hope and hurt.

What a crazy few weeks this has been. I’m sorry that I haven’t written for a few weeks. It’s about time that I update everyone on how things are going here. Due to it being winter here, it has been more and more difficult to connect with people in the community—people don’t come out here when it’s cold. I have had a wonderful opportunity to continue getting to know the girls from Jr Youth in the church choir. They are always around Walk In The Light because they have choir practice almost every day of the week. Last week I went and joined them where they were singing in the old well. They practice in an old well outside the church, such great acoustics. I learned a few new songs, one that was especially touching. It spoke of how people are hurting, are in jail, are sick, and when they reach to God they find comfort. Obviously its all in Zulu so it would be difficult to type it all out and have it make sense… but it is such a beautiful song full of pain and hope—the exact combination of what I have seen here.
For an update, I was really sick about 2 weeks ago, to the point that I didn’t eat for 4 days. It was a really frustrating and painful experience and I finally went late one night to the clinic downtown. I went with Tanya and Elisa from my team and we were the only white people there. People were shocked that we would come there for treatment rather than go to the hospital. This was the same clinic that we took Haniville residents to when we did our daily clinic runs. It was so strange being on the other side of the gate, inside, getting treatment myself.
This last week I had the opportunity to do clinic runs. We leave at 5:45AM, pick up Phindile—the woman in charge of community outreach—and drive up and down the streets picking up people. One day we took 8 people, and the next we took only 2. It is so painful to see each individual and know that many are going to get new ARV treatments/medications for HIV and others are going for TB, skin conditions, burns, and other such things. I met one girl who is in her last year of matric (senior year of high school). Her name is Pretty, and rightly so. She is hoping to be a teacher for primary school. I met her when going to pick up her father from the hospital. He had been denying HIV and TB treatment. It is hard to think that a girl just younger than me is almost losing her father. In talking to her more, I found out that she is one of 4 children. Her oldest sister already has passed away, her oldest brother moved to Pretoria and she hasn’t seen him for 4 years. Her other brother is living at home still, has dropped out of school, and as she put it is a “lost cause.” It breaks my heart to see how much has happened in her life, but it gives me hope that she is still pressing through. How would I react if I were in her shoes? Why does she have this life while I live in America and have all of my family still intact? How is this fair? How is this just?
The saddest of all was bringing a young boy to the ARV clinic. I asked him, “Ufunda ugrade ba?” which means what grade are you in? He replied that he is in 7th grade. He is the same age as my brother Hunter. When I went to clinic I had both Elisa and Tanya with me, but this boy woke up at 5am to go to clinic by himself. I don’t know if Hunter has ever gone to a doctor by himself. I can’t imagine this young boy, younger than my brother, struggling through HIV. And here he goes, alone, to clinic. My heart breaks because there is nothing I can do to make everything okay. I just wish that I could tell him that it would be okay. I can’t imagine how I would feel if my own brother were in the same situation. He is so young. So much life should be ahead of him. I can’t even imagine the possibility that this child will not reach the age of 25. The grips of death are so strong here. Yet there must be hope. There must be.
There have been a million wonderful things that have happened in the last few weeks too. I don’t want to only show the painful things that happen here. I just want others to see that there is pain here that shouldn’t be ignored, but there is also hope and that shouldn’t be ignored either.
In the last 2 weeks I have gone to two funerals and today, while driving through the city, we saw a man who had just been hit by one of the dangerous taxis. He was just lying there, face-down on the pavement. He didn’t move. I haven’t seen such raw death or pain anywhere in the United States.
As I said before, I don’t want to make any blog that I write to pose South Africa in a painful light, but it is obviously not only bucky rides and safaris in Africa. I want people to know that there is pain here, pain that should not be ignored. HIV is real. Death is real. HIV and death are so real that they are almost normal. I caught myself in this state without emotion. I should feel this.
For a little more positivity though, I have had a lot of opportunities to grow closer to people in both Jr and Sr youth and have really enjoyed just hanging out with people. Time goes by so slowly every day, and it is so good to enjoy a slower pace of life with people like Sne, Tesh, Noluthando, Sihle, Nomvelo, and my team. I can’t believe that I have been here an entire month already with only 5 more weeks until Cape Town. I also had a wonderful opportunity last week to hang out with one of my professors from the semester. A few of us who had class with him got to go with him to lunch at one of his friend’s houses. We ate tons of amazing food and just enjoyed talking. He was my psychology professor so I asked him how his research was going. He is completing his PhD right now. It was so encouraging to talk to him about what he is doing and about what I want to do. He reminded me of how important it is to make sure your priorities are in life. If school and work is important, let it be important. But it is hard to have relationships and do a PhD at the same time. It made me really think through so much of these plans that I have made up in my head about my future. For the first time in a long time, I have gotten to the point that I am truly trusting God with my future. I know that I will come back here again, but I don’t know when. I know that I want to go to graduate school, but I don’t know when. I want to get married and have a family, but I don’t know when. All I do know now, is that God knows. As one of my favorite authors, Shauna Niequist, puts it, I need to be writing my future in pencil so God can change, edit, and erase when He sees fit. My life isn’t about me anymore, is it? Why would I try to plan it as if it were? I can’t even fathom the rich and beautiful plans He has for me. Of great encouragement to me is this passage from Ephesians 2:8-10, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
I pray that this gives you a small insight into where I am in processing life and everything within it. God has been so good; meeting me in my brokenness and desperate need for Him. How good it is to know that while I am weak, His strength is made full and, while I don’t know what to do, He has already prepared everything in advance. Ah, the feeling of peace.