We’ve just about finished our first week in South Africa. With Thanksgiving just around the corner and teammates blasting Christmas music in conjunction with the sunny skies, I feel a bit disoriented. I’m sure one day this will be normal.
I have been alternating between volunteering at the library in Vrygrond, the local township, and playing Master Chef on a budget for 26 people. We call ourselves Heaven’s Kitchen, although sometimes I really do think our dishes fall from grace into the depths of Hades itself. I love working at the library. The smell of old books delights my soul, and being able to share that experience with kids – what more can I ask for?
Vrygrond, meaning, “free ground,” is the oldest township in the Western Cape. The fragile houses held up with cardboard walls and rotting wooden planks, capped with tin roofs were first assembled by fishermen who wanted to be close to the ocean shores. However, all too often the case with townships and impoverished makeshift communities all around South Africa, this land was owned by the government, and, under Apartheid, many were uprooted from the little they had to call a home. For over fifty years, six thousand inhabitants lived on 20 taps and toilet buckets were emptied once a week. This isn’t just low-income housing. . .This is poverty.
Improvements have been made over the past decade to make an already hopeless situation bearable, if not simply livable, however, walking through the narrow streets covered in garbage, you can look to your right and scan fields which were once green pastures have now become modern landfills. To your left are clusters of children, unable to afford rudimentary education, passing time in drug abuse and aggressive violence against one another.
The 45 minute walk to from our “base” in Muizenberg to Vrygrond is riddled with lampposts plastered with “30-Minute Abortion” posters. The promises for the alleged “painless” operation consists of “clean,” “quick,” and “easy.” Yet with every poster I pass by, the pain in my heart increases. How many women have seen these signs and seen it as a sign of hope? How many women, in desperation, have sought after the promises of the fallen world and been disappointed? Dad says “[My] promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over.” (Psalm 12:6) and He has never forgotten me or given up on me.
During my second year of college, I lived in a dormitory with three beds. My desk was at the window, which overlooked a much-travelled walkway from the apartments usually housing upperclassmen to the dorms. God had placed it on my heart at the beginning of the year to paint a sign saying “Jesus loves you!” and prop it against the window for everyone to see. At first, there was much controversy over it. We were given warnings to take it down because we were not allowed to “propagate” anything. I never took it down. Eventually, we had to meet with the Resident Director, who sternly told us that we should take it down and not give her anymore trouble.
I had an idea about making my own posters and covering the abortion posters with the same message, or “HOPE in the Lord.” Except this time. . . Daddy’s telling me to ask the kids to do it. People deserve to be reminded that they are fiercely and relentlessly loved by a compassionate Father. I’m willing to fight for it. It makes me laugh now, to think, that what happened in my sophomore year of college, would carry on into now – in the streets of South Africa. I love it š
