Heritage Day, Calvin, and Elvis

Yesterday we enjoyed a day of thanks to the national holiday, Heritage Day. So after sleeping in, I went into Cape Town with my 2 housemates. We headed down to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront and went to the big craft market and the Two Oceans Aquarium. We also got some lunch at a cool restaurant right on the water, the Green Dolphin. It was a lot of fun! There were a couple of local music groups performing around the waterfront that were really good…singers and drummers. Despite the cold weather and occasional rain, it was a nice day! Heritage Day is also National Braai Day. A braai is like a barbecue, and is a pretty big thing here. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to braai.

One of the things I am doing each day is leading music at Living Grace, the homeless ministry, for their morning devotions. Its been so much fun! They do a devotion each morning with several different people who speak on a rotation and they always do a few songs before the speaker. So, I have a guitar that I am using here and have been leading the music. There was a volunteer here about a month before I came who used to do the same thing, and a woman before him who would play a little organ, but since they left they’ve just been singing on their own. They were pretty grateful when I showed up. Its been fun being a part of that! Its amazing how much they enjoy singing songs and the devotion each day and I’m always humbled by how passionate they are about their faith and how much their faith and God mean to them! It’s easy to think that the homeless people here or the children in the townships would have plenty of reason to feel the opposite way about faith/God/religion since they are in the living conditions that they are in. However, its not that way and it makes me thing about what Pastor Pedro said in the Dominican Republic one night when talking about this very topic. What he suggested to us was that because those people have so much less and are in the situations and living conditions they are in that they have a greater dependence on God, whereas we (referring to us…Americans, and others) so often allow ourselves to be dependent on other things: jobs, money, relationships, material things…all these things that distract us from God and our faith and our dependence on those things. I’ve witnessed this in the Bahamas, Jamaica and the DR but am seeing it here so much more and much more closely than I did before. As I said before, it’s humbling, but it’s also inspiring!

This morning while I was getting the music ready and tuning the guitar one of the men there came over to see what I was doing. His name was Calvin and he was very interested in the guitar tuner, so I showed him how it worked. We then started talking about a little bit of everything and he told me that he had a 4 month-old daughter, whose name I’m not sure I can pronounce, much less spell. He said that sometimes when its warmer he brings her with him to Living Grace. So I told him that I would like to meet her when he brings her in next time, which he then gave me a huge toothless smile. It was pretty obvious how much he loved her, regardless of how much he had to sacrifice just to take care of her. So it was fun meeting Calvin and will be great to meet his baby daughter.

Tonight we are taking the MMA kids to the theater in Cape Town for the Elvis Show: a musical tribute to the king of rock and roll…I’m not really sure what to expect, but if its anything like the Brady Blade’s drum show, then it will be great!

The Craggs

So Friday we moved from our B&B to a new place, "The Craggs". It’s a 3 bedroom apartment that overlooks the beach/ocean and is just around the corner of the main street/downtown area of Fish Hoek, which is a small coastal town that is a lot of fun to be living in the middle of! There are lots of neat little shops and restaurants around and the beach is so close and so nice! There are lots of whales and seals playing in the bay where the beach is, so from our balcony and the walking trail along the coast below our house you can easily watch the whales! Unfortunately our new home doesn’t have internet like the B&B did, but fortunately there is a nice and cheap internet café about 3 minutes walk from our house, so it’ll be easy to keep up with emails and the blog.
The weekend was pretty uneventful, and very relaxing, which was perfect! Saturday is the day we do the Mobile Music Academy and is so much fun! Right now we are doing theory lessons with them at the living hope container just outside their township, and then we take them to a jazz workshop put on by the Glenn Robertson jazz band, a pretty big local jazz band. It’s a free workshop for beginners on any instrument and any age. They do some cool things and the end of each workshop they have a jam session, letting kids switch out on different instruments. Its pretty awesome! Its so cool to see how excited they kids are about music and to give them something productive and meaningful to do! Part of our program includes some music therapy. We provide them with music and the academy as a safe haven and physical and emotional escape from the stresses and issues that they unfortunately have to deal with on a daily basis: drugs, alcohol, sexual/physical/verbal abuse, disease, etc. One day, one of our girls, who until recently thanks to some social work intervention by Living Hope, has been on drugs since she was about 8, came up to Amy, the MMA coordinator and said “Amy guess what! I turned down drugs yesterday cause I wanted to do music instead!” Which makes it all very worth it!
But things are good. Just wanted to give you all an update on the new house and my weekend. Also, as I was walking around downtown Fish Hoek, I came to a cross street and just happened to look at the street sign and was very surprised to see that the street’s name was ‘Dalton Rd’! How weird. I added a picture of it to my slideshow at the top right of my blog. (you can click on the slideshow and see the album much larger and with captions)

Moving Day

Sadly, today we are moving from the B&B to a new location, which we found out yesterday! The owner of the B&B is selling it, and despite their best efforts, ACTS (the organization that takes care of our accommodations and transport) was unable to buy it from them. Since it is getting into the spring/summer seasons, the rates of the B&B will be getting higher and other people are booked to come in a use the rooms, so we are moving now. We are moving actually into the town of Fish Hoek, into a house, which apparently is pretty nice, and in walking distance to "downtown" Fish Hoek, which is a cool area, and also in walking distance to Fish Hoek beach. So we''ll see! But definitely an exciting adventure for today!

3 Churches and Brady Blade

So, I have been without internet for the past 3 days, so haven't been able to post anything about this week. So I'll give you a brief update of my week so far.

Sunday was our day of 3 church services. Myself and two of the other volunteers spent the day with the mission team here from Knoxville. (By the way, the Calfee's nephew, Brad and his wife Caroline, were a part of that team, which was fun to meet them!) We started the morning at Fish Hoek Baptist Church for their regular morning service at 9am. After the FHBC service we all headed to Masiphumelele (or 'Masi') Baptist Church. Masiphumelele is one of the black communities that was originally setup by the gov't when apartheid ended. The community was designed for 750 families, with that many houses constructed by they gov't. Now, however, there are over 5 times that many living there, most in shacks built around each of the actual houses. The church building also serves the Living Hope Community Center site for Masi. The church service was such a fun experience. They speak Xhosa, so since we were there and don't understand Xhosa, they had someone translating into English for us, which was so helpful! But the music was amazing. They start singing and all know these songs, and start dancing and doing incredible harmonies and have a small organ playing with another guy playing drum sounds on a small keyboard. It was amazing! The music was incredible! This is actually the church that I may start working in, to help restart their choir, but after experiencing that, I'm not sure how much help they need! If nothing else, I'll certainly learn a ton!

We left Masi and headed to downtown Cape Town for lunch. We ate a place downtown called the 'Spur', which is very similar to a TGIFridays, but with a more South African menu obviously. The have your basic hamburgers, sandwiches, ribs, chicken, etc. but also serve snails as an appetizer, a chocolate chili burger, and have a monkey gland sauce for meats. We quickly asked and were told that monkey gland sauce isn't actually made from monkeys, its just a name. We were a bit relieved! From lunch we headed to the big open-air market which is in the parking lot of the future FIFA World Cup stadium, which is currently being constructed for the 2010 World Cup. But we spent some time at the market, which may have been the windiest day I've ever experienced. It was hard to even walk forwards against the wind and most of the vendors were struggling to keep their items from blowing away. However, because of the weather, all the vendors were offering "windy day" prices. So everyone was able to get some things for much less than they normally would have. We left the market and headed to Hillsong Church, our 3rd and final service of the day. Hillsong is a megachurch started in Australia, that has locations in London, St Petersburg, and now Cape Town. It's a very contemporary service with a big praise band and they do a lot of music, which Hillsong writes. The pastor is one of the founders from Australia and was really good!

Monday night was my first field trip with the Mobile Music Academy kids. We took them downtown Cape Town to a drum clinic that was performed by Brady Blade, a pretty famous studio drummer that has recorded with everyone from Dave Matthews to the Indigo Girls. It was a lot of fun and after the show we took the kids down to the stage to meet him. He was so nice and very interested in the kids and the Academy and spent about 10 minutes with them taking pictures with them, signing a poster for them and all their hands, and even gave them a couple of his drum sticks! As we were leaving he gave me his email address and said that when he come back here in a couple months he would love to come see what we are doing in the academy and maybe do a drumming workshop with the kids, which would be amazing!!

But other than those things, Monday through today I've been at the Living Hope offices in Muizenberg (the town over from Fish Hoek) where the homeless ministry, Living Grace, is located. I've been doing music in the mornings as part of the Living Grace morning devotions for the homeless community, and doing some work and personal research for the Music Academy. I'm trying to redo and upgrade the current curriculum for the academy and also putting together songs to do in the mornings at Living Grace and to do with the kids at their afternoon Kid's Clubs!

Sorry this one is a bit long, but just wanted to catch everyone up on the last 4 days. Hope everyone is great!

PEACE

Circus Tents and Dance Skills

Today was quite a busy and long day, but a great day! I met the kids from Mobile Music Academy today for the first time. They are amazing kids and incredibly talented. They were so excited to have me there and so anxious to show off their talents and learn new things, especially the piano! There is one boy, Basil, who is 13 and has an unbelievable singing voice. Its hard to explain exactly how good this boy is, except to say that when he first started singing today, my mouth literally dropped open! He is so talented, with dancing and rhythm and of course singing, and picks up everything so quickly. I spent some time with him one-on-one today showing him some things on the piano. He is so anxious to learn! They're are so much fun and all have so much talent and potential. It was an exciting morning!

This afternoon, we (the Living Hope volunteers) helped the mission team here from Knoxville with a big outreach event in own of the coloured townships, Mountain View. 'Coloured' is the proper term used here for people who are of mixed race. But we set up a huge circus type tent on a big field just outside the township and split up the almost 150 kids into 4 groups and the groups rotated around stations. There were 4 stations: crafts, a puppet show, sports and games and face painting. There was also some blood pressure checks and other health related things for the parents there. We served them dinner and and showed Veggie Tales movies after dinner for those who wanted to stay. It was a lot of fun, and the kids and parents both seemed to really enjoy it. I got two big hugs from a mother and grandmother who stopped me as I walked by just to say "thank you for doing this"!

Last night, we all went to the fundraiser ball in the Ocean View, another coloured township. The ball was put on by the church as a fundrasier and also as something fun and positive for the people of the community to do. It was 'formal evening wear' so everyone was dressed up and wearing all the "bling" the could. It was kinda like church dinner/small highschool prom. It was great fun though. We volunteers dressed up as much as we could and were the only white people there, which didn't matter, cause they loved us being there! After dinner they called out ticket numbers and if your number was called you had to go to the front. The announced that we were to have a dance competition. Myself and another volunteer, Danielle (a 32 school teacher from Nashville) were called and partnered up. They were playing some good ol' Boys 2 Men and other R&B. Danielle and I basically did all the cheesy American moves we knew, including the "shopping cart" and just had fun making fools of ourselves. But, it paid off...cause we won! There were 3 of these dance offs and we one the second one. Each winning couple was awarded with a very delicious chocolate bar. It was a great time!

Today was 82 and sunny and a perfectly clear day. Unfortunately the weather here changes extremely quickly and a cold front has come through and tomorrow will be 58, very rainy with 30 mph winds. Oh well.

The ball last night was just proof that cheesy American dance moves really do pay off!

Mail

So for all those interested, I now know my mailing address.

It is: Ryan Wilson
PO Box 734
Noordhoek
South Africa 7979

Apparently sending mail here is pretty easy and not too expensive. So for all those who feel so led, all letters, postcards, packages, etc are welcome!

Balloons aren't just for Kids

The USAID/Living Hope Conference ended Wednesday afternoon and went really well! There were about 80 delegates from different faith-based community development non-profit/NGOs and was pretty interesting to be a part of. Wednesday morning the new (as of Monday) US Consulate General of South Africa spoke and I got to meet her, a very fascinating lady!

The conference was essentially a seminar or workshop, but one of the ice breaker/teambuilding excercises they did was to get into groups of about 10 and blow up as many balloons as you can and make the tallest balloon tower possible in 20 minutes. Let me just say, watching a bunch of 30-60 year old adults from all over South Africa blowing up balloons and getting extrememly creative on how to make their balloon tower the tallest was hilarious! There was some cheating and stretching of the rules involved and was so fun to watch.

After all those shenanigans were over, and the winner declared, they all piled up all the balloons (probably close to 1,0000) in a corner, which after the conference we, the volunteers, got to enjoy popping, and then of course cleaning up. But before we cleaned them up, during one of the breaks, one of the conference attendees out of no where jumped straight on top of the huge pile of balloons! A 45 year old man from Pretoria. It was hilarious! He was then given the 10 Rand (US$1.25) from the guy who dared him to do it. However, the best part of all of that was Pastor John Thomas, the Senior Pastor of Fish Hoek Baptist Church and the head of all of Living Hope, rolling around in this huge pile of balloons revealing the child within! I've attached some pictures for your entertainment!

Cheers!

Senegal, Tacos and South African Malls

Well, I made it! After 18 hours on 2 different planes and a 6 hour time change, I arrived in Cape Town yesterday (Friday) at around 4pm. Both flights were fine, watched several movies, slept, ate, read...anything and everything I could do to keep my self from going stir crazy! But I did sleep most of the second flight which helped a lot!

We landed in Dakar, Sengal for our connecting flight about 4am their time, and got off of the plane via a wheeled staircase and everyone staying in Dakar got on one shuttle bus, and everyone going to Cape Town got on another (everyone else was going on to Johannesburg and stayed on the plane.) My shuttle drove us a couple hundred yards to the airport door and dropped us off. From there we went into one airport door, did a big U around a wall where we then showed our boarding passes to someone, then walked straight out the adjacent door to the one we came in through, got back on the same shuttle which had just pulled up a few feet, which then drove us back to the tarmac to the plane parked right beside the plane we just got off of. We "boarded" that plane, sat down and then took off... all of which took less than 10 minutes. Kinda of a strange first Africa experience. But I am glad that I wasn't staying in Senegal, cause it might be the most muggy and humid place I've ever been!

South Africa is wonderful though! An amazingly beautiful country, even from what little I've seen so far! The volunteer house is a nice bed and breakfast type place where 2 other volunteers are staying. The town of Fish Hoek, where I live is located in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean on the southern peninsula about 30 minutes from Cape Town. My first meal was a delicious taco dinner at a Living Hope worker's house, where I met several of the people I will be working with, all wonderful people! I have my own room and am slowly getting unpacked! I took a trip to the nearby shopping mall today to get a few things, and discovered that shopping malls are pretty much the same in South Africa as their are in Dalton, GA...this one complete with McDonald's and a KFC!

Tomorrow, we will go to the morning church service at 9am, which I'm looking forward to, and then later on that day we begin setting up for the big Willow Creek, USAID, World Vision, etc conference. The focus of this conference is to unite NGOs, mostly faith-based organizations, some not, and form a coalition to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic and come up proposals on where to go from here as a united group rather than individual organizations. SA has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any where else in the world! The conference is Monday through Wednesday and should be a pretty interesting thing to be a part of! After the conference is over I will begin my ministry projects.

Thats all for now, but exciting things to come! Hope everyone back home is great and I miss you all!

PEACE

Comments

Hey Everyone,
I just realized today that this site was set so that only "registered users" could leave comments. Well, I changed that and now anyone can post a comment to me on this site. Thanks for all those who have checked out my blog so far, and again for all the prayers and support!

3 days until I leave!...