I Think That I Shall Never See

Peter assures me that he will write a comprehensive summary of the last two weeks, including (and pretty much limited to) our adventures in Joburg and Botswana (a.k.a. "real Africa"). What I want to share with you personally - confident as I am that my associate will actually sit down and write a full and complete report - is that the trees here in Africa, and specifically in Botswana, are awesome. And I mean awesome not in the way that people like myself so often and so carelessly use the word, but awesome in the sense that I am in awe of them.

Whereas trees in Canada generally have pencil-like or perhaps wishbone-shaped trunks, and on the whole look something like cotton candy or feather-dusters or bristle-brushes, trees in Botswana have trunks something like lightning, or grasping claws, and with leaves they look more like an ink drop in water or a freeze-frame moment in a hundred-year organic explosion, life-green billowing, blasting out against the sky. Branches twist and split off at hard angles, as if the whole frame were made of some malleable metal and had been bashed about by an idle boy.

Living, these trees mingle majesty with a sinewy, pulsing energy, like electricity in bloom. If you made Ents of these trees they would not be grandfatherly singers and shepherds. They would be hunters, sweat-slick and battle-scarred, crouched low and taut in readiness, and fire in their eyes.

The dead trees are darker, rawer. Leafless and stripped of their bristling branches they stand iron-still in a solemn scream, an ancient monument to the beauty of barrenness and death. As if some great beast had gnawed the flesh from a mountain and spit out the bones.

That's my best shot at poetry. (Not poetry in form, I know, but in spirit.) If you don't think much of it, that's fine. But you should see these trees!

Tristan is a Friggen Genius

So far we've gone to a different church every week. For some reason all of them so far have been more or less charismatic. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with charismaticism. I can't really get into the whole jumping around, "Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus!" thing, but I like that other people seem to feel this way, and I like watching them get excited about God. On the other hand, sometimes these services feel more like pep rallies than worship, and I can't help but wonder if people should (or even can) feel as jubilant and passionate about God every day as some of these churches try to.

The reason I bring this up is that last night Tristan coined the word "charis-manic" to describe one of these churches. I thought that was tremendously clever.

In other news, we leave for Johannesburg in about an hour to visit Tristan's rellies. (Am I the first to call relatives "rellies"? I'm kind of afraid I stole that from someone.) From there we're planning to go to Botswana for a bit to help some missionary build a church and hopefully ride elephants and/or see God. (Apparently Botswana is more Africa-ish than South Africa.) The whole trip will take about a week and a half. You can pray that it'll be worthwhile.

Love to all.

Despite All of Which, I'm Still Having a Good Time

Let me tell you what we're scheduled to do next week. We're dismantling and moving a little church in the township, starting a kid’s basketball program, going to Khayelitsha (the big scary township were everyone gets murdered), doing stuff with a local Bible School, and pouring the floor at the job site. Thing is, we've been doing most of these things "next week" almost since we got here. Generally we get to one or two of them each week.

How's the church coming, you say? Well, the church will have a big sanctuary in the middle and rooms around three sides. Above the side rooms will be a balcony for additional seating. In order to put in the concrete floor we need to dig trenches where the interior walls will be and then cover the ground with sand to even it out. The trench along the right side was originally dug by a backhoe (which mysteriously disappeared after the first week), the back side was dug by the Save Africa team with pickaxes and shovels, and the left side is not yet dug. After we dug the back trench the church people took a look around and said they thought the sanctuary was looking awful small. They hummed and hawed and decided to move them in a meter and a half. So Save Africa shoveled off the layer of sand where the new wall would be, dug new trenches on the side and back, filled in the old trench with the dirt, and sanded the top. Then the church people came back and said the side rooms are pretty small now (really, they are), and then the contractor came and said there's no way it'll work with the walls like this ("Everyone thinks they're a fucking engineer!") and we'll have to move them back out again. He says we're not allowed to dig anything until he talks some sense into the church people.

That's Africa. It's more funny than frustrating, really, but it means that we're low on work at the moment. So you guys can pray that we'll find good things to do. At the moment we're doing some sightseeing and renovations for the family we're staying with. Things are lovely.

On another note, I can't believe the Oilers are in the finals for the first time in sixteen years and I'm not in Edmonton. If you're having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this tragedy, it may help you to know that my greatest regret in life is not being old enough to remember the dynasty in the 80s. If we win the Cup again and I'm not around to see it, I may not be able to come home.

Finally, our African internet connection (which currently will not allow me to use gmail, windows live mail, or most pages at nhl.com, among other things) has recently become finicky about loading blogger.com. So if we disappear from the blogsphere for weeks on end, know that there is at least some chance that it's all the fault of our African dial-up internet (or "Satan", as I like to call it), although it's also possible that we've just become lazy.

Introspection

The other day Pete happened upon an advertisement for an evening with Phillip Yancey, and I forced everyone to go. Nothing he said was particularly interesting to me, except that his next book, due in September, will be about prayer, and if it really does anything. (I think the title is something like "Prayer: Does it Really Do Anything?") That's kind of exciting for me because I've been thinking about prayer a fair bit recently. I suppose I've been having a bit of a crisis of faith. (This happens to me every so often.) I'm trying to decide whether I really believe in Christianity or if I just say I do because things are easier that way. It's been about nine months since I decided that what one believes is more or less irrelevant, and all that really matters is how one lives. (Hence I claim to be a Christian not because of anything I think or feel, but because I try to follow Jesus in loving people and be selfless. Real Live Preacher argues for this kind of Christianity.) But now I’m wondering if Christianity is more than just a title you can give yourself. Besides being raised in a Christian home and associating with Christians, in what way am I like Christians? I don't read my Bible or pray regularly, in fact I don't even like or understand the Bible and prayer a lot of the time. I've never felt close to God. I don't see God at work in the world or in human lives. I'm drawn somewhat to the life and message of Jesus, but is that alone enough for me to call myself a Christian? I'm not sure what I think about his divinity, his resurrection, miraculous power, etc. (nor do I particularly care), and I know I don’t believe that one must accept these things to escape eternal damnation. I enjoy the perks of calling myself a Christian (community and the opportunity for service) but maybe it’s dishonest.

Not sure what all of this has to do with South Africa. I guess I came here partially because I want to see God at work powerfully and openly, and people tell me Africa is where he does that. Maybe I'm in the wrong part of Africa. Or maybe I'm eating too much steak and thinking too much about the Oilers. But I was at this Yancey thing and they were talking about a prison in South Africa where these people started a Christian ministry and the inmates were transformed and the murder rate plummeted and BBC sent a crew to report on it. I think when I heard that I realized I don’t believe this kind of thing is miraculous at all (good, certainly, and perhaps influenced by God, but not miraculous). This makes me sad.

I think Church is really built on shared experience. A bunch of people can work and worship and fellowship together because they have the same beliefs, and they have the same beliefs largely because they have the same experiences. I wonder if it’s really possible for someone like me who doesn't have those critical beliefs and experiences to be a full member of the club. No matter how much I like the Oilers, no matter how good I feel when I go to their games, no matter how much I want to be a part of the team, I will never be an Oiler, because I suck at hockey. Maybe there’s nothing to be done about that.

This was written by Tristypoo

There’s really influential moments in your life when something huge happens and it shapes you and you remember that moment as a milestone in your journey Then there’s little moments that don’t seem to be too significant but for some reason they still stand out and you tend to remember them more frequently and clearly than the milestones.

So we were standing on the beach, me and peter and joel, kind of in a half circle like in high school in the morning when nobody really has anything to say but they want to look like they’re really sociable and content with their abundance of self confidence overflowing from their coolness, all with the intent to not stand out as losers, but still inviting anyone who passes by to join the circle. We really weren’t too sure what we were doing there. we’d just shown up for some kind of a youth rally game fun thing but as we got there it seemed more like we were to help out or something. So we stood there confused and reluctant to do anything because the people who where supposed to tell us what to do weren’t really sure what they were doing and therefore did not know what to tell us to do. A few people were arriving and signing up or something at a table set up next to a tent, but not the 300 that were apparently supposed to show. We stood mostly in silence occasionally broken by random small talk, starring back and forth from the sea to the people arriving. I looked at the road we stood by, then to the beach and in a split second it happened…so fast that I’m pretty sure it must have been planned or perhaps all a beautiful illusion. It all started with blaring music behind me, kwaito music as it is apparently called. It’s a lot like the theme from talespin and jungle book…with like steel drums and stuff but then it was kind of dance musicish. Anyways it was pumpin and exciting and full of energy. So I spun around immediately and there’s this party happening right there on the road. Like 15 locals from nearby townships had spilled out of a cab and started dancing and freaking out in a split second. All the cabs here are pimped out with woofers and 6x9s and flashy cd players. Everyone was dancing…You know when you go to a Christian wedding or like a school dance and the music and accommodations are really high quality but nobody really dances, except for a few annoying people who try to get everyone rallied up and it works for a few moments but then everyone gets kind of embarrassed because they don’t want to look stupid but then they’re also embarrassed because of the fact that they’re embarrassed about what other people think about them and the dancing dies and people mostly stand around in awkward half circles with confused looks on they’re faces. Yah so this was totally opposite, like I said everyone was dancing and not just swaying to the music but truly freaking out. Everyone had their own dance moves that involved there whole bodies with head thrusts and kicks and flapping motions with their arms. They didn’t look embarrassed at all in fact they looked pretty confident with their moves. And damn they could dance, so smooth and rhythmic and natural. Just then the cabbie started his engine and took off. The moment ended just as suddenly as it had begun leaving behind possibly the best memory of South Africa I will ever experience.

Now I’m not writing this with the intent of saying that all white people are boring, lame and stuck up. You see Joel gave us this long speech afterward about the difference between racism and racial profiling and how one is prejudice and demeaning and the other is prudent in certain circumstances. So in order to avoid being called a racist or educationally challenged, let’s just say all the white people that I know are boring lame and stuck up.

-Tristypoo

The administrator wishes it to be known that Tristypoo was given every oppertunity to become a full-fledged member of the blogsphere, but has unfortunately chosen to foist his posting responsibilities on me. Just thought you all should know.

Peter said I have to write something

Not sure what I should write here. I like South Africa. The place we’re staying is called Somerset West, which is about 40 minutes from Cape Town. There are mountains on two sides, and ocean on the third. It’s stinking hot. The place we’re working in is this big township for poor black people called Lwandle. Some of it is these little duplex things that the government is building, and part of it is super-tiny shacks made of pieces of tin and whatever. The strangest thing about working there is that the people are really big on dressing well, so poor people spend money on nice clothes instead of food. Half the people at the job site dig ditches and lay bricks in nicer clothes than I wear to church, and then they change into their good clothes right away after work before riding the taxi home. Taxis here are more like busses – twelve-seater vans that run on a route and drop people off on the way. They cost about a dollar. So far we’re the only white people I’ve seen riding the taxi, and probably 90% of the people driving cars are white. Everyone here is really polite and nice to each other, but apparently all the different racial groups really don’t like each other. But I won’t get into the race thing here and now. I don’t really understand it at all. Those are my scattered thoughts for today.

Molo! (That might be how you say "hello" in some South African language)

Welcome to the official blog of Save Africa '06 - a three man, two month South African adventure that will absolutely save something or someone. Expect tri-weekly (as in three times a week) updates, prayer requests, inspiring stories and deep thoughts from Jacob, Peter, and Tristypoo, provided we don't become lazy. Toodles!