headache is better today... keep sleeping so hard! i think i average about 10 hours a night... during the week we are up at 6 to be to school about 7, start teaching at 8. i teach all morning... until 11 30 tuesday and thursday, until 12 00 on monday wednesday. then kathy takes the afternoon classes and i am free until choir at 2 on m and w. t and th i have will visit other schools. i enjoy the high school. my friend anna is a good teacher, and i learn a lot from watching her.

i find the pace of life here almost requires rest. there is something about being in a new place, seperate from all the little things we find ourselves doing everyday. i don't have to pay bills, fill up the gas tank, make meals, run errands, worry about things, watch tv, clean the toilet (not that i was busy with that before) or do anything "extra". and so i have time to rest... to write in my journal, to play boggle by myself for 5 minutes before i go to bed (i love word games) to read, to talk with the brothers and anna.

i'm praying that more of this space will be taken by time with people in the township. i am a bit disappointed, impatient perhaps, becuase it takes time to develop a relationship to the point where you are invited into someone's home, to their church. we are living in such luxury it feels... last night we went out to eat again... something so many people here never do. they say in past years they invited the brothers' and the sisters' to eat with them at the end of the time, and they refused. it was brother chris' last night with us before he went back to cape town and anna and i bought him a cake, which he didn't eat any of. on principle, they choose poverty. this is so admirable... and yet does it mean that i must choose poverty too? i enjoy time with these other women teachers, we have good repore with each other, which is so helpful. but i am in africa and there is a part of me that doesn't want to eat pizza and watch a movie. there jokes last night at dinner were frustrating me... why must we laugh about never having toilet paper and using hand sanitizer and the accents of the people here.

pray that God would provide places for me to enter in. i'm especially hopeful about the relationships with the women at school. i must be patient though, and enjoy the time as God arranges it for me. i think sometimes that it is hard for me to rest and just enjoy... do i always try to do things the "harder" way? maybe not the harder way, but i want to connect... to walk the streets with people and talk and laugh with them, ask them about their lives, to take a "black taxi" (similar to the combis in mexico city where you load people into vw vans and then start driving before you are fully in), to sit in their homes and eat food with them. i would feel a lack if we left without doing all of these things...

saturdays we spend in town... shopping and email and so forth. i found a salon today that will give me a facial and massage for under $20. i scheduled for next week... it was interesting to talk to these women. it is a place for africaaners, the culture here is very seperate white and black... not by law, but the class differences are so evident. they were asking me where i was from, where am i staying. i told them we were teachers, living in galashewe and there was an audible gasp. "this is so far" they said... and, "how is it there then?" a trace of why would you want to be there in their voices. it is not so far... maybe 3 or 4 miles from town, and right on the edge of a white, more weathly area. but i imagine they have never been there... and so it is so far.


i walked to the big hole... an interesting walk. most white south africans don't walk, except right here in the shopping area. it was probably a mile or so to the museum, but through a different part of town. no whites walking there.

they have recreated the town as it was between 1880 and 1914 when the mining was flourishing and money was good. funny the older buildings have been mostly destroyed in greater kimberley and replaced with new ones. they say in south africa they have less value for the old... more for the new. the museum documents the history of the white, the rich. the european influence is clear... taverns, leather shops, printing press, tea rooms, barber, auctioneers, german church, ladies clothing and hats, ballroom. i wonder what was life like for those who lived on the fringes, doing all the work no one else wanted to do? why do the white and the european profit from all the wealth of this beautiful land?

it was odd too... i was probably one of maybe 10 people in the whole little museum village. felt like a ghost town literally... dusty and vacant. mysterious and other worldly a bit and me walking around by myself, trying to get a sense of things and feeling a bit sad, but not sure why.


i walked back into town thinking about how to describe the land here. i imagine it to be like la without sprinkers... except more flat. and the earth is red, beaten down on the sides of the roads by the many many feet which tread every day. everyone has gates around their houses, some fancy and made with brick and iron, in the townships with anything you can find. it feels like lompoc california... that probably helps few of you.


we went to mass again on thursday evening. the twana women were dressed in purple capes, purple ribbons, with black skirt and hat. they all wear the red ribbon aids pin here, and every church service they recite the aids prayer.

i sat weeping, the songs in twana echo off tile floors, tall ceilings, and wood pews. the jesus is white, made in mosaic tile, the colors of africa around him. i cannot understand the words, but am comforted being in a place where God is present. a woman comes in slowly, kneels across from me and folds her thin hands. she looks sick to me, so frail an young and i wonder if she has aids. her face is painted white, common here, although i don't understand it yet. someone said it is a xhosa tradition, that it marks some kind of ceremony or ritual. i know the young boys in the plastic huts do this too after circumsicion.

i am grateful that they continue singing as i take the bread and remember that jesus loves me. i feel surprised by this... and realize how much of the time i live as if his love is not greater than my sin.


today marks one more month exactly until we fly back to america. i somehow feel that most of the time is over already... which maybe accounts for my disappointment at not being able to do as much as i wanted. but no... there is time. God is not finished.


there is a young woman, lerato. did i mention her already? she is in grade 12 at st boniface. tommorow she will meet us at fatima, another catholic church, larger than st boniface. the service is at 7... (they don't really play here) and then i asked her to take me/us by taxi to get something to eat, our treat. i hope this works well. i feel a bit possessive of that time, feeling tied to the group a bit and wanting to get away and just experience something without the americans. but i am challenged to keep loving them well too.


today i think i will go to the "guest house" where kathy stays and go through music with nyssa. i am excited to take home lots of new ideas... and might as well use my time wisely here... collecting songs and getting ready for another year at langdon. i feel more interested in music education than i have in a while... the children here remind me of the importance of the arts to our spirit, they affirm my choice in careers and encourage me to move forward to be a great teacher.


i pray all are well. i miss hearing about things going on in the church. if you have a chance to email me what's going on with people, that would be great.



also... plans as of right now are to try to change my ticket and go home to ct to see family and then come back to cali the beginning of sept. i will keep you posted.

grandma, i have been trying to write you back, but i cannot get mail through to your address... i send my love to you and grandpa.

aunt cathy are you there? maybe you could share my blog with g and g straayer?

with thanksgiving for all your love and support.