12/7/11
Never would I have thought to be in Africa until the moment when we landed at the Johannesburg airport. Never would I have thought to travel over 24 hours on a bus until I arrived at the bus station from J’burg to Muizenberg. Never would I have thought to live on a $2.45/day food budget until I calculated how much money each person on my team receives per day on food. There are so many hings that I never thought I would be a part of but am glad that Papa made some happen. In South Africa, my team and 3 other teams worked together in Muizenberg with Volunteer in South Africa on several projects around the community. Volunteer in South Africa is an organization, created by Mandy Weschta, which help children in townships come to know Christ through teaching them how to surf, read, and play soccer. It also partners with other organizations and/or community, such as Malcolm’s project that works in mentoring children, and Tembaletu where children participate in creating arts and crafts; as well as volunteer in serving the community through feeding. Townships are living establishments for the impoverished, and not only are they suffering from poverty but have been deprived of education. Education provided in townships are supported by foreign volunteers and very few from its own community.
My part in serving this community was to build relationships with children at the Vryground Township via soccer. A group of us would walk nearly 1.5-2 miles on the weekdays to play soccer and share stories from the gospel. In the mornings, different groups would walk the streets of Muizenberg to do prayer walks, and seek children to help them go back to school. Every weekend were our days off and would spend those times checking out Muizenberg or experience fun activities recommended by the locals in farther places. Few times a week we would have worship and prayer in our hostel together as a squad, sometimes with our contact. A typical day starts out getting up 6 AM to go for a run and/or do devotion, breakfast, depending on if it’s a worship/prayer day our singing/praying would start at 8-9:30ish, afterwards attempt to check e-mails if the internet allows it or walk the streets and look for children to help them go back to school, lunch at 12-1:30, get ready to leave for soccer by 1:45 and stay there till 5, get clean for the night, dinner at 7, feedback meetings with team at 8:30ish if said by team leader, and finally be in bed by around 10. In soccer, once we conjure up the children from the township we start by saying the Lord’s prayer then pray for the day’s activity, stretch, do warm-up exercises with the ball (chest pass, kicks…), then line them to do a few drills or split them up to play World Cuppies, and after an hour of drills we separate them in to two teams to start playing soccer for 45 minutes to an hour. After playing soccer, we’d gather them in a circle and open us up for our gospel sharing by praying again, serve them orange slices, pray to end the day’s activity and finally walk them home.
Working with the children from the township was an incredible (by that I mean shockingly interesting and not the chocolate covered meaning defined in dictionaries) experience because it allowed me to see life from their point of view. Frankly, I say it’s one heck of a hard life for these children to live in every day. The constant awareness of danger lurking in every corner from bullies, being exposed to unsanitary conditions, not having proper education, and the scarcity of acquiring the full knowledge of who Christ is leaves these children with worldly minds. It’s tremendously scary for them and I’ve encountered such events where darkness almost to completely bring their life on the line whether it’d be getting beat up by bullies or the inappropriate behaviors displayed during soccer. I thought about those children every day in South Africa (still do) and prayed to God that He sends His angels to protect them, but all I could tangibly do was to be their friend and shed some light about Christ for a few hours. I know God sent me there for incredible reasons and am glad that I was there for them in the amount of time I was given. I am truly happy to be given the chance to befriend those children and become a best friend to a sweet little 6-year old blonde hair-braided girl named Gemma, aka Paddywok (spelling?), whom I ended up giving a Threads of Hope bracelet from the Philippines. It’s a depressing situation for these children, but hopefully the smiles that they showed during soccer shed some light into their lives.
