Altered Perspective

Okay, it’s finally happened: I had a rough day in South Africa. I know, I know…it’s absolutely crazy and all you’ve heard from me so far is how obsessed I am with this place. :) But I had a rough weekend.

However, the only reason it was rough was because I’m sick. And it’s nothing too bad (don’t worry, Mom) but it feels like a fever. Chills, headache, sore throat, blah blah blah. I slept on and off for 15 hours last night, which I’ve never done. But it’s been good for my body to just relax. I’m just praying that I’ll feel better for Ethembeni tomorrow because I don’t want to miss a day at all, but I don’t want to go and risk getting the kids sick. So pray that I’ll wake up in the morning just feeling 100% better!

I think it’s been good for me being sick though, as weird as that sounds, because I had a lot of quiet time to just reflect on everything I’ve seen the past two days at Ethembeni. Because, as wonderful and joyful as this place is, it also has revealed a lot of things to me that I’ve never experienced before. This is what I wrote in my journal yesterday:

“I’m realizing how small my perspective is. The whole first six weeks we were here, just doing school, going on mall runs, living in the most beautiful location…and I remember being in awe of how far this country has come and amazed at the equality they’ve achieved in such a short amount of time. And that’s all true; South Africa has done more and come further in 16 years than America did in 50. But going to Ethembeni and Mpophomeni…it’s not great. There are absolutely no white people living in townships, many white people I’ve talked to don’t even know where they are because they’ve never been. People are dying at such a rapid rate from HIV/AIDS and no one says anything. It’s still so divided. Their lives are still very much first and third world. But it does help me understand how apartheid happened and how it lasted so long. They keep the poverty hidden so well. I was here for almost two months and was pretty ignorant to it. And now it’s illegal. I can’t imagine how much more they covered it up 20 years ago. It all makes sense. But it’s absolutely heart breaking.

“Something Lauren brought up that I hadn’t though about is how her service sites change the positive way she viewed everything when we first got here. I remember she and I talked so much about how we loved the culture here: how we loved that people are always outside talking to each other and the kids all take care of each other and they’re always outside playing. But she was saying that being at service sites alters the way she sees all of that. That people are always outside talking to each other because they don’t have jobs, and the kids take care of each other because their parents have died, and that kids are always playing outside because their one-room house is too crowded by all the people crammed into it. I wish we could take the economic prosperity of America and mesh it with the community and faith of Africa. It’s just hard to know how to balance all this. Like I said before, Africa is a place of extremes, and I feel like I’m just now experiencing the extreme poverty and despair. But Lord, you are faithful. You bring and joy and prosperity where there is none. You provide for your people, Jesus and we praise you for that.”