Friday, August 9, 2013

Months ago, I had received an email asking if I would be interested in attending a ladies conference in a town called Hammanskraal and help with some painting with a man named Oupa.  I was also told that three people from Canada/USA would be joining me and that we would be sleeping over in this town.  Of course, I said yes as I wanted to experience as much as I could.  Little did I know what I would all experience.

Today was the day of the woman’s conference.  We left home (The Farm) at about eight in the morning and after driving for 1 ½ hours on ‘regular’ roads, we arrived at Romeste Reformed Church.  

This is a church that Oupa planted and he is now the ordained pastor of this church.  We were early and so we had some tea first.  The schedule of the conference went something like this:

9:50-10:00 à Opening

10:00-11:00 à First Speaker

11:00-11:30 à Tea

11:30-12:30 àSecond Speaker

12:30-1:30 à Lunch

1:30-2:30 à Third Speaker

3:00 à Finished

Well, we finally finished our tea at 10:50 and so the schedule was revised.  The new schedule was:

10:00-11:00 à 1^st speaker

11:00-12:00 à 2^nd speaker

12:00-12:30 à Tea

12:30-1:30 à 3^rd speaker

1:30-2:30 à Lunch

By the end of the day, we still hadn’t followed that schedule, but we still managed to listen to all three speakers, have lunch and do a small craft – Africa time!!

The title of the conference was “Living a Christian Life.”  We listened to explanations on spiritual growth, Godly love and living like Jesus.  For the most part, the topics were done in both English and Sewestho(sp?) so we were able to follow along. 

Oupa

Craft time 

Lunch time - Braai

Craft time

The ladies who came to the conference

The conference was done at about 4:30 and so Oupa took us to the homes where we would stay the first night.  The two guys would stay at one person’s home and us two girls would stay at another.  We were all quite nervous about this – what would the food be like? How about showers? Is it safe?.  We were assured it was safe and as long as we were safe, we thought it should be alright. 

The guys were dropped off at their homes first – this involved travelling over very rough red dirt roads.  My car has taken quite a beating since I got it and is becoming quite filthy.  We were all invited into this home and so we stayed here for about an hour.  During this hour, we were all kindly lectured by Oupa about reasons why we should get married and things that he could do to help us.  Oupa is a friendly, caring and outgoing man and he is going to be our ‘tour-guide’ for the remainder of the stay.  While drinking our tea, the man of the house left the room and announced he was going to clean my car.  I guess he did not like it looking so filthy and so he washed it for me. 

Once we finished our tea, we were taken to our home.  Before we arrived, we were told that we would be going to a place where a mother lives with her two young sons.  But we were unprepared for the poorness, but also the love of this home. 

We stayed by the lady on the right.

The house was very small, (probably about the size of my living room at home) and had two bedrooms and a kitchen/dining room/living room area. It was very clean and you could tell the mother had pride in this home.  We slept in one of the rooms (we think it was the mother’s room).  During the evening, the mother told us some of her story – her husband passed away in 2008 and one of her boys has epilepsy.  She has a very hard life and yet is quite cheerful.  For supper we were served a huge plateful of food (and yet, I didn’t see her have any food).  The house had no running water and limited electricity.  The washroom was an outhouse outside.  I very much dislike outhouses and so was not looking forward to using them.  After supper, we did some reading, a little bit of visiting (which was difficult because of the language barrier) and then went to bed early.  When we announced we were going to bed, the lady came to the room with a bucket, and told us “It is not safe to go outside at night time, so if you have to go to the washroom, you must use this.”  Elisa and I looked at each other and decided that we would not put this bucket to use!! We made sure to go to the washroom right before bed. 

This house opened our eyes a lot.  I had heard stories about some of the poorness and I know some of the students that I teach live in poverty, but once you see it with your eyes, it becomes a lot more real.  The government had provided this house for this lady. Many people receive housing from the government if they are unable to buy their own and in this way, they can still have shelter. ( I will have pictures of the house later)