle (I am beautiful ) by Auguste Rodin, 1882

2005-11-03T22:58:00.000+02:00

Ready. Set. Go.

Vehicles take off, the navigator gives details from the back seat. We find the street―no parking. We find the garage―no parking. We disappear three levels under ground in our search for the elusive collection of beauties. Following polished signs toward daylight the revolving door spits us out into the granite plaza with music playing from the potted plants and people taking smoke-breaks.

Inside the museum we synchronize our watches and disperse with another map in hand. A hushed response from a serious art lover directs our search to the European art section. Scurrying from the red elevators to the blue elevators and staring at the wrong set of doors delay our discovery as precious minutes roll away along the muted corridors hiding behind the heels of uniformed volunteers who look unhappy.

We find it.

We hesitate for a moment―stuck in the center between three giant photographs.

To the left―dust, desert, desolation. Arizona or New Mexico reminds me of Namibia and fresh air.

In front―a photograph taken inside the Berlin Museum of visitors looking at a classical Greek structure. We transcend into shared recollections of the Seine in Paris over looking the Eiffel Tower. We hear German seep from this moment caught in time continents away, dripping from the frame and run down onto the wooden floor beneath us. We turn clockwise to see red brick buildings soften the mechanical mirrored monuments of a parking lot in Dallas. A sudden burst of children’s voices chase us out the room stumbling down some stairs, to land among bizarre interior exhibitions.

A clattering of golden colors in velvet, middle age candle stands and Japanese vases confuse my art chronology as I stagger ahead in this room, trying to regain my focus. I look down at the plastic brim around the ancient furniture, careful not to touch anything lest I induce a reprimand from the art police and notice a lump of bronze mistaking it for an elaborate door stop. This Frenchman’s handiwork catches me unaware. Hidden behind so much clutter I almost missed it.

Two figures. Male and female. A visual of unexpressionable approval.

Exaltation. His robust back muscles strain as he holds this delicate bundle of woman against his chest.

Did he just receive her from God? Is he offering her back to Him?

In his public display of unashamed adoration his strong arms provide security and protection to all she represents in his life. He carries her livelihood, her fears, her body, her heart. Her head turned to the right with her left cheek almost touching his lips. She feels completely accepted, appreciated, loved in all her vulnerability. Like a little bird nestled beneath wings, still, kept high away from dangers, she lies hunched on his torso in safe warmth.

All chattering cease. The race ends. I understand.

I am beautiful and wonderfully made.

time and expectations

2005-11-01T05:54:00.000+02:00

“may he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth…”

says the wisest man in human history through the eyes of his new bride

did she expect him to exchange her for nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine other women?

today my mom began her fifty-sixth year

outliving her two brothers by four years who both died of Muscular Dystrophy

was carrying his bride into the shower part of my dad’s retirement plan?

yesterday I learnt that my god-mother had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s

now unable to ride her twenty thorough-bred horses like she used to

how will my god-father adapt his lifestyle to this new season?

last week Friday I met the blind husband of a fellow student of mine

she moves around on campus in her scooter as she suffers of Multiple Sclerosis

did she dream about a husband who needs her help to get to the bus stop each day?

“for her worth is far above jewels, the heart of her husband trusts in her…”

even if I should lose my breast to a mastectomy like my father’s mom did

would he still want to fall asleep with me after decades of late night conversations?

last week Sunday my neighbors' baby girl arrived ten days too soon

today I felt her bunny-soft skin as I touched her cheek two days before her birth day

how many pumpkin breads will she bake in her lifetime here on earth?

back home Jacaranda trees color October in lilac purple – die mooiste mooiste maand

here the streets and houses shine orange, anticipating red and yellow gardens soon

how many cold Novembers remain here for me to share with my American family?

“enjoy life with the woman you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given…”

says the now wiser man after wasting every good gift he expected to keep forever

would You send me this gift when I stop expecting You to do it?

time change

2005-10-30T23:21:00.000+02:00

The US.
October 2005.
Three o’clock on Sunday afternoon.

Inside: the freshly backed apple pie cools off on the stove top while I soak a new Earl Grey tea bag in my mug―courtesy from Starbucks where my room mate works. The dishes clean and the work surfaces wiped with a clever vanilla scented trash bag in place.

Outside: all the pecan trees stir with great difficulty as their branches still carry full loads of green when November is but two days away. No kids playing on the lawn today. The gray skies chase families to television sets, board games, pullovers. Orange pumpkins turn cold and costumes get stored untill next year.

Four weeks of school left to go: what became of this semester? Thanksgiving and a brief break before Christmas and then the year passes too. Forever finished. What will I show for this season? Finding my life’s ambition for the first time perhaps?

Eight time zones east: my parents get ready for bed with the expectation of celebrating mom’s birthday tomorrow. Spring well away, jasmine smells hypnotize the garden thirsting for relieving summer rains soon. Momentum climax as the southern hemisphere races to year-end.

Dallas.
Texas.
Saving daylight.

holidays

2005-10-28T20:05:00.000+02:00

outside Oudtshoorn in the Karoo

2005-10-27T22:28:00.000+02:00

loneliness

2005-10-27T22:23:00.000+02:00

when I hurt you and you leave – I feel lonely

when you hurt me and I leave – I feel lonely

when you die and I stay behind – I feel lonely

when I visit childhood friends expecting their third baby – I feel lonely

when I sit in a board room with suit wearing men demanding more results – I feel lonely

when I find a desert sunset and watch the evening star appear – I feel lonely

when the immigration officer questions my intentions – I feel lonely

when I don’t know the name of the store you are explaining me to go to – I feel lonely

when my accent makes you laugh and you ask about my clothes – I feel lonely

when I go to weddings and baby showers – I feel lonely

when I want to hold your hand when we pray and I can’t – I feel lonely

when I walk to my apartment through the throng of toddlers on the lawn – I feel lonely

when I struggle for the right translation for something and you look away – I feel lonely

when I order a milkshake and I miss my country and her people – I feel lonely

when I need this month’s hug but can’t find it anywhere – I feel lonely

when I want to explain myself and you won’t wait – I feel lonely

when you get sick and I can’t do anything about it – I feel lonely

when the whole class misunderstands my comment – I feel lonely

when I walk along the concrete road and think of dust and thorn trees – I feel lonely

when I need to explain why I want to drink a beer right now – I feel lonely

when I have to stir my tea with a straw instead of a teaspoon – I feel lonely

when everything I can order to eat burns my mouth - I feel lonely

when you ask me ‘how are you’ without wanting an answer – I feel lonely

when you walk too fast ahead of me – I feel lonely

when I don’t recognize the birds outside – I feel lonely

when I wish you were here to celebrate your birthday with me – I feel lonely

when I end up alone on the campus square at the end of the week - I feel lonely

when you ridicule my strange preferences – I feel lonely

when I fall asleep hugging myself – I feel lonely

when I feel too demanding and decide not to call or email you – I feel lonely

when I fall asleep praying – I feel like You must have felt