Udondolo

“All of us pass a bit of ourselves onto others. You better like who you are and make what you give to others from yourself a gift and not a curse.” Erwin McManus , Chasing daylight

"Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back is drawing near." Hebrews 10: 23-25

Sawubona!!!

I have been a Very Busy African Bee. Here is a recap of the last couple weeks-

Tuesday the 12^th My fellow nursing students and I went to a high school in Mpopomheni, a nearby township, and we taught on a variety of health related topics to the 8^th grade students in two different class periods. My partner and I taught on smoking, and it went great!

The following night, at around 11:00pm, we were having a huge thunder and lightning storm so we stopped doing homework and had a Slip n' Slide, of course!

For clinical Thursday, I rode in the back of a buggie (truck) up into the hills outside of Mpopomheni to a very poor rural community called KwaHaza with a fellow nursing student, Christina, the director of Ethembeni, Grant, and a church volunteer, Pendile. We visited 4 homes, with no electricity or running water. We brought them food, listened to their sruggles, and prayed for them. Pendile shared with them Psalm 121:

"I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?My help comes from the LORD the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you—the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going."

One of the women we visited happens to be the only woman Ethembeni serves that does not have HIV. All her daughters died of AIDS and now she takes care of her many grandchildren. I saw her a couple weeks prior in the eye clinic in which she came in because of cataracts that have left her almost blind. She is an amazing old woman who gave us her only seats to sit on when we visited, huddled close to us (touching and closeness is big in Zulu culture and I LOVE it!) and then she proceeded to encourage us! So precious. She refers to things like bits of scripture as "udondolo" which is Zulu for "walking stick" since it helps to keep us walking on the narrow path. She told us to lean on the Lord and walk with Him everyday. Once again, she is an example of how the people here who have nothing, have so much! I keep on coming into these communities thinking that I will be sad for the people, but the truth is that I'm not. I keep on leaving these communities sad for the rich people at home who don't have the joy, hope, and faith that these lovely Zulu people have.

Its difficult to leave areas like this without having a desire to live more simply, or without struggling through thinking about all the money and stuff we have, and the way we use it. One house we went to was the home of the poorest family in Haza. Grant said that a group of 7 people from Texas are coming soon and he is hoping that they will build her a new house. He predicted it would cost about $1, 500. Each of those people are probably spending more than that just for the plane ticket to come here. I think there are so many great aspects of short term missions, but I am also realizing some of the negative aspects of them too.

This was my last clinical day at Ethembeni and I must say that makes me really sad. I have learned a lot in this community and have seen how powerful touch, encouragement, prayer, listening, and love from another human being is. The interdependence here has shown me how important family and community is. I love working with Ethembeni and would be there every day if I could- I much prefer it over working in the clinics.

Last Saturday we went to Durban! We spent a couple hours at a market and then went to a rugby Semi-Finals game. We all QUICKLY became HUGE sharks fans. And GUESS WHAT?!?!?! THEY WON!!!! It was an Awesome game! I was literally on the edge of my seat at the end of the second half. I was freaking out- the game was so close. Rugby is incredible and violent and I love it. Football is so boring and wimpy compared to it.

The next day we had this thing called “Talking Drums” in which these people came with drums for everyone, along with other instruments, and they directed us through an hour playing session. It was a lot of fun! A video clip of a little bit of the session is on youtube-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smfpxnoNIso

Then later that night, about half of us went out for Thai food ( I had one of my favorites- veggie red curry-oh wonderfulness : )

This past week was Homecoming Week!!!! Monday was Pajama day, Tuesday was Twin day, Wednesday was White V-neck T-shirt day, Thursday was Wackey Tacky day, and then Friday was AE blue collar t-shirt day. (Below we attempted to spell out the word twin).

Tuesday and Thursday this week, I was at a NGO AIDS clinic, mostly funded by the United States, called Caprisa. Tuesday I worked with a lovely Sister named PK. I did lots of Depot injections that day. My favorite part of the day was organizing her computer records and teaching her how to copy and paste. She was thrilled- it is going to make her job go by a lot quicker now. Thursday, I was in the blood trailer. I drew a few bloods, but mostly I labeled blood tubes and sorted them. I thoroughly enjoy little tasks like that, but my favorite aspect of working at the clinic is that every time I look out a window I see gorgeous deep green rolling hills and cows, lots and lots of cows. It is wonderful!

There is definitely a difference between Caprisa and the other clinics I have worked at. Some things I have noticed are that it has a nicer outdoor waiting room, there is way more paperwork, less patients, the workers get a higher pay, and the biggest difference (which may be a result of some of these factors) is that the workers are all so kind and compassionate. They are smiling like all the time, and speak in a very caring tone with the patients. P.K. says she thinks that this is because they are less tired and burnt-out since they are not as overworked than those at the other clinics. I don't know why it really is, but I think it is absolutely wonderful and refreshing. I feel like these patients are going to be healthier and happier just because of these positive interactions. I think we often underestimate the influence we have on others, and how important and powerful a smile, or a kind word or tone of voice, or some encouragement can be. My Papa once told me that in every interaction we have, we either deposit in someone, or we withdraw from their personal account. We build them up or we bring them down.

For Friday chapel we had a woman who survived the Rwandan Genocide speak-AMAZING & INSPIRING story!!! God is always in control. He is so Faithful!

Friday afternoon we played an intense game of soccer and my team won in overtime!!! We decided the best thing to do after the sweaty game would be to have a soapy slip n' slide. (I have seriously gone down more slip n' slides during the last month than in my whole life combined). After that, the nursing majors slipped away to the grocery store to buy food to make for a semi-homemade Italian dinner and ingredients for a surprise for the other students that we baked while at Janet's, the girl's CLC's, house in town. At 10pm we put on a surprise "Midnight Breakfast" (an APU tradition usually put on the night before finals start) in which we brought our baked goodies and encouraging notes we nursing majors wrote for each of the 34 other students. They had their last final the next morning (nursing majors don't have our final until next week and then in a couple weeks we will have our huge papers and Senior Sem. presentations).

Sunday night we had our Homecoming Dance. This was my first and last APU dance, and it was by far the best dance I have ever been too! The room looked beautiful. We had a delicious dinner, a spelling scramble challenge, great music including a couple performances, a raffle, and a lip syncing improve contest. One of my favorite parts was when we all left the tent and danced by the waterfall under the stars to the song "Dancing in the moonlight."

The homecoming planning committee made a video slideshow of some of our journey up until this point and they played it at dinner, you can check it out on you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvHNw7rU4J8

Upper left is me and some of my South African church friends (Laura, Kanengoki (K for short), and Carrie) in the dining room, and upper right is me and K in the photo booth.

Upper left are all the lovely ladies at my dinner table, and upper right is the whole group.

I miss and love you all!

Sala Kahle