1st travel day

My thought every hour is “what the heck I am doing here”. Being in South Africa (SA) is surreal. I am writing this blog on a bus from Johannesburg (Jburg) to a town called Umtata. From there our ministry host Solomon will pick us up and drive two hours to the town of Port Saint Johns. 

To get this far we were on a plane for 14 hours. This was a miserable experience I had a window seat and everyone beside me slept the whole time so I stayed in that seat the entire time.

Then we got to stay at a squad mates house who lives in SA. Which was great because it was a great example of SA hospitality. 

Then we went to the bus station the next day and waited 6 hours for our bus that we are one. The bus station was crazy. So many people were there and it gave me a glimpse into the culture. SA was fraught with racism due to apartheid so the interaction between whites and blacks is interesting. 

I was standing in line about to get my ticket checked and a woman went to go and talk to the lady who was checking tickets and a older white man in line got mad. He immediately said what are YOU doing, where are you going woman? She, almost with fear in her voice, told him what she was doing and quickly put her head down and talked to the lady and walked away. He laughed with his wife and seemed proud he brought shame upon her. 

This made me cringe and began to understand a small piece of the culture. There are issues here I can’t fix in a month. Or even a lifetime. What am I doing here then. 

I am a problem solver and and I like to be able to diffuse things easily. I can’t do that because there could be repercussions as an outsider telling him what he did was wrong. 

So this is what I am up against here. Learning to love, understand, and make an impact when I don’t know how. A lot is going to happen over the next few weeks here. I hope to continue sharing stories and my life with you.