peace

somewhere, in the middle of this week, between researching hezbollah and watching two ROTC guys walk across the street with Jimmy John's sandwiches, it hit me that everyday we are fighting a war. we are a country, fighting a war we initiated - and we have been and will be fighting for a long time.

we are fighting a war, everyday, but usually, when i read the front page of the times, i glaze over the headlines of x number dead in iraq; background. it's just there. expected. inevitable.

one of my wise professors once mentioned in a conversation a year or so ago that we, as a people, as a civilization, as a species, should have evolved, should have advanced beyond war by now.


duh, right?

there is a bumper sticker pasted on the back of a green honda civic that i see most everyday when i walk back to my apartment in the university commons: it has a picture of a broken heart colored as an American flag and reads: "my other half is in Iraq." i assume this is the car of one of the female employees.

for so long it just registered in my head as, well, bumper-sticker patriotism.

but recently, i have felt my heart tear a little bit more as i walk past, and i think of whoever is missing half of her (or his) heart in there a little bit more often.

as a community, as a nation, i think our hearts our broken over the iraq conflict.

but we still have another half. what are we going to do with it?


about a half and hour ago, i looked up peace in the back of my NIV. there are tons of entries for peace (peaceable peaceful peacemakers), peacable (peace), peace-loving, etc.

so i'll end with some bumper-sticker peacemaking:

Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

- James 3:18

Sweet Home Alabama

I was reminded last week that to be a minority is indeed a state of being. Looking out from the backseat of a baby-blue Chrysler 300M (the rental agency all out of Civics) on route 80 West towards Selma, Alabama, I began to re-enter scenes driving along highways in Jo-Burg where I could feel my existence as a white person. I've not sorted out exactly what this means, but it was startling to me that my perception of control distinctly switched depending on the race of the driver passing me by, and I found myself disappointed when the driver was white because it turned me back into a view of shared assumptions and complacency.

I was in the South (Georgia and Alabama) all of four nights and three and one-half days to get a first-hand look at historic Civil Rights locations, people, and institutions. The invitation came at random towards the end of a long lunch conversation at Casa with Professor Michael Gray, the OU professor of African American and African studies who lead my first trip to South Africa during my sophomore year. So, of course I said, why not, and as I neatly placed my napkin on the table, looked up past the ceiling, shook my head, and grinned. (Requests for understanding sometimes have a funny way of working out)

So here are a few threads and pics from the trip:

I headed with Professor Gray along with bright, activist-minded freshman student Chelsea to Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday, March 1, arriving late in the evening after being delayed several hours because of stormy weather. Bedding down in a hotel right outside the airport, we woke early the next morning to a great sunrise- and news of a bus crash that killed several students from Ohio and tornadoes that had killed several people in the Alabama city of Enterprise. After wondering if our route would be hindered by the traffic backup from the crash, I went downstairs to the lobby to eat my oatmeal and gulp my daily dose of caffeine with Fox News coverage of Anna Nicole Smith blaring the background. Priorities?

We spent early Friday morning at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in downtown Atlanta. The center is well done and here is a particular quote I remember from one of the signs in the King Center display because it caught my attention two years ago right before I left for Cape Town:

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you going to do for others?

Carrying that thought with me, we headed out and strolled down King's old neighborhood, passing the Ebenezer Baptist Church where King's father, and eventually King himself, used to preach.

Then, "because it's all about the food" as Professor Gray says, the serious life question became turnip greens or collard greens? as I determined which three veggies would accompany my cornbread in a serious soul food restaurant named Kenley's. I eventually chose turnip and collard greens along with yellow sqaush - all wonderful and washed down with the best iced-tea I've ever had. I was so glad to feel okay in this restaurant with every inch of free space covered in framed pictures of the owner smiling with various African American national and local celebrities. The owner obviously noted that we were "tourists" and volunteered to take a picture of all three of us together.


After spending the morning in Atlanta, we headed about two and one-half hours south to Birmingham. There, we eased our way around the hoard of Secret Service to walk around Kelly Ingram Park where in 1963, Civil Rights protesters (many children) where hosed, clubbed, and harassed with dogs at the order of "Bull" Conner. The Secret Service was there to keep watch for a group of Congressional Delegates in the area and a press conference held in the park with prominent Civil Rights leader John Lewis.
John Lewis is a member of the House of Representatives and was president of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that played a key role in the end of segregation.

Unfortunately, the amzing Civil Rights Institute was closed because of the delegation, so we left Birmingham after about an hour to drive on toward Montgomery.


Arriving there in early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, we breezed downtown Montogomery which was bascially vacant, despite the fact that it was Friday evening. We did run into an intriguing group of three historians standing outside the historical Dexter Baptist Church who gave us some interesting snippets of Montogmery's Civil Rights legacy. After that, we stopped and ate at a Mexican restaurant and then met our wonderful host Denise Gabriel. Denise was formerly a faculty member in the theater department at OU and is now a faculty member at the Alabama Shakespearean Festival in Montgomery.











Saturday morning, we woke fairly early and went downtown Montgomery to a black barbershop, possibily my favority experience of the whole trip. The barber used to cut Dr. King's hair while he was in Montgomery. Again, I felt okay being there because we were with Professor Gray, but still aware that Chelsea and I were a bit out of place.

After the barbershop stay, we met Chris, one of Professor Gray's fomer students who is now a district attourney for Alabama'smiddle district, at Walt's diner.

Here is a picture of my breakfast. Grits and toast: serious stuff. As Chris noted, Montgomery is still a segregated city. One thing that I noticed right away in Walt's is the change of pictures hanging on the walls. Instead of Civil Right's leaders, they had old pictures of horses dressed up with ribbons, women in big dresses, and old stately homes. There were few African Americans in the place, though it was just down the way from the Barbershop.

After breakfast, Chris gave us a tour of the courthouse, the Greyhound bus station where the Freedom Riders were beaten, Maya Lin's Civil Right's memorial in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center (where we heard the some of the Congressional Delegation, Rev. Shuttelsworth and John Lewis sing "We Shall Overcome") and some other city landmarks. Professor Gray, Chelasea and I then went to the Rosa Park's Museum downtown.



Alabama is a very poor state in terms of public money to fund schools and state patrol. The public schools, with the exception of the few magnet schools, are terrible- real-estate taxes are very low, compared to Ohio (Chris mentioned that for his suburban $ 200,000+ home, he paid $300 a year in property taxes). Then, Chris estimated that there were probably only thirteen state patrol persons in the WHOLE state.

In the early afternoon, we headed up to Selma for quick experience Bridge Crossing festivities - mainly food, music, and stuff. I picked up my first copy of the Militant, a socialist, pro-labor publication, and ate plain rice since everything else was fried or meat. I did attempt fried eggplant, but once I peeled all the batter off, there really was no eggplant anymore. Oh, soul food....



On the way back to Montgomery, we stopped at a couple of campsites of the Selma-to-Montgomery and Viola Liuzzo's memorial. Liuzzo was a white civil rights activist murdered by the Klu Klux Klan after giving rides home to marchers in the 1965 Selma-to Montgomery march.






Rushing back to Montgomery, Chelsea and I prepared to go to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at 7:00 the Shakespeare Theater while Denise and Professor Gray had dinner. After watching a fair production of Salesman and generally feeling depressed about life and capitalism (wait, are they separate?), Chelsea and I chatted a bit with Denise and Professor Gray. Then, it was an attempt at an early bedtime to rise in time to see Obama speak in Selma Sunday morning.

We left Montgomery the next morning at 5:15, picked up Chris downtown at 5:30, and headed to Selma. Noting plenty of standing room outside Brown Chapel Church, the group went to McDonald's for breakfast. We then stood outside for about three hours to wait for a seat inside.


Let me try to set the scene for this event: Sen. Obama was speaking at Brown Chapel Church while Sen. Hillary Clinton was speaking across the street at the same time. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was also in town - so lots of energy in Selma. However, as Professor Gray constantly reminded us, none of these high profile people, with the exception of Bill Clinton and of course The Rev. Jesse, had been to Selma before this year.



Waiting was long, but also one of the highlights of the trip. This was my first real political rally, so to speak, and I loved the energy and comeraderie that surrounded it. However, my feet nearly froze because I stubbornly decided to wear my Tevas. Something about feeling the energy/historical ground through my feet....? I don't know, but after about 30 minutes, I wasn't feeling anything in my feet. But, true to Southern hospitality and what I think is the general compassion in humanity, a very nice teacher held my hands and piled her cloth bag around my feet in order to keep me warm. We had a good time joking about how slighly crazy I was: all the women around me just kind of laughed and shook their head when they noticed I had on Tevas. Then we talked about the neighborhood and volunteer projects, our families and school. It was a moment that I feel charachterized why we were all there in the first place.


Arriving at the church at 6:50am, we were fairly close to the doors when security finally decided to open them at 10:00. However, it was still a mad push to get inside as we battled people cutting in from the sides, etc. Chelsea and Chris were stubborn and lucky to find a seat inside: Professor Gray and I behaved somewhat and thus were sent to the basement to watch the program on a screen since all the seats for the public had already filled up. I was mad, to say the least.



Anyway, the program was okay and we basement convicts sang hymns softly along with the TV. Before Obama spoke, John Lewis and Bishop Kirkland had already prepped the crowd with some stirring memories and reflections of the past struggle.


Obama's speech was passionate, but precise. Compared to Lewis and others, he was not as charismatic, but as a Yale Law grad, I'm guessing that is not really his style. He opened by connecting himself to the Civil Rights movement, stating that his existence as the son of a white female from Kansas and a Kenyan would not have been possible without Selma (Civil Rights movement in general). Framing the speech in Biblical terms, he addressed the triumphs of the Moses generation, the giants like Lewis who lead the Movement forward, but stressed the important challenges of the present and future generations, the Joshua generation. On this note, I perked up as he spoke about a "poverty of ambition" in a materialistic youth culture, problems of educational achievement being perceived as "being white" by many youth, and problems of "economic discrimination", health care, family, and education. A key point in all of this was taking individual initiative: "not what the government can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves." And then, addressing strained and broken families where children are in poverty and fathers are not acting like fathers, Obama encouraged his listeners to push back the negatives that have been pushed on them in the past: "We must fight the opression in each of us."

Most people then exited after Obama spoke. Unfortunately, I also had to leave, but was able to hear "We Shall Overcome" through the doors while standing in line for the women's restroom. And - I got a close shot of Obama as he exited the building.

After that, we mingled in the hundreds of people outside the church and Professor Gray, Chelsea, and Chris all had some kind of pulled-meat sandwich. Soon after, we headed out where the three stopped at someone's porch grill for some Southern fried fish. Then we went back to the market/food area downtown area so that I could eat some more rice. This time, I think that lady had more compassion for vegetarians in Selma and served me heartier portion. :)



After browsing a few more tables and stands along the way, we hustled over across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to secure a spot from which to view the march. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a particularly important marker as the site of March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday" where police brutalized peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators. Now, Civil Rights leaders and this year, Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton formed the front line of the march. We waited there among a hoard of press and camera crews for about an hour before the dignitaries made it across the bridge.


Above: Obama in the white shirt looking towards the American Flag with some Black Power fists raised in the background.





Right: Bill and Hillary are buried in the upper left-hand corner of the picture.


Also to the left out of this picture was a journalist from the AP taking pictures from the top of a step ladder next to the side of the bridge. I am so thankful that he didn't fall in....sheeesh.

About 5:30 ish we drove back to Montogomery, stopping again along the way to take a few more shots. Dropped off Chris downtown and then drove on to Atlanta. Arrived back in Atlanta about 8:40ish and stayed with Nancy, another one of Professor Gray's former students now an attorney with Delta Airlines.
Left Nancy's about 7:45 Monday morning, caught our flight to Columbus, and headed back to Athens.

Searching for Big Muskie

For me, the time after visit home usually feels like being stuck in the cross-eyed stage of a Magic Eye puzzle. Wanting to see something raised above the crazed, loud pattern, I draw myself closer, and then beyond closer, until nose collides with surface, breath drives back into mouth, and eyes somersault against sockets in a desperate attempt to tell my brain exactly how things have changed in this new perspective. But then I still can't see it yet, the hidden transcendence, the coherent form, the purported magic. Directions say to back away (now!) but slowly, while all the time trying to maintain the same sort of focus as being upupclose. And this is what gives me a headache: in the process of drawing away, eyes and brain are battling between two different messages to try to make sense of what I see. Sometimes, after several seconds, it works: a shape rises to provide wonder and form out of chaos. But often, it doesn't, and I have to start over again, maybe many times, in an attempt to try to uncover that something beneath the surface. So it was in this cross-eyed stage leaving my parent's home Sunday afternoon to return to Athens that I found myself taking exit 25 off of 77 south which, as a brown sign had noted a few minutes earlier, was the way to Big Muskie Bucket, the largest coal dragline ever made. Located about an hour south of my hometown, the sign for Big Muskie marks the point at which I am either drawing closer or drawing away: closer in the sense that once again rusty mailboxes, memories of lost jobs, warsh and ya’ll, highwalls, Carhart overalls, pick-up trucks broken down, beaten down, torn down – or proudly taken home with the opportunity of no-down, [payment], zoom me into a blurred UNDERSTANDING that this my home; drawing away in hopes that something from this, my own confused background pattern, will rise above to provide me with a another shape by which to define my identity.

I had learned about the Big Muskie dragline about a year earlier from some class research, though vague rumors of its existence have graced the edges of family dinner conversation and a high school classroom discussion. Since then, the idea to stand by this giant earth-mover in what I imagined to be some tired cattle field has both intrigued and repelled me. Deciding that this particular indifferent Sunday afternoon was as a good a time as any to go up-close, I followed the brown sign pointing right at the bottom of the ramp (which also reassured me that the Noble County Correctional Institute was in the same direction, just in case) and so began.

In cases, such as this once, where I don’t know exactly where or how far it is I am going, landscape is consumed in rapid, undigested chunks to make a guess at distance. A single yard ornament, one of those blue glass balls perched atop a concrete pedestal, is my first clue to where I am. Later, a trailer home to my left parked on the wood line with white and orange plastic porch furniture set off nicely with a banner of plastic American Flags and rusted cars. Yellow railroad bridge with tufts of grass visible from its top. In the bend of steep right turn, Jumper’s Corner invites me as a DEER AND TURKEY WEIGH STATION, with Hot Food! Cold Beer! Lodging! but not, of course, on Sunday. On my right again, a small white shed with a tin roof off to the side of an aging white farmhouse declared the “Mayor’s Office” in snide black spay paint: I knew that I was getting closer.

Reinersville. An almost full sized ceramic cow situated in the middle of six flag poles with the flags all held at a little below half-mast: “Quick Stop”: I stop. Wanting to ask about the flags and cow, and slightly car-sick, I step carefully around gas hoses and oil patches, my heels sinking precariously into the muddy gravel, and prepare to go in. Locked – but the sign says OPEN and the lights are on? Knock again. Peering into the window, I see strings of Bud-Light foam beer holders (with a drawstring for easier carrying) strung down a pole by the counter, plastic worms and fishing tackle, and a rack of some type of cloth covers in various patterns. The air smells strongly of wood smoke and wet dirt. In the whole rack, I notice only two done with the Confederate flag- must be popular. I leave, deciding that the SPARKY’s porta-potty outside is not worth the effort.

After passing though Reinersville, the hills became increasingly steeper and more densely covered in early succession hardwoods- maple, popular, beech- along with large groves of white pine; abandoned farmhouses, silos, and sunken barns added to the conclusion that I am driving over taken land. With each bump up to the top of a hill, I scan over the horizon for the abrasive diagonal of a dragline arm, accompanied by a sudden clear burst of bluegrass music from the D28+5 Sunday afternoon program on NPR. But I see nothing- nothing more than melancholy hills, some wooded, some bald, and many left with scars from mechanical mutilation.

After what seemed to be about thirty-five minutes of windy roads with no map and a mounting headache, the thought crosses my mind that I should really just turn around and go back: I’m not seeing anything. But then, some small signs pop up and catch my interest: Welcome to AEP’s Re-CREATION Land! Forest Loop à Camp Area ^ Miner’s Memorial ^. Sure enough, at the top of the next hill to the right, I notice a cleared space with a couple of pavilions and signs – and then a very large brown-red ark shaped structure. Must be the place, I think, and pull into the parking area by the restrooms, the only car in the parking area.

Getting out, I questioned the wisdom in ignoring my parents’ time-honored routine of church-change-lunch-nap in the interests of gaining a few more minutes for myself when my heels once again began to sink down into the gravel and my pantyhose lost its wind-breaking capacity in about 2.2 seconds. It was now after 2:00 in the afternoon, and, feeling hungry, I ripped open the TO-GO version of the Quaker breakfast classic and walked as daintily as possible towards the hunk of metal. Feeling a bit conspicuous, I hear a diesel truck approach, slow down, and then finally pass, satisfied that I was not up to any harm. Hurriedly, I swallowed the last bite of my bar, sticking the wrapper in my pocket, and continue walking.

NO CAMPING - NO CLIMBING ON ROCKS - NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS AEP. This was it? There was no dragline, no mammoth machine, nothing besides an ugly, rusting discard perched rather awkwardly on a bed of rocks, it’s hulking attachment chains spread around it like a gaudy piece of costume jewelry hung on an elderly woman’s neck, setting off the worst attributes of both. Walking around from side to side, my heel clicks echoing back to me in the interior pit of the bucket, I tried to determine the best angle from which to experience it’s size. And so with this, I stepped inside. The size of a bedroom with high ceilings, Big Muskie’s most important part had been frequented by dozens of those who felt that the best way to leave their mark on this, the former pride of the area, was to inscribe initials, years, and attempts at wit or general crudeness. Four or so signatures in small, white paint, middle-school lettering on each side caught my attention first: Karen Waller (beside Russ and J.P.P forever 2002), Tyler Winkleman, Kevin Waller –n- Heather Winkleman August 17, 2006, Kobe Waller, and Trevor Allen Winkleman. Cousins, most likely, I thought, tracing Kobe’s signature. Pinning my hair back behind my ears against the wind, I imagined a scene similar to ones in my own childhood where all day could be spent scrambling over and around the huge piece of equipment, imagining that is was something bigger and better than it was, and that I too, was better with it.

Stepping out and down the Muskie’s claws, I walked over to the Miner’s Memorial, a plaque of names commemorating those individuals who contributed to the growth of the coal industry in the area. There were several panels of names in which I could see a mirror image of myself, similar to the effect of the names inscribed on the Vietnam Wall. Starting with C, I scrolled down to find a Cook, but none were listed; general workers didn’t make the list. Remembering the child-scrawl in the bucket, I moved on to the Ws, and not surprisingly, found several Winkleman’s listed. I smiled to think how Grandfather, or Uncle, or Dad would react if they knew their children were decorating with poster paint the machine that brought their industry (and the region) one of its greatest measures of respect.

Before I left, I stood for awhile in front of the bucket, taking in the view of all the now “reclaimed” land Big Muskie had stripped in 325 ton bites; in total, more than twice the amount of earth moved for the construction of the Panama Canal. And though there were many trees, and though the air was clear, and though I could hear the rumble of heavy trucks hauling things, hauling something up and down the road behind me, what rose out to me from this was a great sphere of emptiness. And it stayed with me, this image, as I turned with muddied heels to walk back to my car and to leave.

breaking sticks

I could tell last night when I started examining the ceiling structure of my parents’ home, daydreaming about how much pressure it would take to blow the roof off of the house as my grandparents were talking about one of their friends, that it was time for me to get out for awhile. I have been home for nine days in a row now, minus a night that I spent at my sister's apartment in New Philadelphia. That is a lot. Now, don't get me wrong: I love my family and love spending time with them, and it has been an absolutely wonderful homecoming for me. But four days of sitting and chatting and eating (and yet more chatting) in small rooms with the same people; sleeping half the night on one couch and half on another; and waking up in the middle of the night- twice- in panic that my father's newly mounted deer head (graciously covered with a sheet for my benefit) was going to come alive and reclaim its body, I was staring to get a bit squirmy, to say the least.

I feel guilty when I'm angry and anxious, and I've been angry and anxious for several days now, maybe weeks. I haven't exactly figured out why. But there has taken root in me a strain of bitterness that wasn't there before. This disturbs me a great deal, especially during the Christmas holiday.

So this afternoon when all other forms of distraction- checking e-mail, reading, cleaning, leaving voice mails on cell phones of my friends, had failed to improve my mood, I finally decided that I should go out for a walk. The sun was shining, so there was no excuse, I told myself aloud. So I slipped on shoes without socks, a coat without gloves, and a hat without a top and headed out to the woods behind our house.

It was a good time of day for a walk, the time when the sunlight is just right to make everything softer and easier to take in, sort of like what a candle does to someone's face in an already lighted room. As I started walking through the tufts of brown grass in the Christmas tree field to get to the opening of the path, I thought about how odd it is that we refuse what we know to be good for us. Well, at least I do. Walking, being with friends, sitting still, saying hello to God, why is it that I avoid the very things that I know will help to make me feel somewhat better?

To be honest, I had come out for this walk with the intention to break sticks. (Not exactly the sort of serenity you expected, hey?) Along with visions of blowing off the roof, I had been daydreaming about whacking homeruns in a championship softball game, then jousting, and then chopping wood. I'm not even going to try to begin to analyze the symbolism in all that; all I knew is that I was agitated and felt like breaking sticks.

I passed up some fairly good-sized branches at the mouth of the path, where the wild turkeys always scratch around in the summer and the fall, figuring that I should save up my energy for something nearer a woodpile (so at least this might be a semi-productive venture). Then I walked by the maple tree with the large grapevine and brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a giggle or a groan, I'm not sure which, remembering how I had bloodied my gums after an attempted Tarzan swing on a vine some summer when I was younger. In the process, I spooked about four deer, their white tails flaring up in false flags of surrender as they bounded over the hill. Luckily for them, I had had no delusions of grandeur in spearing deer and so continued peacefully down the path.


Entering a clearing, I remembered my purpose and half-heartedly picked up a nice, semi-rotten branch and smacked it against the nearest sapling. Neither the sapling, nor the branch made out very well, and I felt so sorry for the tree that I gave it a little pat in an attempt to cheer (and straighten) it back up. The next branch I picked up, on the principle of my purpose, was a much sturdier piece of poplar. Bracing myself in the proper branch-bashing position, I pulled my arms back and - whack!- the other half of the branch promptly punched my right shoulder in return as I cracked the branch in two piece. Sucker! I could imagine the tree taunting. Rubbing my shoulder, I mumbled some choice words to the trees and kicked up a few leaves, deciding that I was over the whole branch-breaking thing and wanted to go back to the house.

Without the distraction of looking for good branches to break on my way back, I began to notice how green the moss still was at this time of year. I had missed fall, so the brown emptiness of the woods felt too rushed. Sniffing the air, I tried to see if I could still smell fall, in the leaves on the ground, but could only detect a faint odor of cold. A few steps beyond, I bent down to peel a patch of moss off a small rock and sniffed gently, satisfied. Yep still smells like moss, wet and sharply earthy. Beside the rock, I roughed up a few leaves with my hand, but still couldn't smell anything, so I put both hands on the ground and stuck my nose right down on the forest floor. Smiling and wiping my nose, I decided, simply, that the ground smelled only like wet, rotting leaves, fall, or winter.

After a few minutes more, I reached the woodpile in the clearing in front of the back porch, empty-handed. The wooden bench where family and friends sat on to roast marshmallows or hotdogs, (or veggie dogs), had lost both of the armrests; the charcoal ring from earlier fires was barely visible with all the leaves. A few feet beyond that was the tree house my father had built for my sister and me, now missing at least half of the roof and piled full of rubbish and wood. Our initials, scratched with charcoal, were still visible by the stairs: RCL, Rachel Cook Leah, depending on how you read it. Looking once more to the condition of the tree house, I thought about how soon it would need to be taken down, broken, stripped, and maybe even thrown into the fire as fuel for some other gathering.

But not now, I decided. Now I will go inside, light candles, write thank you cards to my family, and ask my friends what they think of camp fires in December.

no, i did not get eaten by a lion

well, i've neglected this blog for quite some time now, to my dismay and embarassment. rather than try to catch up on the month or so missed, i'll start with the most previous events and work backwards.

It is a rainy and relatively cold Sunday afternoon here in Jo-Burg, and I've just returned back from services at Melville Union Church and am sipping some rooibos tea. I'm also trying in vain to get the local classical music station to come in through my clock radio but getting mostly static and random bits of Indian music, traffic reports, and African language talk shows. To be really corny, I guess I could say that parallels what my own thoughts have been like recently: constant static while searching for my classical Western tastes and values, jumbled up by South Africa's complex realities of race, history, desparation, and violence.

This morning's message was entitled "Dealing with Doubt," focusing specifically on Psalm 73:

Psalm 73 (NIV)

BOOK III : Psalms 73-89

1A psalm of Asaph.
Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.

3 For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong. ^[a]

5 They are free from the burdens common to man;
they are not plagued by human ills.

6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.

7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity ^[b] ;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.

8 They scoff, and speak with malice;
in their arrogance they threaten oppression.

9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.

10 Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance. ^[c]

11 They say, "How can God know?
Does the Most High have knowledge?"

12 This is what the wicked are like—
always carefree, they increase in wealth.

13 Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.

14 All day long I have been plagued;
I have been punished every morning.

15 If I had said, "I will speak thus,"
I would have betrayed your children.

16 When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me

17 till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.

18 Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.

19 How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!

20 As a dream when one awakes,
so when you arise, O Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.

21 When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,

22 I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.

24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

27 Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.

28 But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

Now, I'm still sorting this all out, but I became extremely sad and nearly angry after reading this. Melville Union is relatively new church, intentionally founded as a racially diverse, service-oriented congregation, which I really enjoy. So looking around during the service, honestly, all I could envision when I read verses 3 and 4("For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as other men are; they are not stricken like other men") was the speaker as a black South African and the "wicked" as white South Africans. I don't quite know what to make of this reaction. Certainly, while I've been here, serious questions of justice, God's will, and forgiveness have come up relatively frequently as I sit in church services, or small group studies, or in traffic behind stuffed taxis and just drop my jaw at the absolute inhumanity of apartheid and the ultimate humanity of forgiveness.

One of my first experiences in South Africa was wondering into some kind of Christian campus organization function at Wits and hearing past leaders of the group describe the changes of the organization over the last 20 years. Well, obviously apartheid issues came up (fyi: I was the only white student present in the group of about 425 people) . One scene that a middle aged man described continues to both inspire me and trouble me: members of his group - both black and white- would meet together in the mornings to pray. But often, as the gentlemen recounted, they would be praying for seemingly opposite things - a white student praying that his Afrikaans brother would not get killed in some government appointed raid on a township alongside a black student praying that HIS brother would not get killed by soldiers in that raid. Now how does one even begin to sort out ideas of justice in that?

By the end of Psalm 73, the speaker picks himself up and realizes that the things he envies are just "dreams" or "phantoms" in the RSV, and that God is his ultimate desire, that the day of justice will come.

I don't know what it is, but I just feel impatient and even guilty after this passage because the depth of suffering is so much greater for some than for others. So does increased suffering make their faith stronger or just more desperate? I don't know.

-------

In any case, last week, I took a bit of a holiday to Kruger National Park in the northeastern corner of South Africa. Kruger is one of the ultimate tourist attractions in the whole country and probably Sub-Saharan African in general. I travelled with a friend from the US who was visiting SA with her two other friends (all women who worked for the US Forest Service in some capacity).

We left early Monday morning to drive towards the northwestern edge of the park at the Phalaborwa gate. From Phalaborwa, we headed east to Letaba, then south to Olifants and Lower Sabie, and finally exited the park at Crocodile Bridge. The three ladies then dropped me off at Nelspruit where I caught a Greyhound bus back to Jo-Burg, while they headed further south to Durban.

The entire experience was amazing, and a bit too much for me to describe adequately right now, so I'll just give you some highlights. Basically, I felt like I was reliving the hours of National Geographic videos about Africa that I watched as a young tot.

My absolute favorite part of the trip was a sunrise bike ride at Olifants camp. Our gang joined an Austrian couple and two young male guides at 4:00 in the morning and drove for about 30 minuets in a safari vehicle to get to the trailhead. At 4:00, the sun is already starting to come up over the horizon in a sheer orange purple blaze across the sky, so everything looked grey and just slightly gilded. On the way to the trail, we spotted three hyenas and a leopard which is fairly unusual. By 5:00, the whole sky was lit and we began our ride through the bush towards a lake. Once at the lake, we stopped for breakfast with the hippos, literally. I munched Marie Biscuits and gulped Powerade about 20 feet from a herd of hippos and about 40 feet from a crocodile. There was even a little baby hippo playing around in the water, which received lots of oohhhs an ahhhs from the group of mostly women. Even I had to oohh and ahh a bit; I was such a tourist.

We ended up seeing all of the Big Five (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant, and buffalo) plus some other pretty amazing mammals and birds. The four of us combined took thousands of pictures - no joke. I can only post a few of my 200-some now because my internet bandwidth is very low, but hopefully I'll be able to post additional ones soon.

Well, scratch that, I can't post any pics.

things that make me smile after 5:46am

1. the thunderstorm that woke me instead of a damp sunrise
2. that the mosquito i smashed about four hours earlier is still stuck to the wall
3. thinking of yoda's wiggling ears, but realizing that it was too early in the morning for me to even attempt to wiggle the one that i can (i caught the end of the SABC3 movie last night - some star wars episode)
4. having a second shower from the runoff as i stick my head out the door under the arboretum
5. black (clean) shirts
6. rediscovering accidentally songs in my itunes library that talk about rain -when it is raining
7. that 2% milk leaves just enough swirl in my nescafe to require stirring it away with a spoon
8. clothes hanging on the line that aren't mine
9. lacy suds from wet footprints mixed with spilled laundry detergent on my steps
(ending this list with nine instead of 10)

Eastern Cape: East London

So my original post that I had typed about the Eastern Cape disappeared into slogger land, much to my dismay. However, the word must still get out, and I wanted to give you at least a general idea of what I did in the Eastern Cape before I move on to other interesting things...like Soweto (yes, a shameless plug for a future entry).

East London

Thursday, October 12

Flew from Jo-Burg to East London, a city along the southeastern coast of South Africa, where I met and stayed with the Vasi family. The Vasi's were my East London hosts during my previous trip to South Africa, so it was wonderful to reconnect with them again and have more time for conversations other than very early in the morning and late at night.

Nolan, the father, is a manager at Nedbank; Lee-Anne, the mother, runs her own events management company and is also teaching business management at Damien, a private high school/college; Tyrren, at 10 years old, is one of the sweetest and most considerate girls I've ever met; Kaitlyn, at 8, is just downright ornery and full of energy, but always ready to give a hug or a big smile to anyone who will take it.

Thursday evening was mostly spent catching up over a dinner of hot lamb curry, going with Lee-Anne and Nolan to church, talking to Nolan about BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) and East London development, and catching a bit of sport.

Friday, October 13

Went with Lee-Anne to Damien for the morning. The students were around 18 and learning basic percentage rules. The atmosphere was a bit tense because the day before, a group of girls from Lee-Anne's first class stormed out to verbally and physically attack a girl in the next room (I'm not sure why...I think something to do with a guy). In any case, Lee-Anne gave them an ear-full about that in between calculations. And, as I told her later, the students listened because I think it is one of the few times that an adult has actually cared what happens to them.

In both classes, the students were pretty jolly and polite to me. I talked with them a bit during the classes and then during break time outside, and they could not believe that I looked like a "normal" person (I'm guessing that was supposed to mean that I didn't look like the American girls in movies). All in all, the bunch is a little rowdy with some serious family/personal issues, but an energetic and fun group nonetheless.

Nolan picked me up from Damien in the afternoon and I went back home to chill and read the paper. After Lee-Anne returned home, we chatted for a while about the students, teaching, racial issues in the classroom, etc, and then went to pick up the girls from school. From there, we did some grocery shopping, picked up the girls from school, and then went for ice cream and waffles.

Returning back home, Nolan was in a rush trying to prepare for his Burger Bash that evening. After organizing the groceries, I assisted by frying bacon for the first time in my life and then making hamburger patties for about the second time in my life. Kaitlyn graciously provided me with directions on how to do all three of these tasks.

Both Nolan and Lee-Anne have large, extended families. Nolan’s family is Indian and most of his immediate family lives in the same neighborhood so they get together quite often. Lee-Anne’s family is colored (term for mixed-race) and is split between Cape Town and East London, but they still make it a point to have family reunions, etc. Similar to situations in the US, this family togetherness is becoming more unusual in many middle-class families as the children leave to work in Jo-Burg, Cape Town, or Durban.

So as a result of all this happy family stuff, I spent half of the evening trying to remember the in-laws and sister’s names, and whose kids were whose. I put my success rate at just under 50%.

The other half was spent trying to eat discreetly around my burger (I soon gave that up…Nolan’s mother was giving me the motherly eat-up-your-food-stare), and trying to decide if I should join the women who were talking about church, hair, perfume, etc, or the men who were mainly concerned with the cricket match, rugby teams, cars, etc. After trying to add something to each (and learn cricket rules at the same time), I finally gave up and went to play blind-man’s bluff upstairs with the kids (more fun, anyway).

After everyone went home relatively early (9:30, 10:00pm), the evening ended with Lee-Anne and me catching the last part of Jeepers Creepers II (Friday 13^{th, remember}).

I went to bed quite content. It had been awhile since I had been part of a family, with all the quirks and charms that come with it.

Saturday, October 14

I was awakened early with Nolan looking for his golf clubs or something (golf on Saturday mornings with his brothers) and finally coaxed out of bed by Tyrren peeking and giggling through the door. Saturday was sleep-in day for the rest of the family, so Tyrren and I made ourselves comfortable with cartoons and coffee, respectively.

Later, Lee-Anne and I went downtown to the Ann Bryant Gallery to view the opening of the MTN Messages and Meaning Exhibit, which has since received good reviews. The exhibit features beadworks, paintings, and works from major African artists including William Kentridge (South Africa), Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah (Ghana) and Yinke Shonibare (Nigeria).

(http://www.buffalocity.gov.za/news2006/oct/oct4_mtnexhibition.stm).

The Ann Bryant Gallery is a beautiful Victorian style mansion, and as we were walking around in the garden area, Lee-Anne mentioned that many couples have their wedding pictures taken here. But then, she matter-of-factly added that she and Nolan were not able to have theirs taken in the garden when they were married since they were not white. Walking around in such a beautiful area, looking at art, interpreting the pieces with the Sesotho-speaking student, everything seemed happy and fine and together, and this comment snapped me back to remember that what I was doing just then would not have been possible twelve years ago.

After we finished with the gallery, we took a bit of a stroll along the beach area, and then Lee-Anne dropped me off at the shopping center while she had her hair done. I generally just walked around in a daze and then found my way into a bookstore. Luckily, Nolan rescued me from the mall about an hour later and we went to his Mom’s house for the family ritual of Saturday samp and beans lunch. The stuff wasn’t bad, but whatever sauce I put on it required me to drink about five glasses of water. This was cause for much giggling among everyone, but I joked that it must be part of my initiation into the family.

Lee-Anne and I were supposed to go with her friend that afternoon to Mdantsane, the second largest township in South Africa, but the friend cancelled, so we went back to the shopping center. Now granted, East London is a sleepy town compared to Cape Town or Jo-burg, so shopping is one of the main forms of entertainment, but sheesh! Actually, no, shopping is a major activity among middle to upper class South African families and the malls are packed on weekends with people buying—everything. South Africa is experiencing a consumer boom at this point, as more and more people have enough disposable income to buy things that they couldn’t buy before. You can see this as you walk around in the mall: people are dressed way up to go shopping and the whole atmosphere is just loud with BUY BUY BUY. I may be over exaggerating a bit because I personally find this obsessive consumer craze a bit sad and discouraging not only in South Africa, but in the US as well. But that is another matter and I shouldn't be so harsh...

However, there is cause to be concerned with all of this shopping because the consumer craze is also fostering huge percentage of people with enormous amounts of credit card debt. Gael Beckett and I were talking about this one afternoon and she gave an example of furnishing a living room. Instead of getting a couple of pieces at a time, what many families are doing is buying everything for the room and then charging it on a card. There are obviously several factors that go into that decision such as a sense of entitlement, reaction to not having, etc, as Gael the psychologist explained, but really, it is a huge cause for concern.

[In fact, as I was riding around in the truck in Mthatha a few days later listening to the SABC, there are now several radio adds and programs encouraging people to save money or invest it and to pay off credit-card debts, as the interest rate is going sky-high].

But enough of my grumbling about shopping. Lee-Anne and I had a good time and we even chatted with two of Nolan’s sisters while were there (imagine that!).

From the mall, we went to another family gathering where the guys were catching the end of the rugby game and once again the ladies were chatting about stuff. Unfortunately, I did not have my swimming costume, but I played outside with the kids for awhile by the pool before coming inside to do the men-and-women conversation hop again. After a quick snack and a brief synopsis of the game from the men, everybody piled back into their cars to get ready for an extended family member’s 21^st birthday party.

21^st birthdays are a big deal in South Africa—everybody is invited and everybody comes. This one was no exception and the sisters joked that the entire Indian community of East London was in attendance.

To turn 21 without a child is a cause for celebration and part of the reason for big 21 birthday bashes. 21 is also the coming of age marker. At this particular party, each family member and a few friends made a short speech about this girl and how she has grown up, etc. Then there is a toast and the feast begins. (I must say that by Saturday, I had grown more accustomed to strong curry.) We (Nolan and the family gang) left just as thing were getting started at about 12:30am – these 21^st bashes usually last through morning.

I slept pretty well that evening.

Sunday, October 15

Tyrren and I were once again up in the morning – after making her some coffee (and drinking it for her), I packed up my things, said my goodbyes, and boarded the Greyhound from East London to Mthatha. I have a feeling I’ll be back in East London again, sometime, so for me it was more of a see-you-later, rather than a goodbye.

East London left me with warm fuzzies, home-made cards, thoughts about the challenges of being mixed-race in South Africa, my quota of shopping malls, and habit of saying "is it?" and "yesses!"