It's heating up in PMB and it's not yet summer. This afternoon (Friday) it was 38 degrees Celsius, 100.4 F and us with no air conditioning. But hardly anyone else has it either. The houses are constructed to trap the cool air inside and it seems to work. The humidity is 6% today. There is culture shock and there is climatic shock. Everyone, especially farmers are talking about the lack of rain, a condition going on for about 6 years. At the same time, the dollar continues to drop against the South African Rand.
We are reminded it is an election year by a rare visit from the postal service. We received our write-in ballots and two campaign brochures. I immediately got a headache. There's nothing like going out of the country for awhile to gain perspective. At least this far away there is an absence of the shrills and screams that have replaced spirited debate of an earlier time.
Meanwhile, our principal reason for being here - to help in the fieldwork aspect of the education of the seminarians, is also heating up. Field work, also referred to as work-integrated learning, means each person is required to spend about the equivalent of 1/2 day each week working in volunteer situations such as HIV/AIDS counseling, teaching teenagers the complex issues of teen pregnancy, working with orphans and a few others. Cheri and I have conceptualized a three year fieldwork program that focuses on a different area each term or 1/2 term. For example, the first year will revolve around life and death issues - hospice, suicide prevention, mental illness, family dynamics, caring for the aged and others. For weeks now, we have called on agencies, churches, hospitals, anyone else we can to explore ways for the seminary to partner with these entities next year.
We work closely under and with the Dean of Studies, a black Methodist minister named Sox Leleki. While we are culturally separated, we are discovering each other's gifts. We seem to feed off each other's ideas, and in that process, a new excitement about the program begins to spread. The seminarians are doing a lot of speculating on what this means to them and they will learn soon enough.
Before we came, the program was a requirement that needed filling, a box to be checked. It has enormous potential in transforming the seminarians and forging lasting bonds with the community. But it is an overwhelming job to plan spots for around 80 people, not to mention following up and evaluating the program. Now, though, with two new staff members (us) we feel it is within reach.
One of the greatest joys in being here in the second year of the seminary is plowing new ground for future years. What we do today has consequences for decades. The closer to getting it right this time through, the more there is to build upon.
It has been gratifying as well to experience the responses we have received from the heads of the agencies were we have gone. For sure, Christianity is growing in the southern hemisphere while declining in the northern hemisphere. Thus, we do not encounter resistance to an religious institution's interest in developing a partnership. The people who will be served by the seminarians in field work are of many faiths, especially in this neck of the woods with many Muslims and Hindus. (Note: the first Indian indentured servants arrived as here 150 years ago today.)
Of course, it's not all roses. It's 100+ degrees outside, we have 2 ceiling fans, a family 24 hours away, governmental bureaucracy that makes the U.S. look streamlined, loud neighborhood dogs that sometimes bark most of the night, and extremely loud birds (brown ibis) that a game preserve employee called a flying vuvuzela that wakes just before dawn and makes sure the rest of us do too. And we are beginning to lose some of our impatience since no one seems to care if it takes 3 days instead of a hour. A local paper publishes the TV schedule for the week and always leaves out Thursday. We no longer go to the toilet. We go to the ablution.
These locals oddities of speech, behaviour and environment are to be celebrated just as a foreigner to the US should celebrate the Theater of the Absurd that defines our election season. We smile and carry-on, enjoying all that is different, reveling in work that we do, and thanking the God that sent us here and watches over us.
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