Experiencing Africa

It’s been nearly two weeks since we’ve had Internet access to be al to post an entry. We have seen and experienced so much. I wonder if I can capture the essence of this pilgrimage of the last two-and-a-half weeks through the words of a blog which would be brief enough to hold the interest.

I remember the sky of the Northern Hemisphere on a clear night with the constellations clearly defined: Ursa Major and Ursa Minor with Draco winding in-between; Cassiopeia and Orion and Polaris, the North Star, to guide me. All so familiar. Looking up to the night sky as I did in Kruger Park last week, it seems as though someone took a big spoon and stirred the heavens, stars coming to rest in all strange, yet beautiful arrangement. We have had little difficulty communicating, yet we hear the music of several different languages at once. Now at John Wesley College, we discovered today that the students, when engaged in informal chat, will speak in one mother tongue and hear a response in another’s. Within a group discussion Zulu, Tswana, Xhosa, and Shona may all be used at once, with a little English or Afrikaans mixed in. This, indeed, has been a considerable step into a new world.

And it is a beautiful world. Look at the photographs and you can glimpse what it and you can glimpse what it is like to stand atop the Knysna Heads and see the Indian Ocean pound at mountainous shores that reach their fingers back into the sea. You can almost sense the lush green sugar cane caress the sky along the winding roads of KwaZulu Natal. The sudden speed of the leopard seems to promise a leap from photograph to your lap (yet you’d better hope it doesn’t). The depths of Blyde River Canyon reach up to embrace you. The frenzied dance of the Zulu and the Gospel song of the Pilgrims’ Rest cooks are difficult to record in two dimensions. Rush hour in Johannesburg notwithstanding, the people here are a hopeful, beautiful, struggling, hurting, persevering lot.

I love my homeland; and I have seen God’s hand in another. We are among those who were strangers, many of whom have become friends and, as brothers and sisters in the one Body of Christ, family. I have discovered that we in America have a stake in Soweto. This has impressed upon me how I also have a stake in the Detroit City neighborhood and what happens to a family in Baghdad. As strange as the night sky is in another part of the world, we are bound together; we cannot escape it; it is God’s given.

We've now been driving back and forth from Pretoria to Jo'Burg, and negotiating the traffic through rush hour. The day before yesterday we went to Soweto for a tour. Interesting, and after our interactive tour of the Cape Town townships which were all "informal hosing" - intense poverty, Soweto was surprising. Much of it is developed and some is even up-scale property. There are some informal sections, but not like Guguletho or Langa and many others we've seen on town outskirts through the country. Langa and Guguletho are startling and go on and on as far as you can see. Soweto is especially important for its history as one of the centers of resistance and sites of violent confrontation and suppression in the resistance to apartheid. Yesterday we went back in that direction on our own and toured the Apartheid Museum. It was very sobering, comprehensively marking the whole 350 year history that led up to the severe oppression and segregation, and the events that led to the establishment of democracy. Today I led a class in the seminary after Laura and I accompanied some of the seminarians to their introduction to pastoral care in a hospital setting at Pretoria University Hospital. Tomorrow I will preach during morning chapel, and then we will go to Central Methodist Church to visit an AIDS ministry. Friday we will join Rev. Phidian Matsepe to stay with his family in Kwa Thema Township and will preach at his church on Sunday. Phidian was a prominent leader in the struggle against apartheid, and we expect to learn much from him as well as from our stay in his community.

I will look at the sky again tonight. It will still be new and strange, yet becoming to my eye more familiar and ordered. With someone’s help, I may even find out will look at the sky again tonight. It will still be new and strange, yet becoming to my eye more familiar and ordered. With someone’s help, I may even find the Southern Cross and know all the more that though America is my home, I am also connected to Africa.