"Typical Day" - April Newsletter

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;

we are the clay and you are our potter;

we are all the work of your hand.

- Isaiah 64:8

There is no such thing as a “typical day” in South Africa. Several people have asked me what exactly it is that I “do” on a daily basis. It is only in retrospect that I am thankful for the complete lack of description about my placement sites I initially received from YAGM. I didn’t have even a vague job description to which people could relate. I remember being frustrated in the months leading up to my departure that I was unable to tell people what exactly I would be “doing.”

For those of you who, like me, have a need to “do,” I will make some vague attempt at describing the “typical day.” In fact there are three potential “typical days” depending on which placement site I’m at and what day of the week it is. A day at the PACSA office almost always begins with making the rounds, saying hello to my co-workings, checking in on things both personal and professional. There is usually a meeting or two to attend, e-mail to check, and a report or minutes to write. Lunch often involves coordinating an order from the Indian restaurant down the block with co-workers. The day usually end when I realize I’m in danger of missing the last khombi out of town.

A day at the crèche starts with cleaning the hall and feeding the kids breakfast porridge. Then there are usually songs, games, drawing/writing activities, and stories (often in no particular order). Sometimes I help out with organizing the student and financial records. Then lunch and nap time round off the day.

Weekends are filled with errands that I put off during the week, social events (weddings, funerals, more casual hangouts), and church on Sundays. I attend a few different congregations, two in the townships and one at the Lutheran Theological Institute at the local university. Admittedly I am a very “left brain” person. I like structure. I like to know what I’ll be doing in any given day and week. Only several months after arrival I realized this need to “do,” if acted out in the way I’m accustomed, would have been a huge detriment to my year of service. A plan or an agenda would have made me so focused on a few specific things that I would not have seen anything in the peripherals of my vision or made room for anything unexpected. I’ve had to let go of this need for structure, which has given way to a decidedly more “right brain” schedule. There is so little that can be planned on any given day, because there are simply too many contingencies to predict. I might be invited to a person’s home in the afternoon or pulled into a meeting during the day. I might be asked to come on a hospital visit or a trip into town at the spur of the moment. These events, though unexpected, often become the most interesting and meaningful parts of my day. Much to my initial uncertainty, the plan is often to have no plan.

It’s humbling to realize that there’s something in control of this experience far more powerful and aware than I am. This year has been in a lesson in giving up control and learning this experience is about something much bigger that I am. In order to be shaped into something beautiful, clay must be soft and pliable. If it is hard, no work can be done, no creativity expressed. In many ways this time has shaped me and shaped itself, not the other way around. Iwas told at university that your experience is exactly what you make of it, that you create your own experience. If I had taken that mentality into a cross-cultural setting I would have been bound for failure. I realize now how much rigidity there is in this approach and how limiting it can be. My year of service as a YAGM is largely not a process I can control or shape, and I don’t understand that as a bad thing. It is something that has unfolded organically and prayerfully. There has been something very powerful in allowing God do the molding.

April Highlights

• Helping facilitate a peer education workshop with the Gender and HIV/AIDS Desk at PACSA
• Celebrating the Easter holidays at family’s home and attending my first sunrise service
• Presenting reflections on the theology of accompaniment at a learning workshop
• Observing the SA national and provincial elections, in which the African National Congress (ANC) was re-elected as the majority party
• Attending the wedding and traditional Zulu ceremony of a friend from the ELCSA Young Adults League