August 11, (South Africa)
Greetings from South Africa—the land of racism, apartheid and wild monkeys; a land where there have been massive changes in the past 10 years. Only ten years ago, the blacks in the townships needed permits to enter the cities where we are staying. The whites (the minority) had jobs, houses, electricity, water, money (infrastructure) but the blacks had dirt roads, huts, no electricity and lived in poverty many unable to feed their children. With Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and his coming to the Presidency a few years later (Mandela is to these people what Gandhi is to the Indian people) all that began to change and apartheid is slowly losing its power in this culture. The laws have changed but the hearts of the people have not all changed. We can SEE the resistance of some of the whites and their hatred and racism (both hidden and blatant). We can see the increase in crime and the fear, too.
We arrived on Wednesday August 6th after a 11 hour flight from London on British Air. Did you know you can watch movies for almost the whole 11 hours? I ended up not being able to sleep and stayed up about 38 hours total. We were met at the airport in Durban by friends who are missionaries with Cornerstone International in Pietermaritzburg. Cornerstone is a mission sending organization based out of Wilmore, Kentucky. We met the director (Duane Jones) while we were at Asbury and he arranged for us to meet Ron and Joanna Zeiner who are missionaries and work with ESSA (the Evangelical Seminary of South Africa). Ron teaches OT to about 55 students from various African nations. We stayed a night at their beautiful home and got to meet their daughter Mary, her friend Debbie, their dog Max and see some wild monkeys. I have never seen monkeys in the wild before so that was very interesting! The next day after a picnic in the park with wild zebras, we moved to stay with a ministry called Youth for Christ (located in the same city of Pietermaritzburg). We are about 1 hour from Durban which is on the coast of the Indian Ocean. If you look at a map, you can see Durban right on the coast of the Indian Ocean. We are now living in one of their International Volunteer Houses with several single women from Holland, Germany, and the USA. Next door is a home for street children (about 20 boys, ages 7-12) and around the corner is a home for school-age girls who were living on the streets. The ministry here is very involved with children, doing both prevention (by building trust with kids while they are on the streets), residential care and after care. The have a team which just works with street kids in the HOPE that they can get the kids to leave the streets and after a stay with YFC, and eventually be reunited with their families. Unfortunately, some of their parents have died of AIDS and other parents are violent and abusive and the kids often don’t want to (or can’t) go home. On Saturday, some staff workers drove three children home to one of the townships where they came from and within a few hours, the children had found their way back to YFC in the city.
The AIDS problem here is out of control. 90% of those in the local hospital are dying of AIDS. Today the paper reported that 50% of the children in the hospitals have AIDS. There are large funerals in the city every weekend. I’m told that it is not unusual to see 50 grave holes on a Saturday at a cemetery in this community. YFC is working primarily with the Zulu people and the Zulu cultural mindset which has a rather male-dominant view of women. Therefore, the culture encourages men to live with women before they are married and also encourages the men to have a wife and several girlfriends on the side. These “cultural values” have been around a long time and the men seem to think they are invincible and will not get AIDS. And if the men have children with their girlfriend and decide the relationship is not going to work out, their culture allows them to leave their girlfriend and their children and to have no further responsibility. There is so much I have to learn about the Zulu culture. Are any of you familiar with the Zulu people? I have been told that their founder (Shockazulu) was quite a violent man. Many children are being orphaned because of AIDS and the people are so poor, they can not afford the 1200 R (the currency here) a month for the medicine (about $115.00) to treat AIDS. Worse yet, Zulu witchdoctors are telling the men with AIDS from the tribes that the way they get healed of this is to find 3 virgins and to have sex with them. The problem of sexual promiscuity here is overwhelming. Good news though: just yesterday (Sunday) the news reported that the government has agreed to allow Antiretroviral drugs for treatment for those with HIV. This will slow the AIDS process for so many.
