TOWN HILL

by Doug Roland

It's one of those times that our resolve is tested, when we are called to live out what we say we believe. The extended strike by public workers has hit South Africa with predictable results. When bad things happen, usually the most vulnerable, the poor, the ill, the young, bear a disproportionate burden. When that happens, what is the role of a seminary whose reason for being is the training and developing of preachers for sure, but also a new generation of transformational leaders?

Across town from the seminary is Town Hill, a specialized psychiatric hospital situated at the top of a long hill. The centerpiece is a beautiful Victorian building of red brick with exquisite grillwork adorning it. The serene landscape belies the suffering that is occurring behind the bars. In a parking area just in front of the entrance is a car with four tires slashed, portions of a bumper ripped off and a fracture that destroyed half the front windshield. It sits there as a witness to misdirected anger. The damage was caused by a striker. The car belonged to a hospital staff member who ignored the strike to care for patients rather than barricade the front gate. There are about 18 housing units at Town Hill. There were four staff members to care for them.

On Monday evening, August 25, the seminary president announced the cancellation of classes for Tuesday to go en masse to the hospital and volunteer. A bus was scheduled to transport the seminarians at 8am. They were to serve until 4pm. As well, he asked for volunteers to leave almost immediately because the evenings were the crisis times - feeding and getting into bed. The president's reasons for our involvement were based on crystal clear scripture that commands Christians to serve the forgotten, the vulnerable, even the outcasts in the world.

It turned out that we really were not needed Monday evening. Tuesday was a different story. Hospital management, such that it was, expressed the needs as cleaning, removal of a week's accumulated garbage, providing company for neglected patients and doing long overdue laundry even though no one could find the key to the laundry room. A few seminarians used their own cars to load up the laundry into them and drove to the seminary apartments to use the household machines there. Now, three days later, the laundry is still not done. Some people worked through the night .

We soon learned that there were serious patient needs that were not being met. One of the wards, Impala, houses the women. There is nothing gentle on the inside. Hard, dark concrete floors, plain walls, and everything accented by bars and locks. The metal doors close with an unsettling finality. The women living there - about 25 or so, had been left on their own for 2-3 days. These are not people capable of self-direction. The events in that ward typify to a great extent what can be done when needs are so dire.

Early in the day, word spread that one young teenager in Impala had become uncontrollable. Her screams could be heard throughout the campus. Two seminarians and Cheri went in not really knowing the situation and established an uneasy calm. Later in the afternoon, I went in mostly to see if Cheri was ok and ended up staying. We served dinner to the patients then cleaned up. There weren't even any towels to dry the dishes but we managed nonetheless. However, the troubled girl from the afternoon threw another fit because she claimed we had not fed her. In the hollow atmosphere in that building, she was a one person speaker system. Eventually she was taken to isolation by the nurse and one of the four staff people.

When things calmed, three women came together to the kitchen area to thank us for coming and providing new faces. A few started to sing and dance. We joined with them. There were smiles and laughter and lots of hugs all around.

There were heros that day. Several seminarians did jobs they never envisioned. Soon-to-be ministers collected garbage, mopped floors, handled laundry in unspeakable condition and kept company with elderly folk who appreciated anyone. One seminarian in particular, Jill, a former nurse, took control on her own of managing the effort, assuring that everyone have a task. She has gone back each of the next four days.

The entire property is enclosed by a large metal fence with a security team at the only gate. As we were leaving around 6:30pm, there was an intense dispute at the gate between the strikers and some of our seminarians who were returning to serve a few more hours. The strikers were actually people who lived on the grounds, and they were intimidating the volunteers. Police were called but none showed, at least not while we were there. Eventually, the strikers agreed to let leave our people alone for two hours.

Wednesday the seminary president met with the strikers and negotiated a temporary peace which has held the rest of the week.

The laundry still isn't completely finished. The patients' condition has been improved though only temporarily.

Why do all this, extending ourselves into the unfamiliar territory of mentally ill people unable to care for themselves? Why go when danger is a possibility? It's that unavoidable scripture mentioned above. I'll be honest - not everyone answered the call. Some shied away.

Jesus said "What you do for the least of these, you do to me." He also said we would be persecuted for our beliefs. He said that and lots of other things. He never said anything would be easy.

If you want meet Jesus, or even if you are just curious, go to Town Hill.

Just a Bowl of Jello Rice Krispies

By Cheri Roland

It’s not Shadrac, Meshack, and Abednigo hanging out in the fiery furnace. Life is more like being poured into the bowl with Snap, Crackle, and Pop when the milk hits, a cacophony of new experiences rolled in serendipity.

It started popping last week. In a thumbnail sketch:

Saturday – The Capital Climb up one of the surrounding hills (mountains to us flat-landers) with hundreds of runners, walkers, and us stragglers. We did make it the 8 km to the top before Doug’s little heart arrhythmia kicked in and we caught a ride back down. Better safe than heroic.

Sun. – Church in the AM, then our first opportunity to cook together (our hobby) plus the proverbial house cleaning. (It is extremely dusty here because of the controlled burns.)

Monday – A regular day at SMMS , then entertaining a seminary prof and his wife for dinner before their move to England the next day.

Tuesday – Learned, after a three hour meeting in the AM, that we would be hosting Peter Storey, the face of the Methodist Church in Southern Africa, for the night. (Thank God, literally, that we had addressed the condition of our house on Sunday.) This meeting was with all staff initially, then continued with Sox, the Dean of Studies at SMMS, and Ross, the President. We finally got down to the nitty gritty of our assigned task: designing and implementing the field experience program for the seminarians, an awesome task. We are to start by visiting the five superintendent ministers of the greater PMB area to get acquainted with all church projects addressing the most urgent social crises. Also we will visit community agencies, hospitals, prison, hospices, etc. to scope out possibilities for field work. Then we will evaluate the opportunities, group them into themes for the 6 semesters of the seminarian’s training, meshing their class schedules, transportation availabilities, needs of the organizations vs. those of the students, creating agreements and evaluation tools and procedures, and Viola! We’ll have SOUP! Doug keeps assuring me that since we are starting from scratch, we can’t screw up too badly.

We had a lovely time with Peter that eve, after a Communion service and trip to the grocery, even convincing him to join us in a few rounds of Bananagrams.

Wednesday – A four hour staff meeting concerning upcoming visitors, and activities surrounding the official opening of the seminary. In two weeks, SMMS will throw a traditional African pre-opening fling to which the PBM community is invited. That Friday a bull will be slaughtered by what I call “the cow whisperer” –this man makes the cow know that he will be offed the next day after he makes a certain noise to open the channel for communication with the ancestors. (This ceremony is only for guys, but it is happening in the midst of National Women’s Month. What’s up with that?) The next day will be filled with feasting on the cow, traditional dancing and singing, and praise singers (“professionals” who would perform poetic songs for the king of the tribe, but now for The King in this celebration). It’s gonna be a blast!

Then for the weekend of Sept. 4 – 5, Peter Storey walked us through the grand ceremony announcing to all that Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary has become a reality. This promises to be pomp and circumstance, with luncheons, processions, dedications, singing, culminating with a community colloquium headed by Rev. Samanga Kumalo from SMMS (who has preached at our church) and Dr. Greg Jones, Duke University. I can’t wait! Stay tuned for photos.

On Wed. afternoon, Doug and I with another staff member gave two important visitors “the campus tour”, seeing areas of this place I’d not been before… Ross had instructed us to act as if we knew what we were talking about. It’s amazing how many titbits of info we had actually gleaned from hanging out around here.

After work I walked up to the sports park across from the Seminary, my first solo venture. I “chatted up” a young gal who was doing laps on one of the cricket fields. Cathryn is a psychologist whose father was a Methodist minister, turned psychiatrist, living in Joburg. He will be visiting Friday and we hope to give him “the tour”! Cath will call me today to set up our meeting. But as we were planning this, I noticed it had gotten dark. I knew Doug would get worried, so I asked her to drive me home, just around the corner. (Dark and out walking = stupid.) So she did, and popped in, wrote down her phone number, and now we have new friends! To top that off, while I was out walking, our next door neighbors dropped by with a flowering plant to welcome us. (In this land of a thousand gates and locks, I find that extraordinary.)

Thursday - Today I’ve scheduled a working lunch with Dr. Wendy Dougmore (what a great name!), my medical consultant, to discuss S.A.nursing protocols, thereby preventing my landing in jail.

This Saturday we’ve been invited to watch rugby with a big group at someone’s home. We have been instructed to wear green (Springboks). If any black (New Zealand) is noted, we will be sent packing.

Estimates of my clinic supplies are in. I hope to get them this week so I can open with office hours on Mon. Woo Hoo!

So, as you can tell, we are having the time of our lives!

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

Part of the charm of traveling for us has been the fun cultural differences and surprises along the way. We have felt sadness as exotic places continue to become more homogenized. But we have plenty of new differences to celebrate here.

This place has deep British roots, from the colonial architecture to the word usage. After Sunday dinner you must have jelly (Jello) and pudding, (any type of dessert). Rum raisin ice cream trumps chocolate. Then our jelly is jam and pudding is custard or creme. Since we are always freezing in the mornings and evenings - these homes are built to stay cool in summer since no A/C - I purchased a "knee rug", big enough for both D and I to wrap up. Stop lights are robots, speed bumps are sleeping policeman, when driving (yikes stripes!) you must give to the right of way, literally. The trucks on the roads are buckies (small pick-ups), combis (campers), and taxies (mini-buses). My washing powder, detergent, is to be closed with a peg, or clothes pin. (I have a old-fashioned real clothes line, resembling an inverted bumbershoot.) Oh, tea is the thing, not coffee. Only instant stuff is hospitably offered to visitors; a real coffee pot and real coffee were included our in initial shopping spree. Our beds are made up with dubai, lovely to see but feel very heavy after a few hours of slumber, so I bought cotton sheets and a blanket, very pricy. In fact, the prices generally have not reflected our much anticipated lower cost of living.

My Zulu words so far are saw-BONE-na (I see you, I acknowledge you), answered by YEA-bo (back at ya), and BO-bo (our thatched patio under which we will eventually have a traditional braai, pronounced "bry", or bisected oil drum, covered with a screen for grilling).

Security is a must here, a BIG deal. I think we are the only house without man-eating dogs that lunge at their fences as folks walk by. Our house has the ubiquitous high walls surrounding the property with the bell to push for entry thru the mechanized gate. We each have a "clicker" and keys for every room and cabinet and folding security gate at each outside door, the old-fashioned JAIL kinds. I still can't remember to open the front gate to let whatever workman is here back out and/or remember to lock every blasted thing that should be locked at night! And then there's the security system alarm which I discovered our second night here when attempting to turn on the hall light… LOUD and SCARY and how does one turn it off?? Knowing we were awakening the entire neighborhood, D madly pushed buttons and tried to use the phone attached to the alarm box, to no avail. It FINALLY stopped. Whew. There was a slip of paper under the front door the next AM; the security guy had indeed been by. Good to know. And we have a zillion windows, sans screens, that open out and hook in varying ways, letting in the warmth during the day, all with serious bars. Ronnie, our main handyman, attached photo-sensitive security floodlights at every corner of the house. We lay in bed at night with our curtains diffusing the outside brightness, our space heater glowing softly, reflecting off the built-in cupboards along the wall. It looks like Christmas in front of the fire.

Emphasis on security spills over into all aspects of life here. Malls parking lots have gated, take a ticket entrances, manned by uniformed attendants, assisted by uniformed car guards, with whom it is wise to become friendly and then tip R5, about 70 cents. Upon entering a store with packages (packets), you must check the bags and upon leaving, the uniformed guard checks your purchases against the receipt, like at Sam's Club. Opening our bank account, purchasing cell phones, buying our TV, setting up the antenna (not yet), buying a car (not yet),and getting a land line (not yet) all required copious paper work and consternation.

The metric kitchen throws me; I keep pushing buttons on the microwave requiring me to input a weight in order to start. Whatever! Thankfully the measuring cups and spoons we bought are labeled with both systems. Reading the package nutritional labels is totally confusing. (Even our MD couldn't evaluate our blood work reports or recognize several of our medication dosages.) Thank God for the Internet with temperature conversion charts. Most every appliance in this house has the instruction booklet; you can bet we have been studying those. For our first home cooked dinner in SA, we invited Shayne, SMMS president's wife (the seminary owns four houses in a row, right around the corner from SMMS, and Ross and Shayne thankfully live next door) for dinner since Ross was in Joburg. It took us and Shayne a long time to get our oven to work, and she lives here.

Products packaging is interesting. Zip locks are few and far between; on the brown sugar, or muscovado, the instructions read, "Keep channel clear by removing any sugar particles with a toothpick". Most bags startlingly rip apart when I attempt to open them. If the product is likely to be stolen, go for the hack saw. And remember old Saran wrap? I'm in a time-warp-wrap. I covet your Press 'n Seal. Our vitamins come in generic small foil packages with the name stamped at the top.

This is enough musing for now. We are still lovin' it and will continue to be amused and amazed as our adventure continues. Stay tuned.