I love seeing these smiling faces everyday.

And these faces too…haha

We’re so blessed to get fantastic volunteers at Ithemba.  These are people who selflessly give of their time and gifts to impact the lives of children. And yet, I always hear the same thing from our volunteers,  “the kids made a bigger impact on me than I on them.”
Over the past three months Kate Mase has been doing some incredible art with our children.  Besides being, artsy, fartsy, Kate has an incredible heart that shines through everything she does.  Here is a blog she posted about her last day with some of the girls.

once upon a time (over a month ago), i told my ithemba babies about my family and how i had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. i told them their names and where they live. i drew a picture of my family together. afterwards, i asked them to share their families with me….
today, as i was saying my goodbyes, mary asked me how my brother jesse was doing… i had completely forgotten that i had told her about my family. she reminded me of that one art session… then, she gave me this amazing note as she hugged me goodbye a million times and whispered apologetically in my ear if some of the words weren’t spelled right… ahhhhhhhhh she is so incredible! 9 years old and she has impacted me astoundingly. i am going to miss her HECTICLY (as a south african would say).

age 12

1. What is your biggest dream?

I want to work in the city with the big buildings, doing business and using a laptop.

2. Who would win in a fight, the Hulk or Wolverine?

Hulk, because he is strong and he can do anything.

3. What did you do over the weekend?

I was playing soccer, and watched movies, and I went to Church to learn about prayer and to pray with other children.

4. If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?

You see the guys that are stealing and stabbing people,  I would make them stop.

5. What place do you want to visit the most and why?

Paris, because I like the soccer teams in France. I want to see the houses and people there.  And I want to play soccer with the people.

These are her friends, “Raise your hand if you like cupcakes too.”

Sharing cupcakes, cause that’s what friends do.

5 Questions with :: Tadiwa – Age 7 AKA- Miss Attitude.  haha

1. Describe your perfect day
“First, going to see the penguins in Saint Francis Bay, and then going shopping in Cape Town.  After I would eat spaghetti because it’s my favorite food.”

2. Do you have Bieber Fever?
Tadiwa- “Huh??”
Me- “Bieber Fever, do you have it?”
Tadiwa- (gives me the glare of death) “Uhhhhh NOOO!”
Me- “Okay, take it easy  Next question.”

3. Who most inspires you and why?
“My Dad and Mom.  Dad is special to me because he’s generous, like sometimes he buys me sweeties and chocolate.  And my mom beacuse she is so beautiful and she works hard and puts my sister and I first.”

4. Wonderwoman or Barbie?
Tadiwa- “Barbie.”
Me- “Really, I had you pegged as a Wonderwoman kind of girl.”
Tadiaw- (rolls her eyes) “Barbie.”
Me- Barbie it is.
5. What is one thing you remember from Zimbabwe? (where she was born)
” I remember seeing lots of animals.  Monkies, lots of monkies.  And my grandmothers had a lot of cows.  Black ones, brown one, white ones, black ones, white ones, brown ones, black ones..”

Me- “I get it, your grandmothers had a lot of black, brown and white cows.”

Tadiwa- “Yes, Zek (how most of the kids say me name) I’m trying to tell you they had lot of cows.”

Me- “Okay they had a lot of cows.”

Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. Fluffy buttermilk biscuits & sawmill sausage gravy, cheesy hash brown casserole, Belgian waffles with homemade whipped cream & fruit topping, hot-melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon rolls with gooey frosting, yogurt with fruit, granola and honey drizzled on top… are you hungry yet?

The staple breakfast food for most of the kids I work with is called pap (pronounced ‘pop’), which is made from finely ground corn meal.  Think grits, but more finely ground, add a little milk and you have “kremel pap” the breakfast of young South African champions everywhere.  Being from the Southern United States, and given its similarity to grits, I love pap and how it gives you that gut-busting full feeling for hours.

But sometimes you need to spice up your life, so I wanted to introduce a couple of the boys to SATURDAY BRUCH, American style.

The first item on the menu was light & fluffy pancakes with a plethora of toppings: homemade whipped cream, Nutella, banana & cinnamon and juicy mango.  The second item was breakfast burritos made with caramelized onion & sweet yellow pepper, black beans, scrambled eggs, melted Bonita cheddar cheese and perfectly browned flour tortillas.  I know you’re probably thinking, “ Breakfast burritos? I thought you said brunch ‘American style.’” But what is more American than stealing the best of other cultures’ cuisine and making it our own?

Sinetemba, Bulalani and Elaine, a Brazilian lady who is helping out at Ithemba for the year, had a blast helping out in the kitchen and we all ate until we were in a food coma.  After we recovered, we spent the rest of the lovely afternoon at the beach.  A perfect JBay lazy Saturday with friends- life is good!

Life – the good, the bad, and the worst

Life. What constitutes a good, bad or underprivileged life? And out of those, which would you describe to be the worst life imaginable…and why?

The word ‘worst’, when describing living conditions, holds differing and personalized connotations, as each person will imagine scenarios relative to their own personal life and experiences. For instance, the billionaires in the first world will imagine losing a hundred-million dollar business deal or having to fly in commercial aircraft or having to work and manage their own gardens, as perhaps the worst life they could have. The middle class of the United States might describe the life of a local homeless man they pass on the way to work, begging for money or for work just so he can feed himself and/or his family. And the poor 1st world persons, perhaps would dream of those who have no family or no support, or perhaps no food or electricity for 25% of their daily living, only being able to work a fraction of the time they wish due to illness or disability.

But say, for instance, we take the individuals…wait, no, not all individuals. Just the children. Take just the children of the township (ghetto) located in Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa, and imagine how they would describe the worst living conditions possible. But before you do that, let me try to describe the living conditions of these children. In the heart of the township, many of the children have tested positive for HIV. Here, the children faint or present jaundiced eyes due to a lack of food or any nutrition for days or even weeks and where the little ones can contract tuberculosis around every street corner. Where a boy…no. I need to be more specific. Where, a thirteen year old boy, is caught in school with a switch blade forcing a classmate to hold down another boy while he forcibly rapes him. In these children’s lives, boys raping boys, uncles raping nieces, and fathers raping daughters is in such abundance, it becomes their normalcy, their way of life, and their baseline by which they will use to describe their own ‘worst’ imaginable life. Einstein was correct. Everything is relative and all things are comparable, but I cannot, in any capacity, imagine what these children would deem to be the ‘worst’ life possible, as they are living in such physically un-forgiving and completely demoralizing environments, there is simply nothing worse out there.

-Grateful for eyes being opened to a part of the reality of my community. ** There are a lot of beautiful things about my community as well, Anthony was only writing about one facet of his experience.  Just wanted to clarify.

Love. Joy. Peace.

Zach

When I think of school the pictures I typically visualize are of chalkboards, an apple on a teacher’s desk, children being herded into line, yellow school buses, caring teachers, neutral colored paint, bright florescent lights, the sterile smell of cleaning products and neatly rowed desks.

What I do not typically picture is a shootout between tsotsis (gangsters) and the police.

Pelsrus Primary is one of two schools in the townships of Jeffreys Bay. To say that the education given its pupils is subpar is like saying; the education given at your local elementary school is subpar to Harvard, it grossly approximates two categorically incomparable things. But I digress.

Imagine the day shootout happened if you will. Two worlds converge and collide.  Inside, school children are “learning,”* sitting under the authority of their teachers, and the structure of their school.  Outside, tsotsis are stealing underground cable to sell, sitting under no ones authority, save the lawless, chaos of their own mind.  What an ironic dichotomy, the very children the school had failed sitting outside its walls, thieving thugs, as if to tauntingly say, “look at what has become of us, your systemic failures.”

A phone call is made and the police respond.  However, desperate men cannot be reasoned with and the conflict escalates.  Yelling ensues, and both parties have their weapons drawn.  Inside, everything is clam.  Children learn basic arithmetic and practice reading unaware of the mercury rising.

And then worlds collide.  Hot lead screams and explodes through a classroom window.  Glass fragments fall to the floor, and panicked screams reverberate inside the small room.  “Everyone, to the ground,” the teacher commands.  Heartbeats punch in solid rhythm, as giant doses of adrenaline are injected into their blood streams.  Teeth clench and eyes squint with each shot.  The air smells like fear.

Outside bullets whiz by as each side exchanges a barrage of gunfire.  The police have superior gun power, but he tsotsis have nothing to lose.  After what seems to be an eternity to those inside the school, the gunshots seem to slowly move away from the epicenter.  The police have gotten the best of the volleys and the tsotsis retreat into a maze of nearby homes.

Teachers survey their classes.  Thank God, no one is hurt.  Classes resume and the day continues.  Unfortunately, no one is too surprised by the day’s events.  When some Pelsrus Primary children show up at Ithemba and tell me the story, I’m blown away as much by how nonchalantly they tell the story, as the story itself.  But for these children, it’s just another day in the life of the dysfunction they call normalcy.  For me, it’s another reason to keep diligently working with and in this community to see life change happen in order that the chains of poverty may be loosed.

So may we continue to remember those who live in the horror of such a reality.  May we spend our energy and resources on fighting along side with, and on their behalf.  After all “Injustice anywhere is a treat to freedom everywhere.” (MLK Jr.)

Proverbs 29:7 “The righteous care about justice for the poor but the wicked have no such concern.”

Love. Joy. Peace.

Zach

* Not wanting to be negative, but also wanting to be real; “learning” hardly describes what does or more aptly does not, go on inside the walls of Pelsrus Primary.

So thankful for the opportunity to share our story with others.