Goooood Mowning Teeechas

"Gooooood Mowning Teeeechas. Gooooood Mowning Sistaaaas.  Howww aaaah youuuu?”  It’s difficult keeping a “serious face” when one hundred 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th grade Sesotho students offer you such a warm greeting in unison.  It was my first daily assembly.  As the students proceeded to sing the St. Peter Claver School song, I quickly removed the smile that’d appeared on my face.  During teacher training, I’d been advised by another teacher, “Don’t smile until Christmas. They’ll think you’re a pushover.”  Despite the students’ charm and my joy, my legs trembled, and I was thankful I’d worn a long skirt my first day.  All I could think was, “A year ago you were still a student, Sarah. High school students will never buy this act.”

Somehow when the Zimbabwean head administrator, Sr. Melta, asked me to say a few words to the hundred or so students, all I could muster was: “Hi, I’m Sarah.  I’m 23 years old, and I’m from America.  I’m from Colorado, where we have the beautiful Rocky Mountains and where it snows a lot.  I heard you don’t have snow here. (Laughs galore).  I’ll miss the snow and my family and friends in the States, but I’m so happy to be here with you this year.”  Their applause and smiles assuaged the lump in my throat.  Three weeks have passed, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t let more than a few smiles slip.   I’m learning to live with that.  Teaching’s more natural for me than I’d thought. 
St. Peter’s runs through the ninth grade, and I’m working with the oldest two grades.   I must say, while I cherish the delightfully artless grins of the primary students as I greet them in the schoolyard, there’s something to love in these mischievous, pubescent 8^th and 9^th graders.  That first day, I sat in on a 9^th grade social science class taught by Marie, a spunky young teacher wearing a worn-in newspaper boy’s hat, a blue striped skirt, and teal leather sandals.  She wrote the words development and infrastructure on the board.  “Who here can tell me… What is development? What does it mean to say a country has been developed,” she asked, just like that.  “To improve somewhere” one young man shouted. “To have lots of jobs and everyone having money to buy a house, food, and clothing,” chimed another.  Several students shouted, “Not like we have here!”
To the students, their part of South Africa is not “developed,” but “undeveloped.” In my university classes, we often used the term “developing,” but it struck me that these terms are inherently relative to the perspective of the person using them. These students see little evidence that their community is “developing,” so it simply remains “undeveloped” in their eyes.

The poverty in Maokeng, the township outside Kroonstad where the Sisters of Notre Dame built this school more than a half century ago, is striking.  The children live here but have heard stories of what big houses there are just a few hours drive away in Johannesburg, where most of them have never been.  The juxtaposition of developed suburbs of Johannesburg and impoverished townships like Maokeng smacked me in the face with the reality of inequity on a scale that’s even incomparable to homelessness in the U.S. or the poverty I saw in rural Saltillo, Mexico.  And if the lack of food, running water, and electricity in many parts, diseases like tuberculosis and HIV devastate this community.  Children and adults die from opportunistic diseases and the effects of AIDS on a weekly basis.  On Saturdays in Maokeng, every tenth home or so a crude displays a white tent in front of it, indicating that someone in that home has died. 
As the class discussion continued, Marie and I began to teach the class together.  In their workbooks, the students read aloud a lesson about the “Rich North” and the “Poor South,” analyzing a world map that assigned southern Asia (excluding Australia), South America, and Africa to the latter category.  I hoped Marie wouldn’t ask me for my input as a person from the "Rich North," but inevitably, she did.  The students asked me what its like to live in a place where you have the option of many jobs.  They were shocked to hear that anyone in the U.S. was homeless, but even as I explained this reality for some Americans, I knew in my mind that few in the U.S., even our homeless, know starvation like some of these kids.  The only food many of them consume throughout the week are the five free lunches the nuns make them at school.  Hunger pangs from Friday evening to Monday sure take the fun out of a weekend. 

Despite challenges like empty bellies, these students haven’t ceased to amaze me since that first day.  One of many funny anecdotes: The 8^th and 9^th graders are currently working on science projects, and I agreed to help two boys with their project on whether Lucozade (sports drink), Coca-Cola (yes, it’s made its way everywhere), or water is better for athletes before their workout (the World Cup has infiltrated every part of their psyches lol).  I agreed to give them a ride to the library in town after school.  To my surprise, nine other students were waiting for me at the library, informing me of the order in which they came so I’d know who to help first.  Helping those two boys for a few hours turned into meeting students for the next several weeks… They’ll wait for hours just for fifteen minutes of your undivided attention.  The students have continued coming in droves, walking the two kilometers to town or taking a “taxi” (a man with some mechanized vehicle) if they can get the five rand (about 80 cents) to pay for it.  

The library is miserably outdated, the newest book being at least twenty years old.  But we’re doing our best.  The projects are due on Thursday, so it’ll be a busy week…

"The Honeymoon Phase," or "New Things"

The delicate art of driving a very old car, without power steering, on the left side of “road” (potholes with patches of road), with a manual transmission (a 70 year old nun gave me a one hour lesson)… yikes.  I should also mention that thousands of children and livestock may be walking alongside or in front of you as you navigate on said tortuous “roads.”

Living in an isolated farming community and imagining which animal or insect is creating the creepy noise outside my window at night.

Spending quality time with nuns everyday... I love it.

Bucket baths.  They’re much easier than I’d imagined.

The expression “I’m coming now!”  It is frequently said when the speaking party is walking away from you and could return in five minutes or five hours.  I miss “I’ll be right back,” if only because it typically signifies that a person will in fact be right back.

Barefoot children everywhere.  Black or white, a child under the age of 10 need not wear shoes anywhere, ever.  I grew up in the wrong two countries.

Biting ants crawling up your legs when you stand in one place too long.

Staring blankly when someone walks up to me and begins speaking in Afrikaans because, well, I’m white.

Serious sunburns in March.

Watching tiny women carry massive bags of flour and rice (sometimes both at the same time) on their heads.

The expression “You really tried.” Typically used by Nigerians, this expression signifies a job well done.  Example: Kelly and I walked to and around town during one of our first days to get acquainted.  Sister Obehi applauded us for “really trying,” and Kelly and I looked swapped a puzzled look. “Didn’t we succeed?”

Wild peacocks.  I no longer believe God made them just for zoos.

Cow shin stew.  It’s really not as bad as it sounds.

“So are celebrities just walking around everywhere in America?” “Which famous person lives next door to you?”  Anyone under the age of 25 will inevitably asks me a question of these sorts during our first five minutes of conversation. My first day teaching 9^th graders, I bribed them into behaving for the entire day with the promise I’d tell them about meeting Usher in Atlanta when I was twelve.  You could have heard a pin drop from that moment on.  

A Virginian, Nigerian, South African Easter

This was perhaps the most memorable Triduum of my 23 years of life.  Two young Nigerian Sisters of Notre Dame, Sr. Gertrude and Sr. Obehi, invited me to join them for a Nigerian Holy Saturday and Easter.  We traveled an hour into an even more rural area called, that's right, Virginia, where a young Nigerian missionary priest, Fr. Christopher, and his younger sister (my same age, visiting him from Nigeria) invited the sisters to join him at his parish, St. Augustine's, for Saturday and Sunday. And what a glorious time it was.  

We stayed in the parish house, where there were beds enough for us.  I told the sisters it was my first time having nuns for roommates, which they thought was absolutely hilarious.  Then began the comments that my vocation to be a Sister of Notre Dame (SND) was budding... any time they wanted to suggest this to me for the rest of the weekend, they sang a little song: "Oh I'd rather be an SND than be a Reverend Mother in any other order, Oh I'd rather be an SND!"). 

We rested most of Saturday, reading, praying, and helping Obehi finish some bits and pieces of work. She is responsible for all of the programs for OVC (Orphans & Vulnerable Children of parents with AIDS) in the diocese of Kroonstad.  We sat at the Fr. Chris's kitchen table and sorted binder after binder of documentation of these children, one binder for each small township where Sr. Obehi coordinates programs.  It was heartbreaking at first, numbing after a while, to read off the names and ages of hundreds of orphaned or soon-to-be-orphaned children.  Next to the child's name was a place for their parents' names, along with the word "Living?" and two powerful little boxes: "Yes." "No."  The vast majority of the children had two "No" boxes checked on their forms. 

After that, things lightened up.  We prepared a delicious Nigerian feast of curried fish, rice with squid, greens with dried crawfish, and Coca-Cola (it's made its way everywhere).  Spending time in Fr. Chris's home, I couldn't help but be taken aback by parish life from the priest's perspective.  In fact, I often felt a bit sorry for him as he scarfed down his meals to run next door to the church for the next Mass or to his office to meet with a parishioner.  I watched his sister lovingly ironing his vestments on a makeshift ironing board, thinking of him doing this for himself most of the time.  I watched the expression on his face when the doorbell rang for the third time during a supposed time of relaxation, knowing with 99% certainty it was a parishioner with a question or concern or perhaps popping in to simply with Easter greetings.  Being a good priest means truly being a father to hundreds in a very real way.   

At about 6pm, after enjoying the meal and its interruptions, we prepared for the Ceremony of Light. Outside the back of the church, the townspeople had helped Fr. Chris arrange logs for a huge bonfire. When 8pm rolled around, the townspeople were all gathered. The ceremony and Mass lasted for more than three hours.  We went outside, back inside, back outside.  There were all forms of fire and light: big candles, small candles, the huge bonfire, and the Southern hemisphere's magnificent star-filled sky, aglow with stars only visible hundreds of kilometers away from city lights. 

And there were the sounds of a praise-filled people with their drums and their voices.  Organic choirs sprang up from the townspeople as we processed in or out.  Some songs were sung by Afrikaners who sang more traditional hymns or 1960's/1970's songs we know and love.  At other times, the Basotho parishioners sang in their native tongue, Sesotho.  I could only make out words like Jesus and Alleluia (when the word was finally released from 40 days of captivity), but the feeling in your soul when the feet begin to stomp and drums begin to pound and dancing begins in the pews and harmonies you've never heard before ring in your ears... it is like no other. 

After Mass it was nearly midnight, but we managed to stay up for another two hours, celebrating the arrival of Easter.  Fr. Chris whipped out some Amarula (a delicious African liqueur) he'd received as a gift, and Sr. Obehi taught me how to dance like a Nigerian.  As the only white girl amidst four Nigerians, I was quite the spectacle, but they encouraged me, saying back and forth to one another with such surprise, "She really does have rhythm, doesn't she?!" See Mom, all those years of Irish dancing paid off.

Music at Easter Mass was more organized, but just as breathtaking.  The Besotho choir singing every part of the Mass they could.  Men and women alike swayed back and forth, praying with their whole selves, in even more new harmonies.  Five babies were baptized.  I couldn't help but wonder the age many of them would live to, whether some of them might already have HIV.  Thankfully the number of mother to child transmissions is less and less each year here.  The whole Mass was in Sesotho, but the singing kept my attention, as did the most adorable little rascal of a girl next to me sitting on her granny's knee and playing peak-a-boo with me.  One of my favorite lagniappes of the Sesotho Mass was the singing of a peace song as the sign of peace was offered.  The words translated as "we are all one big family." 

After a nearly three hour Mass, Fr. Chris, his sister Eva, Sr. Gertrude, Sr. Obehi, and I returned for another Nigerian feast of fried rice and peppered chicken.  Nigerians call anything spicy "peppered" and season everything with a boullion cube called "Maggi." It was spicy, even by my standards, which most of my friends agree are high enough to permanently damage the taste buds of a "normal" pallate.  On the drive home to Kroonstad, Sr. Gertrude and Sr. Obehi continued with their "She really does have rhythm!" comments, and they told me that all around, I had "the flavor of an African."  I think that's the biggest I've smiled since I arrived.

Beginnings

Exhausted and beaming, I've arrived in Kroonstad.  A fellow volunteer, Kelly, and I left Washington D.C. on time, arrived in Dakar, Senegal for an hour layover (for which we weren't able to exit the plane unfortunately), and then arrived in Johannesburg.  Two sweet old Sisters of Notre Dame, one American, the other South African, picked us up.  It's amazing how nuns, even those without habits, stand out.  I scanned the crowd of faces waiting at the arrivals gate, looking for two women I'd never before seen in picture or in person.  "That must be them," came out of my mouth within a split second of seeing them.  Perhaps it was the small cross around each of their necks, or it may have been their jovial expressions and white hair, although none of these traits is exclusive to nuns, is it?  They drove us the three hour journey to Kroonstad. We stopped a bit more than halfway for a burger (quite an authentically South African first meal haha).  As we pulled into the town, which felt like an otherwise indistinguishable stop off the highway at first glance, I discovered Kroonstad to be quite rural place, or so it seems. It's hard to tell exactly what the surroundings look like since it's just after 10:00pm Tuesday night.  It's hard to believe I left at 6am Monday Denver time.  I believe the time difference to Denver is 10 hours.  Tonight as I journaled, I could not help but feel brimming over with gratitude to the Lord for arriving here.  "What a journey.  What a journey it has been," I wrote as I lay in bed in Kroonstad for a first night's rest.  I feel quite profoundly that the Lord has brought me to this point, purifying my heart and testing my intentions, my sincerity, my patience and my commitment to this vocation to which I believe I've been called.  In the quiet of the night, I thanked God for not testing me beyond what I could bear, for being with me through the efforts of several years to make it to this point in time, to this place.  Now as Maria often reminds us, I seek to deny God nothing, or at least try my best to do so.  Tomorrow, in the posture of JPII, I will kneel down (when no one's around to stare of course) and kiss the ground of Kroonstad.  It is wonderful to be here finally!