more snow on the way

Hard to guess how many books are written on the need for busy humans to slow down. Shelves in airports and train stations are abulge with them. We snatch one and browse it to fill the time between travel spurts. But then, along comes the snow. And for a time life begins to move again at a gentle pace. The goings-on in our villages and fields cease to be a blur as we are forced into slow and careful movement. The art and babble of conversation returns to the dry stone walls and the hedgerows and the warm snugs of alehouses. Somehow this easiness draws us away from talk of gloom and failure and the growl of worries, pacing in wait for us.

Though it is all very temporary, it is a time of rest, like an extended Sabbath.

It is also a time to look into the eyes of a neighbour and notice the life that is in them. Time to make space for listening to their heartbeat. There is a farmer in a village near us whose wife has passed away. He speaks about his grief and his newly discovered cookery skills. Time spent with this man enlarges our picture of life and its possibilities. There is a much younger farmer who leaves the pub early to get a restful night so that he can go out into the darkness of the winter morning to do his work. He is declaring his dream of following into his father's and grandfather's shoes.

The deep snow reveals to us the slow and rhythmic journey we are all making. If only we would take more notice. More snow on the way in the next few days.

cain and abel and the man in the bmw

On the way from the airport today, I moved out to overtake a slow lorry on the M65. A driver in a BMW came up very fast behind gesticulating unmentionable four letter words. Funny, isn't it how many foul language gems have four letters. But the really sad thing is the fact that I was able to lip-read them all. I looked at him for a while in my rear view mirror. He was in a rage. Tail-gating me for a few miles, he overtook on the inside, wheeled out in front with all the aggression of a four year old in a playground, finally coming to a halt four cars in front at the lights by the BMW garage in Colne. For a while during this episode I felt he could murder me.

Cain murdered Abel because he was angry. Actually, he wasn't angry with Abel. Abel made the mistake of quietly getting on with being Abel. No, Cain was mad with God. The whole episode is the first expression of sibling rivalry. Got us all off to a great start! Look it up in Genesis 4.

The man in the BMW needs a spell in the city of Cape Town. Every morning and evening during the rush hour, drivers weave in and out of lanes. And mostly to no obvious advantage. Although I did discover it did make a really big difference at times. Fr. Michael of the Institute sagely reminded me that drivers would tolerate any manouvre as long as you gave adequate notice. The traffic flowed and there were no killings. I did wonder today, though, about the guy in the BMW.

It wasn't a young guy wearing a hoody. Or a shaved head wearing one of those caps. The BMW driver on the M65 was at least 70 years old.

Scary.

notes from 35,000 feet

I sat on the Boeing 777 en route to Dubai absorbing the shock of such an abrupt end to our time in Cape Town. Absorbing too some uneasy feelings that our lives had been changed but not knowing yet just how. For in this time of transit, I felt suspended between worlds high up in the atmosphere, the action of memory like a frantic random slide show in my head, disconnecting from one world, reconnecting with another, fragmented, dizzy and unsettled. Images of Gugulethu were disappearing in my rear view mirror while images of Skyreholme were taking shape on the horizon.

From the beginning, this blog has been about "the colliding worlds" that, among other things, make South Africa what South Africa is. The wound inflicted by apartheid remains open and ugly. In the main, black people bear this wound with dignity and generosity while they yet have to bear the burdens of poverty and inequity which remain fully fifteen years after the 1994 elections. Then, for the first time since 1948, coloured people were allowed to vote. Black people, who had never been allowed to vote, voted for the first time.

To a quite staggering degree, white people remain very rich in South Africa.

Black people remain very poor.

But there are other worlds in collision here. The coloured man who drove us to the airport says he has a daughter who was recently interviewed for a job in the civil service. The outcome - she failed - left him believing his daughter was "not black enough". Affirmative action, as it is known, favours the African, and African is defined as black. Not white. Not coloured. Black.

Anecdotes like this tend to give life to what, in the end, may be an urban myth. Another urban myth goes something like this, "black people cannot run the country, transition to black rule was too quick". But then a rich man disclosed to us his view that the ANC government has rescued the finances of South Africa. He believes they are financially more competent than the apartheid regime ever was.

Such is the view from 35,000 feet.

though my father and mother abandon me, Yahweh will gather me up (Ps 27:10)

Vulnerable children end up in the arms of Masizame, St Kizito or the Institute because in one way or another they have been abandoned by father and mother. This tragic reality is here for all to see. Inescapable. Whether we are a people of faith or a people of no faith is largely irrelevant. The words of the psalm simply point to the gathering in of the orphaned and the vulnerable by a people on fire with compassion.

On my last full day here I am with the Xhosa speaking women of the St. Kizito project in Gugulethu. I arrived early and waited outside the locked gates in my car. The streets of this vast township are busy on Sunday afternoons with smartly dressed church goer’s returning to their homes and men of all ages moving around from one drinking hole to another. The streets were busy as I set out for a walk. Eventually I met with Thobeka. Simultaneously, a man touched me on the shoulder. He had followed me from the car to make sure I was safe!

We spoke for a while, he and I and Thobeka, about the rivalries between townships, fly tipping, youths on street corners, upwardly mobile blacks moving into places like Constantia in the suburbs and whites moving off the street as a result, whites moving into a township and blacks wondering what they are up to. We embraced the guardian angel dressed as a man and went in to St. Gabriel’s. He had started work at the Institute hostel two months ago and recognised me!

The women talked about their work, some in their Xhosa clicks, some in English. As always the theme is the children in a world of poor and messed up adults. The mothers with young babies to multiple partners, the men who disappear, the child allowances collected by relatives no longer caring for the child, the neighbours caring for children who are not their own. The volunteers are like detectives unravelling knotted balls of wool. Alongside the spectacular story with a remarkable ending is the one that would frustrate a Sherlock Holmes.

Thobeka invited me to her home in another part of Gugulethu to meet her daughter Tamara and beautiful little grandchild. When it was time to leave she insisted on escorting me to the N2. It was not safe for a white man on a Sunday afternoon to stop at intersections overlooked by black men drinking. She left me at the slip road and walked back into her world to get a taxi. I coasted down the motorway to collect Karen and Marc at the Waterfront, ten minutes and a world away.

So ends this time of ours in the Cape.

We return in late February. The blog will continue in the meantime for Cape and Dale dwellers alike.

coffee and shoes and desmond tutu

It’s funny how it works. While the little everyday weavings of our lives are quietly going on, we have little idea of how the final tapestry is taking shape. The other evening, we had supper with Marc at Il Leone, a fine, friendly, family restaurant. A guy by the name of Judd came over to Karen and apologetically announced he had noticed her shoes. Yeah, right! She had purchased them in a newly opened boutique, next to our adopted coffee shop, La Fonteril in Plettenberg Bay. It so happens they were hand made by Judd’s flatmate Grandt. Erm! Indeed his girlfriend duly lifted a leg to reveal a similar pair in a different colour and pattern. They are only sold in two shops eight hours drive apart. Judd is a master coffee roaster and his new place, “Deluxe Coffeeworks” opened today on Church Street. We went there and sampled the coffee. It was very good!

We were given a master class in coffee from picking the cherry-like fruit to removing the pulp to drying the green beans, all the different sizes depending on which part of the branch they come from, and then the roasting process itself. We learned that all the coffee that Africa produces is bought up by international dealers, shipped to Antwerp, London and New York, where it is processed and packaged. Then some of it ends up back in African coffee houses! Apparently Grandt the shoemaker is designing a coffee themed version of his new creation. Can smell it already!

The blended themes of coffee and shoes and the significance of places.

Il Leone, you blogfollowers will recall, is the place where we met the elegant Emma working on her PhD. She did indeed visit the Institute the following day to offer some of her free time. Margaret, one of the teachers – also featured in an earlier blog – described Emma as “a Godsend”. Her skills were exactly what they had been needing. She is now registering as a volunteer.

The first time I saw Desmond Tutu was in the newly opened Bradford City Stadium in 1986. Today he visited the Institute. Only a little less sprightly, he carried that same blend of charm and loving attention for everyone around him. He went first to the kids in the workshops and lingered with them. He spoke with all who came near him. He recalled his talk in Bradford and had his picture taken with Marc.

Finally, there was the birthday celebration yesterday of another man whose time is given generously to everyone around him. Bro. Peter Simmonds sdb, now 82, was the original creator of the projects on Somerset Road. Though he is a good deal less sprightly than he was, he can still be seen wearing his workshop apron just as he did when he was a young engineer. The first weavings of the tapestry that grew to be the Institute Youth Projects began with this man’s vision.

Among so many other things, he fixes shoes!

manna from heaven ... for today!

Paternoster is a place to collect thoughts, reflect. The sea and the wind are the only sounds to be heard in this sunny cloister today as I reflect on a thought that has troubled me for some time.

Almost every encounter on such a journey as we have had here in South Africa, is transient. Like the manna that fell on the desert. Those familiar with this epic story of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt, will recall the miraculous appearance of a dew-like substance on the desert floor every morning. A miracle for those who believe in miracles, but what is most striking is the instruction given to the people. They must “go out and collect the ration for the day … and no one may keep any of it for tomorrow”.

I am persuaded that the gift in so many of these transient encounters is, like the manna from heaven, just for this day. So often we are tempted to collect them like souvenirs for the mantle-piece of our minds or to invest them with a future they simply do not have. To gratify something in ourselves. Disappointment too often follows. Some weeks ago in Plettenberg, I saw something of this in the face of a lady called Virginia.

She was hesitant
Her eyes wearing a wary look
Like a trench coat against the wind and rain of
Gilded promises
Carried by the white man
With the white hair
Sipping his breakfast tea.

I am chastened by these thoughts. Often I have wanted to collect the manna and store it for the morrow. Those in the exodus story who did so found this delicate food had become rotten and foul-smelling.

I am challenged to unwrap the encounter that is meant for today, fully enjoy it, fully honour it, and then move on. The mantle-piece of my mind is far too cluttered!

On the food and wine front! The most satisfying Cape Town eatery, taking into account food quality, the wine list, value for rand, service, and an astonishing view of Table Mountain from the tables outside, is Societi on Orange Street off Buitensingel.

Dare I say it, manna from heaven!!!

small shards of a great mosaic

Small and white, enclosed with regular teeth, the cowley shell was once used by slave owners to “pay” their slaves. On the beach at Milnerton we came across poor white men, their faces burnished copper by the glaring sun, their eyes trained on the sand, each looking for these cowley shells which fetch R1 per 25. Worthless to the hapless slaves and of piteous value to these collectors, they are used to make necklaces and bracelets for the tourist trade. They showed us their other finds, ancient fossilized shark’s teeth, old and broken blue crockery pieces from shipwrecked galleons, perhaps carrying slaves in their holds. All worth a few rand to some collector. Across the narrow lagoon inlet black people in their orange tunics collected rubbish from Woodbridge Island beach, their filled bags bringing in the minimum wage of R60 a day.

In a small down near Worcester, displaced Zimbabwean immigrants are prepared to work for R40 or less a day. Two days ago, a thousand locals invaded their informal settlement and tore it down. Now they sleep on a playing field under the stars, the more vulnerable in a local hall. Earlier this year many were put to death in the townships.

Two nights ago, a black Maserati pulled up outside the best Italian restaurant in town, Il Leoni, a block from the Institute and a mere 200 metres from the Salvation Army soup kitchen. As the staff came out to look, other high value, big engines were directed by a policeman to take the one way the wrong way to shortcut on to Somerset Road. A tall, elegant waitress doing a PhD in English called Emma observed wryly with a tired sigh, “Yah, this is Cape Town”.

Pondering on these and many other images in the dead of night, awake because the howling wind caught the scaffolding opposite, making a sound like a rehearsal for a tubular bells recital, South Africa seemed to strain with its great contradictions. We are meeting the tall Emma at the Institute in the morning. She will be offering her free time to the Projects.

And, yah, this too is Cape Town, anotherof those tiny shards of a great mosaic.

the cape of sorrow, grief and good hope

If you set off early on Saturday morning, Paarl is only 45 minutes from Cape Town. Our favourite coffee shop, the Monte Christo, was closed. At the rear, through a plain door from the shop that sells ornaments made in local townships, is a quiet room where people can pray and meditate. It is as unexpected in its simplicity and beauty as in its utility and popularity. But, Monte Christo was closed. We tracked back a little on Main described locally as the longest street in South Africa and had breakfast. It was good.

Paarl is a thriving industrial town, or at least it was until a string of factories closed down, ripping the heart out of the place. Nowhere now for the men and women, highly skilled in the yarn and clothing industry, to go in the morning. A pall of pessimism hovers over the once busy township.

We had come to be with the local St. Kizito group. We sat together in a decaying old structure awaiting funds that will transform it into a church centre. They talked about the children, the soup runs that never seem to bring enough soup, the teenage pregnancies, the great burden on grandmothers, the absent men, the new job drought.

After a while, Janette began to weep with great sorrowful sobs. There are many reasons for these tears, but the image that tipped her over was the one given by another, of the people still turning up at the soup-serving when there was no soup left. It seemed to symbolise their feelings of helplessness in the face of such need. Janette has been doing community work in the township for many years. On her own, before St. Kizito was formed. They are her people.

The tiny group of women shared her sorrow and began to dream of how one day they will acquire a container fitted with a cooker. How one day all the cups will be filled and no one will be turned away. How one day they will take more of the children on a fun-day out and see more faces filled with uncontainable laughter. Just for a day.

We left for Cape Town.
Bruised by the sorrows of these women.
Inspired by their hope.

We detoured to Franschhoek where we had a light lunch at the “Essence” restaurant. A young woman called Monise served us. Alone for a while afterwards, I began to write my blog notes.
She noticed.
She asked if I was writing a diary.
We spoke.
Into the quaint and innocent air of this small tourist town she offered her own sorrowful story. Her twenty two year old twin sister, Monique, was murdered in April by a boyfriend, father of their four year old child. They’d had a row and he shot her seven times over the course of the evening until she died. The child is now with an older sister, Carradine, and the boyfriend will leave jail when he is over sixty years old.
Monise wants you to know of her sorrow.
In a few words, here it is.

Sorrow, hope, grief on Saturday in a corner of the Cape.

something remarkable is stirring

The “widows mite” is one of those startling parables you read in the New Testament which has a mildly edifying impact but rarely assumes any concrete image for us. A mite has come to mean something very small, referring as it does to a poor widow who reached into her purse and gave up this smallest of coins as a gift, something she could hardly afford to do.

Last night, Karen and I were guests at another St. Kizito meeting in another poor township on the edge of Cape Town, somewhere between Somerset West and Kuilsriver. The women, all coloured and all poor themselves pitched up to discuss some of their cases, mostly involving the abuse of the young children of other poor families. What was most striking to us was their humble telling of how they themselves had difficult problems of their own but felt they could not ignore their struggling neighbours,

In the very midst of the horrors of these poor and dysfunctional neighbourhoods, something remarkable is stirring. People are beginning to mind other people’s business.

Remember these are the women whose motto is: “Your child is my child”. When they visit a neighbour, they are not only crossing a threshold, they are dismantling a social taboo. As one said eloquently, “our generation has always been taught to mind our own business, but now it is time to reach out”.

One woman called Hendrinia told how, after reaching out to help other families, she found it in herself to love her own family even more. Another, who had lost her job described how the courses she went on gave her insight into how she might encourage her children with their studying. Giving has enriched them in ways they least expected.

If they have food, they bring some to the family they are visiting. If they notice a child without shoes, they will find some. If a hospital visit cannot take place because a fare of R20 is impossible, they will find it. Somehow. Such examples as these are concrete images of the widow’s mite.

The Cape Kids account, managed by RW and myself, will donate £500 for this movement into what will be known as the “Widow’s Purse” for just those times when the smallest coin will make a difference.

Email myself or Robert Weatherall if you want to help with any of the three projects that we have adopted and that have been featured in this blog:
St. Kizito
Masizame
The Institute

We really want to donate sustainably. Any giving welcome, standing order best.

Michael: mchstw4@aol.com Robert: robert@pwf.uk.com

R20 is currently £1.60

What can be done to change a world

As I read through the emails and comments from those who follow this blog, a common theme is expressed in the question “What can be done to change a world where terrible things happen?” I have reflected very much on this cry. From the beginning of our journey Karen and I have felt the weight of it. Yet the real truth of it is this, we ourselves are being changed into people of hope. Every time we encounter the once lifeless eyes of children now smiling their impish smiles up at us, we know we are seeing a miracle. Some say its God’s miracle, some are not so sure.

But it is a miracle.

No longer a miracle unseen, no longer a gift unopened, no longer a picture beyond our dreams. Life reappears in the desert flowers when the rain comes. Drop by drop, it transforms the faces of the children. So we ask for such rain to fall in abundance and it comes. All the pennies given, every volunteer hour graciously spent, every honest tear shed, they all revive this parched land. For it becomes a glorious flood. Today as we returned over the mountains from Worcester to Cape Town, the rain cascaded in great sheets down the steep gullies of the high peaks forming great foamy cataracts in the valleys below. Enormous waterfalls, dozens of them, had appeared. In a few days there will be an explosion of colour.

Its like that with the children.

I spent an hour in the prison at Knysna. In the larger wing which holds the convicted, I took time in the yard with the 160 men in their bright orange prison issue. Some were huddled in two’s and three’s, some walking up and down, a school of silent domino players noisily despatching their play on the wooden board, others electing to sleep the afternoon in one of the four dorms. Aged from 25 to over 60, they seemed like school children in a schoolyard. Men who never grew up. In one of the rooms, a remarkable woman called Cora teaches them how to sew soft toys for children to the sound of ambient music which calms them. She gives of her time for free every day and then works evenings to support herself. She is white. She brings rain to this parched prison place.

People like Cora lead us into new dimensions, lift us to new levels. Some years ago something changed in this middle aged woman and she was able to break new ground. To spend time with hardened black criminals dressed in orange. In a little prison sewing room.

Performing miracles.

when the fathers come home the sons will follow

The Masizame shelter for orphaned and vulnerable children is next to the police station in Kwanokuthula, about half a kilometre from St. Monica's. When they arrive, some of the children are in such a state of neglect that for a week or so, they lie around the place on the ground unable to respond to any form of stimulation. Emotionally they have been starved to a condition of near death. The little community of Masizame staff and volunteers brings them back to life. Then begins the delicate task of teaching the children how to eat from a plate, sleep in a bed, toilet in a bowl, speak with other children and adjust to a new world where adults are no longer a mortal danger to them.

The most dangerous adults in a township are men. The old ones and the younger ones. It is they who introduce the young to violent sexual initiation, abuse their wives, neglect their babies, kill and maim each other. In some parts of Khayalitsha in Cape Town, the women, young and old, huddle together during the night at one end of their tiny dwelling so as to provide some protection against their own menfolk. In some of the gangs, you see, it is a condition of promotion to a highr rank that the man rape his mother or his sister.

The real problem in Kwanokuthula, as it is in Khayalitsha and other townships and in the great cities of the world, is that a great many men are not being fathers. They fail to love, cherish, respect, protect and nourish their families.

You see the consequences of this failure in the lifeless eyes of the little ones of Masizame. As I awoke in the middle of the night with these thoughts, the words came to me, " When the fathers come home the sons will follow".

More on this and the miracles of Masizame in my next posting.

Angels came to sing at St. Monica's

St. Monica’s church is near the centre of Kwanokuthula, the township that lies at the very edge of Plettenberg. Every day streams of black people move between the two. Plettenberg Bay is not integrated. While racial apartheid is slowly breathing its last, the economic variety lives on. As it does the world over. Bombay, Bradford, Cape Town, Lima, Liverpool, Manila. Of the over six billion human beings who live on the planet, around a billion exists in absolute poverty, which the UN defines as anyone living on less than a dollar a day. Another billion live on less than two dollars a day. That’s a lot of starfish.

For a few hours every Sunday, the angels come to sing at St. Monica’s. The minister has left – they come and go here – but the dark-suited men of the guild and the purple clad women of the union, the alter boys and girls in their sparkling surpluses and soltanes, the deacons and the choir, they come every week. Regardless. With such colourful splendour and eager hearts, the heavy tide of their material burdens, the hardships of township life, seem to recede for this Sunday time.

They sing with great beauty and passion to the beat of the African drum in the sanctuary, the hoover attachment held by an animated chorister and the many hand-held leather pouches in the pews. The stand-in vicar is thirty minutes late, dozes while the deacon preaches in Xhosa and then leaves abruptly at the close. But he’s only there to do the business end of the altar and hardly notices the heavenly host dotted around the church building. Robert W had arrived with a crooked gait, sign of a painful back. It had gone by the end and he demonstrated the miracle with a little pirouette over coffee at Le Fonteril. Miracle?

Nobody is saying a word!

The generous donation to the plate by Jim and Lynne was graciously spoken of by one of the purple ladies as she gave the notices. Then it was back to everyday as the tide came back in and we steered around a young teenage boy high on something in the middle of the street outside.

Route 62 and on through the Karoo

Route 62 begins near Montague two hours from Cape Town, and runs through breath-taking, steep sided gorges and wide mountain valleys. Like any great highway out of the busy city into the big open spaces, it quickly numbs and calms the fretful soul. A beguiling amnesia is carried by the wind and the short season of forgetting begins. We caught a final image of Table Mountain in the misty distance from the hills beyond Paarl before the exertions of Cape Town seemed to fade finally. Just beyond Robertson, a family of baboons on the roadside signalled our passing into another world.

Montague is a sleepy town with charming architecture from an age long gone. People say not much goes on here. But wait. It has a very excellent restaurant. Just don’t tell Sally Weatherall it may beat Suzi’s in Paternoster. Mimosa Lodge is just off the main street, overlooked by the high spire of the imposing Afrikaans church building around the corner. The garden room we have taken for the night is, as Karen says, “to die for”. After two bottles of Windhoek beer and a Karoo lamb curried stew, Montague starts to get even sleepier as I write under a bamboo shade in the garden.

To my left in this small rectangular offshoot of a very large garden, is a line of banana trees under planted with nasturtiums. At the end is a sweep of bamboos next to a cluster of tall fennel. In the corner lemon verbena lops over onto the grass. On the right is a long hedge of jasmine. In the middle, next to where Karen is reading, there stands a thick lime tree. As it is now late in the afternoon, a gentle breeze is generating a symphony of aromas and the bitey ones have come out for their food. I was thinking of how much Margaret, now awaiting take-off at Cape Town International, might have used this peaceful time to reflect on her amazing trip. I was also thinking of the three men adjacent to our lunch table who exuded such menace and made me want to leave, and the charming, elegant old woman called Anna who asked to sit with us and gave her life story, and the book I just picked up from a second hand shop, “Bury Me In My Boots” by Sally Trench, which I first read in 1973 at a counselling centre for the homeless in the crypt St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Contemplating this beautiful and quickly fading afternoon and looking to the feast ahead, I cannot really suppress the memories of my time last night with a small gathering of St. Kizito volunteers in a humble and welcoming home in the middle of a poorly lit township. As I move between these worlds, I am learning what it is like to hold them together. The beauty of the garden and the beauty of the small gathering appear to me as a miracle.

The same miracle.

Its alright for you

The man stood outside on the corner of the Institute for most of the day, a sandal on one foot, the other bare. On the opposite side of Somerset Road is the Cape Town Harley Davidson show room right next to the Cubana bar and nightclub. Cubana closes at 4am. It makes a lot of noise, so once a month the manager calls to the Institute with a donation for R3000. You might chuckle to think that the monks of the Institute are carrying on something of a protection racket in reverse!

Somerset Road is a main artery into the city from Camps Bay and Seapoint passing the new football stadium half a kilometre away. In June 2010, the month of the World Cup, no one will be allowed to enter this area by car or by foot without a pass of some kind. The Institute will close its doors because street kids don’t get passes. Everything and everyone will step to one side for this much vaunted tournament.

In the late afternoon Fr. Michael and I were taking a beer outside Cubana as we waited for Karen and Margaret to join us. A middle aged white woman tried to sell us a hat. We declined with stern expressions hoping she would pass on quickly. Sensing we would not budge she gave up and simply asked for some money. We declined. She left with the words “Its alright for you” left hanging accusingly in the air. These barbs woke me up at 3am as I composed a blog in my sleep.

There is another young fellow, Johnnie, who sits on the pavement outside the Institute on Chiappiani. He has been through the programme several times. As the winter approaches he commits a petty crime to get himself into prison during the cold weather. The rest of the time he hangs out hoping he will get some food and whatever else is going from those who pass in and out of the gate. He usually does and today Karen had bought him a sandwich from the Spar newly opened at Cape Quarter.

As we crossed the street, the man with one sandal was being moved on. Karen said she would split the sandwich but Fr. Michael said he would take care of the kid around the corner. As I passed, I noticed the dried white froth on the corner of his mouth and the poor condition of his thin frame as he held the sandwich aloft saying a quiet thank you. It was as if it were a meteor from outer space. Karen wondered out loud if he would manage to open the hard plastic wrapping.

Then there is the lady with the hats. And there is always the question “why one and not the other?” How do we make this call? I am none the wiser as I sip my morning tea out here in Milnerton by the sea.

Paternoster

We are staying for the weekend at a little place known as Paternoster about two hours drive north of Cape Town. They say it is so called because centuries ago, Portuguese sailors were heard to cry out in prayer as their ships were tossed against the rocks. In the still waters of the bay, these rounded rocks look like whales resting in the sun.

Yesterday, we dropped Margaret off with Sandra Oliver in Velddrif, a town on the mouth of the Berg river well known for its dried fish, its amazing variety of birds and the salt flats which look like empty rice fields. The fish are hung out to dry along the river bank, a process that takes two weeks. The salt is harvested and then made edible in a Cerebos plant at the approach to this very Afrikaans working town. A long way further north is the Namib desert and the vast expanse that is Namibia. The border is a 14 hour drive through a largely unpeopled landscape.

Robert and Sally Weatherall from Appletreewick are with us. He says the little town of Paternoster is the most integrated he has ever seen. In contrast to most other settlements in South Africa, the black and Cape Malay coloured people live in attractive white dwellings in the centre of the town alongside their white neighbours. There are no chilling signs declaring “Armed Response” posted on high security gates here.

Sally, who knows a thing or two about places to stay and eat, was stunned by our little guesthouse on the shore. The Dunes, as it is known, is indeed a gem. And Suzi’s tiny restaurant in the town surpasses the best the Cape can offer. Lamb burgers with pomegranate, Baboti made with a variety of lentils, clams in angel hair pasta, a perfect milk tart. And it was there, too, that we were entertained by Dave, a 74 year old teenager who regaled us with mesmerizing tales in his ex-policeman cockney accent.

In the afternoon, we were guests at a birthday party at the Dunes. Gavin the host invited his neighbours and friends to celebrate with him. It was an intense bite from the rich mixture that is South Africa. A bereaved Margaret from Northern Ireland making a new life, Wendy from Cape Town married to a wrestler called Bronson, Lisa whose family come from Greece has a vine and olive farm with her husband in Stellenbosch, Frank from Eindhoven who moved here from Holland to follow his heart. We spent a hugely satisfying time with this intimate little gathering.

Today we head back to Cape Town and another kind of reality.

A Kurd in Green Market Square

I had a Kurdish coffee on Green Market Square. The beans are North African in origin, a very fine blend mixed with milk and sugar and served in a wide-bottomed, copper jug known as a Jezve. It has a long, thin handle made with a different metal which appears rather too big for the vessel but is ideal for tipping out the dark, sweet, mucous liquid. It filled the little cup four times over. By then I had made my mind up. I would have another if ever I visited Kurdistan!

The owner, a very elegant man with deep-set eyes, sat with me as I drank. In between gusts of wind that threatened to put us in orbit, he gave me an animated, fascinating guide to the sad history of his people, a nation that takes in segments of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Like the Hebrew people of sixty years ago, they are a nation without a state. Baran was born near Mount Ararat of an Iranian Kurdish father and a Kurdish mother from Turkey. Before coming to Cape Town he was a chemist and lecturer at a university in Istanbul.

We will return to this lovely man’s restaurant, the Mesopotamia, for lunch one day before we leave Cape Town. Perhaps we will meet one of the other four (4) Kurds living in this amazing city!


At almost the same spot as the drowning tragedy of two weeks ago, a whale was beached at Milnerton. It is the whale season in this part of south Africa. The epicentre of whale watching is of course Hermanus, a couple of hours from here on the Indian ocean, so the appearance of this large guest here at Milnerton made the front page of the Cape Times. Smaller mammals in wet suits hauled the whale off the sands and off it went into the blue.


Karen and Margaret sat in on a class with the social worker at the Institute. Also called Margaret, she brings with her the most extraordinary calm to these very damaged children of the street, many currently living in a local hostel called Homestead. The boys had been focusing on the words proud, love, happy and sad over a series of lessons. Today each boy was given a piece of coloured card and was asked to put pictures on the card to represent one of the words. A sentence written on the back of the card expressed the word. One boy had written, ‘when I am sad I go sit alone somewhere and cry inside.’ In the background calming music plays. Margaret – the social worker – has an amazing ability to bring out the deep emotions the boys have in a simple non-threatening way through her personality and the way her classes are structured. At the end they all expressed a certain pride at the presence of two approving visitors.

Love and affirmation just does it!

"Your child is my child"

“Your child is my child”. So runs the motto of the St. Kizito movement. In traditional African society, every adult woman was seen as mother and every man was considered father. Kele, the matriarchal figure who heads the board of the movement, recalled she only understood the true status of her real, biological mother when it came to paying the bill for her schooling. For us, as white, western guests attending their annual conference in the vast Khayelitsha township, it seemed both a beautiful and yet troubling idea. For many of the children in this community the adult is often a real threat. In the west, we warn our children not to speak to the stranger. But here, the women who form the membership of the St. Kizito movement have pledged themselves to the motto: “your child is my child”. They are choosing to be mother to orphaned and vulnerable children in their parishes. And it runs against every grain in the modern world.

As we sat in their midst, one after the other stood and spoke – some in Afrikaans, some in Xhosa, and some in English – tracing an unrelenting portrait of love and struggle in this city of much suffering. The morning gathering, business-like and well orchestrated occasionally burst forth in a Xhosa hymn in their beautiful harmonious voices. For those of you who have ever experienced this spontaneous outpouring of song from African people, we were in the gift of that familiar awe and wonder, impossible of words.

More parishes are sprouting groups of mainly women volunteers ready to visit the homes of the most vulnerable children. Typically they want to put shoes on their feet, food on the table, a school jumper on their backs. Some of the families are unregistered, a status in which you are denied any state help of any kind, schooling, health, finance. Some are internal immigrants from the rural areas, some are external refugees from other African countries. What they have in common is a lack of any kind of documentation – a birth certificate, as an example. The result is almost unimaginable destitution.

One woman described the plight of a family with a speechless, eleven year old child without legs. With no transport, they struggled to move him anywhere. They carried him on their backs. The volunteer moved mountains to get a wheelchair. At the meeting she was told it had arrived the day before. She was overjoyed. Another faced threats of violence from criminal elements who disapproved of her involvement with a particular family. There were many such stories on Saturday morning.

In the next six weeks, I will meet with these scattered groups of women and thankfully will be able to give them a few hours of supervision and support.

Our friend Margaret arrived on Friday. She has seen more of the real South Africa in forty eight hours than many do in a dozen visits. As someone said to us yesterday over lunch in Noordhoek, a great many born and bred citizens of this beautiful city have no idea what goes on at the other side of the track.

I want to say a thank you to the many who are following the Capewonders blog. Big thank you to all.

The Monsignor

If you want to meet Monsignor Michael McParland you will find him in the Falkland Islands where he lives six months of the year. The rest of the time he is visiting the other parts of his parish which altogether covers one sixth of the surface of the earth! But for the islands of St.Helena, Tristan da Cunha and St.George, the rest of it comprises mostly uninhabited rock. And fish! He arrived today at the Salesian Institute after a seven day voyage on an Antarctic service ship. He was still swaying gently over lunch.

The Monsignor comes from Middlesbrough, two hours or so from Skyreholme, but its Cape Town where we meet. When a long way from home every encounter can be something of a miracle. I say “can be”. A miracle unseen is like a gift unopened. Of course we dream of the “giver of the gift” waiting for it to be unwrapped. Any parent knows the joy of the spectacle. From the moment of conception, to the time of picking it out, to the moment of frantic tearing away of the carefully prepared package – the goal, the instant of completion, is all about the child’s happy face. I look forward to unwrapping the miracle with this unique man, the Monsignor from the South Atlantic.

We met up with a man and his wife I first met at the end of 2002 in Pretoria in the aftermath of one of those awful coach crashes I have attended in South Africa. Ron was a chaplain at the hospital. He invited me to his church for a service and to his home for Sunday lunch. It was special to have time with him and Melanie as they celebrate a wedding anniversary in Cape Town. Their Baptist community was the first to fully integrate the races in a truly rainbow church. They have kept it up.

On a final blognote, Margaret Batley arrives here on Friday. Like the Monsignor, there will be gifts to unwrap in the many miraculous encounters that await her.

Five Went Home

“Five youth went home choosing not to live on the streets any longer.”

I sat for a long time this morning pondering these words, lifted from the pages of the Youth Projects Annual Report.

Five. The number, so small, reminded me of the little boy returning the starfish to the ocean one by one, observed by an older person who said he was wasting his time. “There are simply too many”. The little boy, as he threw the next one in, says, “not a waste of time for this one”. Yet numbers bear a heavy weight in this modern world of performance related donor thinking. These five returned home.

Home. They once chose the streets rather than remain at home. The teachers, the social workers, the outreach team, the project staff all know why. Home for them was a place of pain, rejection, violence and poverty. In today’s Cape Times it is reported that a two year old child was raped and murdered at home. For many kids home is a risky place. But five went home, choosing home over the streets.

Choosing. Something happened to them here at the city end of Somerset Road. As I write I hear Eddy Lennitch speaking in the room next door to a group of 56 young people. “Life is full of choices”, he says to them. To this new intake, on only their 4th day of an 8 week course, these words may seem unreal. By the end, they will have learned they no longer have to be swept along like so much rubbish before a brush. They will have learned something of their dignity as people, their great worth; that they are loved and cherished in this temporary home. They will have learned something that gives them a choice. To leave the streets. And go home.

The streets. There is nothing romantic about life on the street. It, too, is a risky place. The Project report says “Drugs and prostitution remain our biggest problems on the street”. On the next line we read, “One young woman, Carmen, died tragically when she was beaten to death by her boyfriend”. Risky indeed.

1,145 is the number of kids the project staff have worked with in the past year. This is a big number, but each one of them is one, lifted up and cherished. Approximately 80 come in off the street with only the clothing they wear on their backs. Around 20 return to the streets, the only place they know as family and community. Some street kids are just too damaged to adjust and so return to what they know and feel comfortable with. Some time later they may have a further go.

But, “Five youth went home choosing not to live on the streets any longer.”

Robben Island and the Gynaecologists

Cape Town is hosting a convention of gynaecologists. Eight thousand (8,000!) of them have descended on the city and a fair chunk of them were on the 3pm to Robben Island. The scramble to do an emergency delivery would certainly have caused the boat to capsize! It was our first visit to the former penal colony. We had previously tried to get there no less than four times. Bad weather was the usual reason. Last March they were culling rabbits for a month.

Robben Island is a grim place. Its history is grim. Its message is grim. Nothing can hide its grimness. Its curious blend of remoteness and nearness made it ideal as a one-time slave warehouse, leper colony, madhouse and perhaps the best known jail-house in history. The door leading into the block where Mandela was incarcerated is a solid rock positioned on a small rail track. Ex prisoners tell their story. I imagine they sound just like the apostles in the first century, keeping alive a memory, in some strict formula, of their much venerated hero.

Yet the island is beautiful, with its forlornness, its isolation and its wild life. With its breathtaking views of Cape Town, it has a feeling of being suspended in time awaiting a recreation of itself. But the weight of its past bears down on it and its desolate features can only echo its grim memories.

On the voyage to and from the island, we met two people from Jo’burg. Newly married Sean of Portuguese stock and Nadia a Cape-Malay from Durban already had 4 children from their former marriages. They shared their dreams with us. As we parted, we knew they were a portrait of a new life in South Africa, beyond the vision of the blind oppressors of Robben Island.

By the way, the rabbits outnumbered the gynaecologists. The penguins stole the show!

Table Mountain

Cape Town is not typical of South Africa, and it is hard to say if anything is typical of Cape Town. It is a place of great contrasts, full of life and colour and movement. It is now undergoing perhaps its greatest ever makeover in preparation for the world cup next year. Engineering works everywhere, dizzy and loud. The picture of the sunset to the right shows the almost completed football stadium. Visually it is a stunning city. Table Mountain dominates all before it, a constant presence. Wherever you put yourself, there it is, like an ancient temple of old, declaring “I am bigger than you”.

The Salesian Institute is also very big; it takes up a whole block in the city centre. But, from its upper floors you look up….. at Table Mountain. It is all quiet at the Institute. Next week the kids return, new recruits to the many projects will make their beginning, and it will be a maelstrom of comings and goings. Young people taking up a vital opportunity that will change their lives.

Let me tell you a little about today. Malcolm Pritchard is staying with us until Wednesday. He has been in Harare, Zimbabwe, for two weeks visiting and ministering at a seminary there. We spent some time in Green Market Square in the city centre taking in the many sights of an African bazaar. After a while, Malcolm noticed his camera was missing from his bag – his thoughts were with the missing pictures. It was a bit sombre. He went to the police and we then drove via Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Kirstenbosch back here to Milnerton. As we approached, there was a helicopter noisily suspended yards from our apartment. In the space of thirty seconds we made two discoveries. Malcolm’s stolen camera was in his bedroom and the hovering helicopter was searching for a missing ten year old boy caught in a riptide. The “incident” at Green Market Square paled somewhat in our minds. To complete this picture, a wedding party was doing its sunset photo session fifty metres from where the forensic pathology service were removing the young boy’s corpse. The bridesmaids were wearing black.

Lives changed forever in an instant.

Capetown Countdown

We leave for Capetown in a couple of hours. The scene in the picture is what we leave behind and then come back to in December. The rocky outcrop is known as Simon's Seat. Bit of a climb but the views from the top are stunning. In August the hillside is clothed in purple heather for three weeks, in spring a lovely light green. Shortly it will be brown before turning white in the wintry weather. You get a sense that Simon is casting a watchful eye over everything that goes on down here below!

On our very first visit to Capetown I was strolling around the city when a young woman approached me. She asked me for some money so that she could get some food to eat. I bristled at being confronted by a beggar. "I am not begging", she said, "I am hungry". In a moment I decided to get her some food to eat from a Kentucky chicken place across the street. "Could we go to the supermarket instead", she asked. "There are children at home". I agreed. In the next few minutes she led the way around the aisles. She selected a bag of rice, frozen chicken pieces, tins of beans, bread. She looked to me everytime she picked something up seeking a nod. We filled two bags. It came to about a tenner. We walked out holding one bag each and stopped at a junction. I left her with change to get on the white mini-bus that would take her back to Khayalitsha out by the airport. She hugged me and thanked me and left.
As I watched her disappear in to the crowd I wept quietly with the realization that I had just met a very beautiful and dignified person. Her name was Nisa. I will never see her again but in those few minutes we had together she changed my life. Forever. In the bible somewhere it says "be good to strangers, some of them are angels".

Getting used to the mechanics of the blogosphere

I have now managed to enable you to make a comment! I guess some of you have tried and given up. If so please try again. Just hit on "comments" at the bottom. You may be asked to do a word test. This is to prevent any kind of automated intrusion. Something learned today!

I have wondered how often to add a post. I'm thinking every few days, and perhaps more often when there is more to say. There will be little profiles of people we meet, restaurants we visit, some of the kids and the special people who work with them.

South Africa makes you hold very contrasting things in your head all at once. Karen and I struggled with this as we moved around - opulence alongside great need, fine food inside and hungry children outside. What is written here will reflect that rather than ignore it.

My next posting will be about someone called Nisa.

To begin with.

Well, I have started a blog and though I am not yet au fait with the mechanics, I will proceed! The purpose of doing this blogging thing is to allow people to keep abreast of our work with street kids projects in the Cape. But I am guessing it will develop a life of its own somehow. Who knows!


Karen and I set off for the Cape in a little over a week. Some are already familiar with our plans. Previous visits have enabled us to establish links with projects that help street kids. In March earlier this year we stayed for a month at the Salesian Institute in Capetown, a place where amazing work is done with scores of young people from schooling to clothing, from feeding to skill training. To learn more about this particular venture have a look at:


http://www.salesians.org.za/Communities.html#lansdowne


Yes, I know. The name looks a little formal, even forbidding. But you know what, the people there are so down to earth and full of warmth. It is a fun place where young people, many of whom have suffered appalling abuse, are loved and nurtured.


There are loads of projects looking after street kids in South Africa. We want to make links with those we can help and get some money to them. Some folk have already made generous donations. We have learned that people who really want to give are really concerned about where their gift will end up. We will make sure whatever is given gets to the place of need. More on that another time.

There are other good people taking part in this endeavour. In the coming weeks I will be penning some short profiles.

South Africa is a place of wonder and contrast. I hope Capewonders will reflect a little of its beauty and its mystery.