Day five:
Well today was a good day. It was the first day that we got to serve and it went well. We got up at 7:30 this morning to get ready to go to the office. I ended up sleeping a lot better last night, thank you sleeping pills. Drew on the other hand, did not. He said he only got around three hours. Poor wittle Dwew (yeah I tried to do the baby voice, so sue me). Anyway, we got to the office a little before we were supposed to, so we took that time to check the emails and do some other things. At eight o’clock Drew, myself, Hein, Yan, and Daniel had a small time of prayer. It was good to get to pray together and really started the day off right. After the prayer time, Hein told us what we were going to be doing for the rest of the week and that today we would be serving at Kuyasa. Kuyasa is an orphanage that is located in the shack town, but they reach out to the community in general. However, we didn’t have to be there until ten so we headed back to the house for a quick forty minute nap. After the nap we headed back down the street to meet up with Daniel so that he could show us the way. Kuyasa was about a ten-fifteen minute drive from our place. When we got to the community, I knew that we were in for an experience. There were shacks everywhere, and they were the epitome of shacks. They looked just like the ones that we say in Honduras. After going through this for about a kilometer, we made it to our destination.
Kuyasa:
Kuyasa is kind of an oasis in the desert. It is not a real fancy place, but they do have very nice facilities. There are two main buildings in the complex. The first building houses a garage, workshop, and some office space. The second building houses the main offices, classrooms, and kitchen. While Kuyasa is not a school, they do provide extra classes after school for the kids. They also have a food line in which they feed the kids, which I will get into later. They also have a paved soccer court; it is smaller than regulation size, and a net ball court, that is used for soccer most of the time. There is also a soccer field and basketball court. So the first thing that we did when we got to Kuyasa was to check in with Jenny. Jenny is the head honcho who runs Kuyasa. It is actually kind of funny; she is in charge but doesn’t speak much Afrikaans which is the main language that people speak. Also she has a son who went to ACU and played Tennis, small world huh? Once we met Jenny, we then went and had a devotional with the whole Kuyasa staff. There were about 25 of us in a room going through a chapter of “A Purpose Driven Life.” I have never read the book but have heard good things from it. The chapter that we went over talked about the family of God, and touched a little bit on baptism. The question that it asked at the end of the chapter was, what can we do to treat others more like family? We discussed that for a while in small groups and then got back together and talked about it as a whole. I found it very interesting, was that the majority of the time was spent talking about baptism, and the different beliefs about it. Some things we take for granted when we have been in the church for the majority of our life. Once we got done with the discussion, we had a prayer. However, it didn’t end there. There was a faith healing. I have always heard about them, but never experienced it. This was a different experience. There was wailing and shouting and crying during a very passionate prayer. It was something that I was not prepared for. However, apparently it worked. After the prayer the guy that couldn’t hear, could hear. And I know he couldn’t hear because I was sitting right next to him and tried to say hello, but he never responded until someone told me why. So that was interesting.
Getting to Work:
Once that was done we then went with some of the guys to help move and office so the tile guys could retile the floor. That was all fine and dandy except the cabinets they had us moving where freaking heavy. I mean they must have had lead weights in them they were so heavy, and it took four guys just to move one. Good thing was that it was a small office. Once done there we were taking up to clean out the storage “closet.” Now apparently when they say closet, they mean attic. There attic was full of stuff that appears to have been donated by various people with no apparent need for the stuff. Hence why we found at least three houses worth of counter tops, about ten cot mattresses, a bunch of other random stuff as we were organizing and cleaning. We did that for the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon. At about 2:30 we decided that it was time for lunch and that we should go grab some. As we headed down the stairs it was lunch time for the kids. Oh my word, there were so many of them and when they say us they all came running. There must have been fifty kids, and Drew and I became jungle gyms for about fifteen of them. They climbed all over us, on our back one our front, up our legs, these kids were wired. However, they were also some of the cutest kids I have seen. Yes I just admitted that some kids were cute good thing my man card is in South Africa. They were cute kids. The age group was mainly seven to thirteen, but they were cute. It was actually kind of funny because one of the kids that cam and jumped on me then came back and ate his lunch on my knee. Also I never knew that you could get so much joy out of a stop watch. They would stop and start it, and then try to tell me what numbers it stopped on. We had to have done that for about fifteen minutes. The bad thing was… I didn’t get any pictures. However, we will be back so it can still happen.
Soccer:
After things kind of settled down, Goo Goo (yes that is his name), asked if I would help him with soccer practice. I said yes, and commenced to lay goalie for a few hours. All was fine and dandy until somebody kicked a soccer ball someplace that it shouldn’t have gone. DISCLAIMER: The following is not meant for children under eighteen years of age. Reader discretion is advised. Now that I got that out of the way I am going to describe what happened. Since you are reading this you want to know what happened to me in South Africa. Well this happened, so I am going to tell you about it. It hit square. The Soccer ball hit square. I mean there was no favoring one side or the other, it hit square. So instead of me having a reduced chance of having kids, it may have been taken away completely. I mean it was just awful. Once it happened I immediately dropped. I tried to stay on my feet, but I just couldn’t. I slowly crawled off the court, everybody else continued to play, except for one of the other guys helping. He walked over and began frogging my stomach repeatedly and steadily. I didn’t know what he was doing at first, but after about four minutes it didn’t hurt as bad. I mean normally I would have been down for much longer. You can learn something new every day. Well at about that time it was getting dark, and we didn’t want to be there after dark. So we went ahead and left Kuyasa for the day.
An International Dinner:
After Kuyasa, we headed over to Daniel’s since we had been invited to his place for an “international dinner.” The international dinner is just what they call having people over who are originally from different places. Daniel and his wife had Hein, Drew, myself and John and Yin-mi over along with everyone’s kids. John and Yin-mi are originally from Malaysia but have moved to South Africa because John works for a big non-profit organization (I don’t remember what it is). They also have two daughters ages five and one. Daniel and his wife have a son who is ten months old. It was a very good evening, with great food. We had a very good stew with cornbread (double the butter that is required, to die for), and chocolate chip cookies. It was really good. After dinner we sat around talking and laughing at the kids. They reminded me of when my cousins were young and innocent. Too bad those days are gone (I am kidding by the way). After we left Daniel’s we headed home to shower and check the interwebs. Today was a good day. Tomorrow we will go back to Kuyasa for more cleaning, kids, and soccer. Well I’m off to bed now. This is Ryan Dillon signing off.
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