Dead friend, four eyes, TC, babies, and Rep.

I had an interesting experience, if you can call it that.

I made a new friend outside of Hands from White River named Latitia. She's a physiotherapist at a nearby hospital.
I went to church a couple Sundays ago. They did announcements. They announced the death of a man named Louie who lives on a farm up the road, a lady named Anne, and then he said, "Do you remember Latitia, the physiotherapist? She drowned in a canoeing accident on Thursday." I instantly exploded into tears and couldn't think of anything else for the rest of the service. After it was finished, I texted one of her friends, Mark, expressing my condolences and letting him know I'm here if he needs anything. He texts back and says he has heard nothing about Latitia and wonders what happened. I called him and told him. It was the saddest and hardest conversations I've ever had. About a half hour later he texts back and says Latitia's fine and that another girl had passed, but not Latitia. I didn't know how to feel or react in that moment. I couldn't produce words. I was so confused. I called Vivienne, since she is actively involved in the church, and asked her to look into the situation and call the guy who made the announcement. I wasn't sure if Latitia was in an accident and it was someone else who had died and the church mixed it up or if it was someone else. Well, it turns out another woman from White River died in a canoeing accident with the exact same name and the exact same profession. Latitia called me later on that day. It was great to hear from her. I hung out with her last week to celebrate her aliveness and we're continuing that celebration tonight, as she is coming over for supper.

On a different note, my eyes have been feeling strange for the last couple months. They feel like there's a lot of pressure behind them. Vivienne told me a story of a boy who had the same thing and ended up with a tumour. So, I acted out in urgency and got an eye appointment. Apparently I'm getting glasses, just for reading and computer. I can still read the bottom row and have excellent vision, but I guess it'll help my headaches.

I saw Tony Campolo speak this past weekend in Pretoria at Missions Fest and he is the bomb-diggity. I thought he would just confirm and encourage my philosophies on Social Justice and he did do that but he deeply challenged me in other areas I refused to dig into. So that was good.

This next week I'm hosting a missions team from the UK who will be helping out the community of Belfast. It's actually has the potential to be quite stressful for a number of reasons. The main reason being the fact that they have invested money into the community and not a lot of it has gotten done, which is largely due to the fact that Africa likes to take its sweet time doing things and everything really has to be done in the right way (community-owned and initiated). They arrive tonight and I have to do orientation with them, discussing what's culturally appropriate and discussing what they'll be doing while they're here. Funny that I've never been on a mission trip before this Africa experience and now I'm orientating teams. Strange.

I'm going to be a Gogo. I won't go too far into that, but yes, my baby's having a baby.

This new role can be quite stressful at times, but I'm actually enjoying the challenge. I'm not teaching at all anymore. I was doing the after school program, but now Lacey has taken control of that AND we're getting a woman, Ncobile, from the community involved. We're hoping she'll eventually take over the program. It has to be that way, community-owned. She's a beautiful woman and so very excited to do this. Her husband is a teacher, too, so that really helps. I'm going to be doing some teacher training with her to build in her skills to be effective. I'm mostly just administering the programs though (after school and university). You know, transferring funds, constructing budgets, and balancing the accounts. What my primary job now is acting as the country rep for South Africa. Each country we work in has a rep who supports and coordinates the activities and projects that happen in the country: Pastor's trainings, home-based care trainings, building multi-care centres, gardens, communicating with donors, arranging international teams, food security, health, .... blah blah blah. I don't actually do the work on the ground; that job is for the people in the community. I don't even actually make up the budgets or proposals or track projects; that job is for Simon. It's a complicated structure that I can't explain right now, so I guess the point is, I'm definitely in a different line of work. But it's challenging (extremely challenging) and exciting! My strongest spiritual gifts are leadership and administration, so I guess this fits perfectly.

I hope to update often. I realized I'm awful and since there are some of you who are living out your Africa dreams through me (Katie) I'll have to keep you happy.

Love you all.

7 people, 6 hours, 1 fridge, 1 bakkie, and a partridge in a pear tree

On Monday I felt like a mother. I was saying good-bye to my children on the first day of school. The day started at 6:00 am. I'll spare you the details of the classic disorganized African start. Two hours later, Jayme, Elvis, Fortunate, Gugu, Stanford, Regina, me, a fridge, and the students' belongings loaded into the single cab bakkie and headed off to begin a journey I'm sure no one would ever think is possible. I'm not talking about the six hours of cramped and crammed travel but rather the fact that 4 Masoyi orphans were beginning University.

It's been four days and I still want to cry.

Incredibly resilient people with a strength I could never understand. People who have gone to ridiculous measures just to survive. People who have had to endure a grief far beyond anything I could understand. People who are destined to fail. People ignored, overlooked, left-behind, pushed to the side.

These are the ones that said "I'm going to make it." These are the ones that held onto a promise from God and a promise to themselves that they will bring change to those with the same story.

This is God's style.

Before I came to Africa, all I wanted to do was change the world. Many people told me I was going to change the world. But that's not God's style.

These are the beautiful faces of the ones who are going to change the world:

A First of Firsts

Today marks a special day. A day of all days! The day I've been waiting for, if you will.

Today, I saw my first Black Mamba.

I've talked a lot about this creature that is also known as The Shadow of Death, but to remind you of it's incredible talents to KILL, here are a list of facts:

- It is the largest venomous snake in Africa, growing between 2 and 4.5 meters long
- They are one of the fastest snakes in the world and can travel up to 20 km/h
- It can lift 2/3 of it's body off the ground and usually attacks the head and neck
- They are one of few snakes with the ability to strike up to 12 times in a row
- Their venom is so strong, a single bite can inject enough venom to kill between 15-35 grown men.
- Without immediate anti-venom, death has been known to occur in 30 to 180 minutes.

This blog is, of course, to encourage you all that I am well and the dangers in South Africa are minimal and nothing to fear.