Note: The above pictures are from The Warehouse. The lady in the orange vest is Gilly, my supervisor.
Today marks the end of about five weeks here. I suppose time flying is an indicator of good things. Here are some stories from my life over the past few weeks.

XENOPHOBIA

As many of you know, xenophobic violence broke out in South Africa near the end of May. While such acts were and are reprehensible, the impetus for it is, in a way, understandable: low-income nationals, who, for decades, have struggled against not only poverty, but racial discrimination, relocation, and oppression (under apartheid), have suffered even more with the influx of foreign nationals, who have made the low-skill job market even more competitive by their presence. Yet their emigration makes sense, too; places like the DRC and Zimbabwe are even tougher places in which to work and raise a family. So it was that injustice around the continent eventually engendered injustice here.

When the attacks hit Cape Town, the Warehouse (my host organization) responded quickly, first by housing about 40 of those displaced for a few nights, then by becoming a key distribution center for canned goods, blankets, and medical supplies. Where I could, I pitched in, cleaning, packing, sorting, phone-calling, and staying overnight at the WH a few times.

Two nights into the operation, I went with my friend, Rene, to deliver a truck-full of mattresses-slices of foam about 1/2 inch thick-to the city’s largest and most impoverished informal settlement (slum), Khayelitsha. As we walked into the community center around 9:00 PM, I found a group of about seventy refugees sitting in neat rows of chairs, eagerly awaiting a share of the massive pile of clothes that lay before them all. They were tired, and quiet; there was not conversation or competition, like you might expect of people in need. They only sat facing forward, their necks craning to see when it would be their turn to take an extra sweater, blanket, or button-down.

In retrospect I realized that what I saw that night was a picture of the world. Figuratively speaking, there is no question that there is enough material in the world to clothe the backs of all six billion of us. Neoclassical economics works on the basis that resources are scarce, but they are scarce partly because that pile of clothes belongs to a very small percentage of wealthy people, such as Americans and Europeans. In turn, this lack of possession of and access to things like clothing trap people in a cycle of poverty from which a precious few are able to escape. It is a vicious and devastating thing.

For more on how the blood of many of the world’s poor is on the hands of the West, Google-research the U.S. Farm Bill with the words “agricultural subsidies” in the search field.

RESEARCH

It may go without saying, but getting things done in Africa takes longer. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s un-American. Being an American, these first few weeks have been challenging in the sense that I’ve had to curb my task-oriented enthusiasm, as it were. On the day to day grind, this has meant spending time just visiting the communities I’ll be studying without pen and paper in hand and ten different objectives in mind. Since I am a “mulungu” (white boy, more or less), it’s not safe for me to do so alone, so it’s been necessary for me to tag along with WH employees who have business in these places. So, in short, the past few weeks have been about laying a foundation of familiarity and relationality (for my sake and for the locals’ sake). This is an important part of doing research ethically; think about what it would feel like for them if some American (white=rich) just sauntered in and started asking in-depth questions about their financial activity. I have to constantly remind myself that because people are people, they need to be treated like people-and not just pieces of data. My uncle, more profoundly, urged me to “be incarnate.” Thanks, Uncle Jeff.

This would be a good time to explain what I am here to do. WorkSpring, a project of The Warehouse, is a business development initiative that seeks to come alongside either small-time or would-be entrepreneurs and offer support, training, and advice. They also want to begin offering finance to these people, since it takes money to make money. Community development theory says that the best way to go about this is to take an “asset-based” approach and find out how these respective communities are already offering finance- particularly savings groups- since many poor people cannot afford institutional banks. My objective is to make a “landscape assessment” of three different communities, seeking to learn the nature of group savings in each. Hopefully what I learn will offer some valuable insights and comparisons.

So what are these communities like? Mannenburg is an so-called “coloured” township that is composed of formal structures (houses), with informal additions added on. (Typically, the composition and structure of housing is a good indicator of the socio-economic state of the community.) People there speak Afrikaans (ahff-rih-kahns), which is a derivative of Dutch. A week and a half ago, I visited there one afternoon with Jonathan and Grant, two WH employees that work with gang members who live in Mann. For about an hour, we walked through the community, making small talk when it was natural, but otherwise just seeing and being seen. The houses there are simple, two-story, and made of cinder-block. Children play freely in the street, and thought three mulungus walking together were comical (I suppose I would, too). I was surprised at the amount of people standing around talking. While this is partly because of unemployment, it’s also because South Africans don’t derive meaning in life from tasks, but from conversation and relationship. What an admirable quality for me to learn from, this intentional lingering about.

Sweet Home Farm, the 2nd community I am studying, is a slum. My first experience here about a week and a half ago was strangely numbing. Maybe that is a sinful defense mechanism of mine-not knowing how to cope with the dire poverty, I close up emotionally and perceptively. As I stepped through the muddy alley-ways, between small and tidy shacks, I was overwhelmed to remember that this type of life throughout the world is much closer to being a norm than it is an exception. After a 45-minute tour, I ducked into a pool-house of sorts and lost a round to my friend, Goodman, with whom I had come. We payed our 2 Rand (25 cents), thanked the owner, and left.

Guguletu is the third community I’ll be studying. Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend five nights in this place, with a precious elderly family with whom The Warehouse is friends. Tata Dom and Mama Mavis, both older than 65, are gentle and happy people. My room was small and comfortable, and the meals we ate were excellent. We spent the night-time hours drinking tea and talking about the country’s history. One night, Tata Dom explained with broken but eloquent English that apartheid was “a heavy burden,” then, motioning but maintaining eye contact, “a yoke on my neck.” Sitting there in his kitchen, I was ashamed of my easy life, and humbled by the deepness of his laugh and his joy.

On a lighter note, Mama Mavis seemed to enjoy listening to what sounded like riotous African gospel music at an inconceivably high volume. Sitting there one afternoon in the dim living room while she read the newspaper and I a book, I felt as if this surely must be a joke. But every time I snuck a glance over at Mama Mavis, the soft tapping of her foot and the smile on her face as she hummed and swayed to the music -obliviously- indicated otherwise. I smiled and returned to my book.
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I’ll update again this week and talk about my living situation and a few other things. The Lord’s peace and boundless grace until then.

Learning from steinbeck

As I passed through or near the great hives of production—Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Pontiac, Flint, and later South Bend and Gary—my eyes and mind were battered by the fantastic hugeness and energy of production, a complication that resembles chaos and cannot be. So might one look down on an ant hill and see no method or direction or purpose in the darting hurrying inhabitants. What was so wonderful was that I could come again to a quiet country road, tree-bordered, with fenced fields and cows, could pull up Rocinante beside a lake of clear, clean water and see high overhead the arrows of southing ducks and geese. There Charley could with his delicate exploring nose read his own particular literature on bushes and tree trunks and leave his message there, perhaps as important in endless time as these pen scratches I put down on perishable paper. There in the quiet, with the wind flicking tree branches and distorting the water’s mirror, I cooked improbable dinners in my disposable aluminum pans, made coffee so rich and sturdy it would float a nail, and, sitting on my own back doorsteps, could finally come to think about what I had seen and try to arrange some pattern of thought to accommodate the teeming crowds of my seeing and hearing.
I’ll tell you what it was like. Go to the Ufizzi on Florence, the Louvre in Paris, and you are so crushed with numbers, once the might of greatness, that you go away distressed, with a feeling like constipation. And then when you are alone and remembering, the canvases sort themselves out; some are eliminated by your taste or your limitations, but others stand up clear and clean. Then you can go back to look at one thing untroubled by the shouts of the multitude. After confusion I can go into the Prado in Madrid and pass unseeing the thousand pictures shouting for my attention and I can visit a friend—a not large Greco, San Pablo con un Libro. St. Paul has just closed the book. His finger marks the last page read and on his face are the wonder and will to understand after the book is closed. Maybe understanding is possible only after.

-John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley (pp.108-9)

If we are not careful, I think the conversations and experiences of our lives —even the meekest—crowd together in meaningless traffic. When we do not take ourselves into solitude, these things become like boxes of unsorted family photographs, present in one sense but forgotten in the dusty attic space of the mind.

Entering the quietness of a sanctuary inspires thought about the holy artifacts that fill it.
So with ourselves, entering into solitude consecrates the words and images that live there.
In turn, these small conversations and experiences teach us, and build within us an ever-deeper desire to learn from the grace of the humdrum and the ordinary.

In the madness of the modern world, we need solitude, because pictures do not frame themselves.

TIA

1) Today is my second day at an economic development conference in Pietermaritzburg, SA, about an hour from the coastal city of Durban.

The conference center where we’re, uh, conferencing is a beautiful location. It’s also quite rural.

Today after lunch, we reconvened in our, uh, conference room for another session. Food in our bellies and a mild breeze drafting through open window and door, I struggled to stay awake for the speaker’s message on kingdom business-that is, until a white-coated monkey with a small black face sauntered in the back door behind the speaker (who took no notice) and sat up on his haunches. Chewing on his fingers innocently, he craned his neck outside to his hidden comrades for approval (maybe he lost a bet?)

The speaker droned on about the kingdom. The monkey, who had apparently heard it all before, calmly exited the room. He might as well have had a button down and chinos on.

2) A song that we sang in worship of the Lord, one of the most beautiful I have heard. Click here: Hosanna

This is Africa.

2.5 down

Today marks my two and a half week anniversary here, roughly. And what a two weeks it has been. The first section here is more of a story (the experience called for it), and the second is more of a description of what I’ve been up to thus far.

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Two days after I arrived, my good buddy Austin Grisham (who is spending the summer in Mozambique, and came down for a visit) and I navigated our way down to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. Given our inexperience with (1) driving on the other side of the road, and (2) navigating the very un-grid-like nature of streets in Cape Town, this was no small feat. On our way, we stopped in Simon’s Town for breakfast, an obvious but loveable touristy waterfront town with loads of curiosity shops, antique stores, and breakfast joints. We ate omelettes, drank good filter coffee, talked about life, and paid our bill. Then we carried on: toward the southern-most tip of land on the African continent.

Windows down, we wound and bended our way along the rocky shoreline of False Bay. The sun was directly above us now, as we passed fewer and fewer houses and convenience shops. We drove higher. The water now hundreds of feet below us.

We followed the signs, turned into the Reserve, and paid $8 each to enter. The road turned up and to the right, and, following it, found ourselves at the beginning of a giant plateau that stretched itself for 3 miles towards the meeting point of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans . There was coarse ground cover with thorns and brittle branches, the only thing that survives the endless torture of sand and wind. I turned and looked through the back window: behind us, the high, hidden peaks of Table Mountain, beams of light and dust, deep shadows of rock.

Three miles down we turned right and descended again to the seashore. We parked the car where the road and the world ended, and stood watching, speechless as the icy ocean waters, at long last, threw themselves on dry land.

Up a cliff some five hundred feet tall, to the wind torn stern of the Eastern world. The wild and untamed waters that stretch to Antarctica. Waves fifteen, twenty feet tall for a mile out. To the northwest, the shimmering sea. To the southeast, the cliffs who like wise old men show their strength through a worn but tireless face.

One is silenced to receive with one’s eyes something so spiritual. The gift was itself a doxology. When the unsearchable God hid Himself in creation, I think, He gave to the Cape Point His mystery and power. It is the most incredible landscape I have ever seen, to be sure.

REALITY, ETC

One of my first sensory impressions of Cape Town came just as we left the airport (my supervisors, Gilly and Gareth picked me up when I landed around 11 pm). The first image was a huge sign advertising World Cup 2010. It hung on a building at the airport that was being renovated. It was as nice as any airport building I’ve seen. The second image, as we merged onto the interstate, was Khayelitsha, the city’s largest informal settlement (slum), home to at least a million people (almost exclusively black) and thousands of tin roofed shacks that pack and jigsaw themselves snugly together. The juxtaposition of these images is a guiding metaphor for the history and nature of this place. 40% of Cape Town has no job. 50% live in poverty. The top 5% drive Bentleys and wear Italian wool. The rapidity with which the demographic changes here is sickening; there are no train tracks in South Africa.

But, there is hope. Organizations like mine, The Warehouse, are bearers of it. My first day at work-an actual warehouse-was a testimony to this. Like every day there, we spent the first hour praying for this country, and for one another.. I met the 15+ other employees; they are wonderful, filled with a love for Jesus and a wise, compassionate concern for Cape Town’s poor. In a city so darkened by a history of racism, they are a burning light.

A few of us ate lunch in a local township (ghetto, basically) at a “braii” (grill), where you pick your meat, take it to the braii room, and have it delivered on big platters. [For you Memphians, it's like the Butcher Shop without all that FDA hassle ] It was delicious.

The xenophobic violence started here nine days ago. Since then, the WH has become a central distribution point for food, clothing, and blankets. The truest blessing, for me, is how obvious it is that this immediate, tireless, and sustained response (which will go on for weeks to come) is because of a love for Jesus-for His justice, His compassion, and His generosity. To see them give their weekends and night times for this effort is so decidedly un-American. After all, I am good at giving money, because it costs so much less than giving time.

As I mentioned, the WH will sustain its relief and rehabiliation for the refugees as long as is necessary, without knowing when that will be. What a blessing to be working for such an incredible group of people.

My research will not begin for a week weeks. The first reason is the xenophobia response, which has taken priority these past nine days. The second reason is that Gilly (my supervisor) and I have been preparing a presentation on community savings schemes, which we will present tomorrow at an economic development conference in Pietermaritzburg. The third reason is that I need to become a familar face in the townships I will be researching, as they are extremely wary of those outside their community. Since I am an outsider (and white), I can not go alone, but rather must go with Jonathan or Goodman, WH employees who are considered “men of peace” in these places. This phase will prove to be tedious, I think, but nonetheless is extremely crucial. To do otherwise would be imprudent and unethical (I can’t just study people like they are objects).

My living conditions are excellent. My bed is very comfortable, and I have been eating well. The two women from whom I am renting (I live in a small apartment behind their house) are named Caroline and Rene. They are wonderful people. We have already shared many laughs and stories.

I was given a phone and so am working my way into a social network, comprised of WH employees, church friends (I will save the description of church for another blog), and related spheres. I often get text messages inviting me to this or that, and just this morning played soccer with about 15 other college-aged guys.

Pray that I would spend time in the Word every day. Pray that I would be about serving those at the WH, and those whom I will be studying. Pray also for the Lord’s guidance in Rachel and I deciding whether she can come visit in a month or so. Praise the Lord that He has already given me such a love for this place! (I mean, it’s Cape Town-google it for a picture, and you will understand) Praise Him for my growing love for the practice of development, and for being a voice for those who are voiceless.