What kind of day has it been

I've spent quite a while trying to work out how to end this travel journal (I despise the word blog) but for sure I feel it needs some good closure. The problem for me comes from this: before I left I printed out all my entries and it came to some 22,000 words. That added to my personal journal, which estimate at about 28,000 words, means I have some 50,000 written words about my five months in South Africa.

How precisely do you write something to draw a close to so much?

I have been back a week now and naturally when people ask me how it went it's very hard to know what to say. But one tactic I like and sees to work is when people ask me for my highlights. So I figured that is what I'd do here. This will however mean I may repeat some of the things I've written about before but this time you'll know are the things that have survived the sift of time and remain strong in my mind and heart.

So first, 'what was the most fun time?'

'Um, I think I did have huge amount of fun out there and many of you have noted from the photos that get posted by myself and my friends. The only bad thing about that is that from the outside world it looks like it was a big grand holiday and was your typical student travelling venture! But for sure among the hard work was a lot of fun, and the pinacle of that was the skydive. I never thought it would happen but when it finally did it was incredible. I don't think I'll feel an adrenaline buzz that strong for a very long while!'

Second, 'what was the most challenging time?'

'I think the hardest part was living with six other people in such an intense and oftentimes tiring environment. My team were fantastic but I know more than a few of us will agree that some of the greatest challenges came from that environment. But for sure it taught me a lot about patience, about having mercies anew each morning, about putting other ahead of yourself, and for me, about what it means to truly lead. Leading is not a part-time job but rather gives a new perspective on each choice you make. The balance between team well-being and personal well-being is not one I found easy at all.'

Third, 'what was the most inspiring time?'

'I don't think anyone who has read this journal will be suprised at this answer; Robben Island. I am wearing my Robben Island t-shirt now and I cannot stress enough how challenged, focussed and inspired I was by seeing in the physical quite what many men, but one in particular, were willing to do to fight, endure and perservere for what they believed in. I cannot stress enough how obvious it is to me that if each person in the world picked one value, ethic or virtue, and gave it their all, on whatever scale or in whatever setting, the world would be transformed in an instant.'

Fourth, 'what do you miss the most?'

'Another easy answer but probably one I've not spoken about much here. While I was in SA there was a family I stayed with from time to time. They consist of Rob, Debbie, Marcel, Georgia-Mai, Ellie-Jo and Caleb. Being at their house was so much fun, all the kids are young and just had so much joy and energy. It was a God-send in terms of a getaway from the stresses of working at Gateway. There was only one goodbye that got me close to tears and that was saying goodnight to the kids for the last time I was going to see them. I don't miss anything about South Africa really, and they are the only people who perhaps qualify into that bracket!'

Fifth, 'will you be going back?'

'For sure I have the Africa bug and want to go back one day. I hope to go back and visit people within a couple of years, 2010 is looking hopeful, I hear there's some football tournament going on then...

But I think the best thing about my time there was the crystallisation of what I want to do in the future. Before I went out I was still torn between aid work and pursuing my study and work in the Psychology of work and well-being. However I never realised the two could go hand in hand. Gateway was such a large and ambitious project, focussed on serving and empowering the poor but in a intelligent and sustainable way. I would love to go back to Africa one day and help to run and organise such a project. So yeh, I think it's safe to say I'll be back there one day!'

As I finish I'm watching some BBC program searching for the UK's best choir. They are all singing 'Never Forget' by Take That. The chorus goes:

'never forget where you've come here from'

That won't happen for a good while.

Inspired from outside, driven from within

Hello again. I hope in the haitus you went to fill up your tea or get some popcorn or other stereotypical sustinence line (Incidentally, I never understood why people eat during films. I just don't see the connection. Can people not go two hours without consuming energy? It's not like sitting in a chair staring forwards could be that energy draining. I mean think about it, if you stood in front of a cinema audience and just watched them, all you'd see is a load of people sat there staring forward and making little or no movement or sound yet still being wide awake. Crazy.)


Anyways, a heads up here that a) I'm in a writing mode, and b) I'm about to write about something I'm passionate about. So this means one of two things i) what I'm about to write could potentially be very good and worth reading and ii) what I'm about to write could be very long. I'll let you judge the former and the latter is probably a given!


Ok so what I'm about to write about comes from two sources. One, just being with people around here is enough to see what drives them. Some people have no drive, some people are deeply driven but keep it deeply hidden and some people are so driven by something that it doens't only come out in their observed behaviour but also in what they say. Not that any of those are better than the others, but people here often fit the last type.


The second source is the calendar work I did. I spoke to people about how they came to work here at Gateway, why they still work here despite salaries being affectionately known as 'sacrificial salaries', and what Gateway means to them. So here goes:


#1: Z (not his real name)

Baba Z works on site as the driver, working each night in the overnight shelter and general handy guy. Before he began working here he was in prison for murdering a prison warden. However in prison he became a Christian and every day works in the shelter looking after 70 people a night. I asked him why he does it and he said in his broken English, 'because many of these people have absolutely nothing and that was exactly where I was when I came out of jail.' He now gives everything to live his life in another way and out of love.


Just thinking about Z blows me away. This is no middle-class white guy who was kinda nice and kinda good but then decided to change his life a wee bit here and there. He was in jail for murder and somehow, by his own admission through becoming a Christian, has had his heart and life flipped over and is now seeking to uplift those who have nothing. He has not forgotten where he came from but rather after being lifted out of the mire has chosen to get back into it and help out others.


#2: Edith and Rene

These young sisters (Rene is 80 and Edith just behind here) began working at Gateway AFTER retirement from a life of nursing all over Africa. Rene told me that when she was younger she had a vision to see the young look after the old and the old teach the young. However that vision laid dormant for a number of years until ten or so years ago when they came to Gateway and began their ministry known as 'Rural Home Industries'. This is basically a little programme where they link into poor communties and go in to teach them in sewing, cooking and gardening skills. Things which younger people, especially in poor areas, have no way of learning but skills that will enable them to lift themselves out of poverty.


I mean, who does that?? In our culture, you work hard all your life and then you retire and enjoy your retirement doing whatever you like. And not that there is anything wrong with that, but these guys, at 80 odd, are still doing all they can to work against poverty in Africa and keep up the work they've been doing their whole lives. Ridiculous.


#3: Michael

Michael is one of my favourite people on site actually. I don't see him often but I when I do he's always got a massive smile on his face. I know his kid from the school and he's just the same. And what is the situation of this family? Well they run the Pregnancy Crisis Centre here at Gateway and are incredibly poor and struggle for money both personally and as a project.


I spoke to Michael about why he works in his ministry and he said at first he just came in to tell people about Jesus and offer them a hope, but soon he became envisioned by a more holistic service and wanted to help the women physically as well as offer help spiritually. He soon took over the centre and the phrase he used when I spoke to him was that he wanted to 'give a voice to the unborn'. That has stuck with me ever since. What a thing to say, and what a vision to uphold! He believes so strongly in the value of mothers and unborn children that he works in very trying circumstances to try to bring relief and hope. I don't see that kind of life as natural at all.


#4: Jabu

Jabu is Chairman of Gateway and is so busy with being the public head of this place. He's always in meetings yet when you see him he's the most down to earth and humble man you'll meet. I had a long chat with him last week about various issues and ideas and he just loved listening to what I had to say and would love to keep in touch. I mean I'm sure that won't happen because he's so busy, but he was still genuine in his desire. But this is the CEO, why the heck is he genuinely interested in learning from me?


Oh and he drives 4hours a day to get in to work. He's that dedicated both to his family and to the vision and desires he has for Gateway that he will give that much for it. Crazy.


#5: John (not his real name)

John is an amazing story. This guy did not get a good start in life. He was in drugs and sexual molestation from a young age and unsuprisingly that has significant impacts on someone's mental and emotional state. However one day he, through a friend, happened to come to church and heard about Jesus and the gospel of grace and was immediately changed. He is now still affected by his past, but the real story is that he now works with his girlfriend with drug users and other inner city people. People who he used to be like and can relate to in a way no one else can. He works hard and is always helping out wherever he can. Jonno and I had the honour of working with him and he is one of the most accepting and naturally peaceful guys you'll meet. A far far cry from his children and adolescence.


#6: Mark (not his real name either)

Mark was left with his father after birth when his mother left him, and then at the age of seven saw soldiers drive into his village and shot his father dead. He then grew up mostly on the run and as he got older soldiers made not one but two attempted on his life. The second was in hospital as he lay recovering from the first attempt. Only the Red Cross got him to safety. He is now a refugee in South Africa and works as the security guard at Gateway. While in South Africa his wife died in childbirth. You'd think this would be a very angry, bitter and disillusioned man.


'Mark' is actually always smiling and whenever we see him in the mornings he will grin, clench his first and say to us 'be strong'. He calls me Baba which means 'father' and is a huge honour for me. He now leads a church of refugees and works very hard to bring them food and shelter where he can. In the midst of the outbreak of xenophobia here two months ago we saw his leadership in action and he is as wise as he is brave. He relies on his God fully and draws his joy from Jesus. That's inspirational.

#7: Lorne

Lorne is bi-polar and has spent time in a mental institute and yet here at Gateway she has found a home and a community and is so much more stable and happy. She works in DMPR and is so valuable and helpful to people here. She works so hard and brings such joy to the place and you really wouldn't know anything was amiss in her mind.

I just find is so unlikely that any other sphere or organisation would've found room for her or been able to see who she really is and her true value beyond the disability she has.

#8: Di

Di is a lady of many many years of fundraising experience and skills. She has the gift of persuasion and can talk forever and immediately be likeable to anyone she meets. She knows the ins and outs of the business world and especially the fundraising world. She trains and speaks on various topics and has a true entrepenuerial spirit. Her ideas are fantastic and she is more than capable, with her talent and contacts list, to make them happen. Put simply, this lady could be earning so so much money in the private sector as some form of consultant.

Yet she works here at Gateway on a very small salary and does pretty much a bit of everything. She works harder and is busier than almost anyone here. All because she believes in the vision of Gateway and what we are doing here to empower the poor and downtrodden.

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So as I learnt from these people it's a bit like them taking me the top of a mountain, putting a hand on my shoulder and with the other hand pointing out a beautiful vista and saying 'that's where I'm going'. For sure it makes your spirit soar, just the idea of that place inspires you to set your own sights there or somewhere similar. But that inspiration rarely gives you the drive to get there. That person can show you their map and inspire your own, but their engine stays in them. The engine that drives you has to come from within you.

I have been taken to many vistas here and now it's up to me to use my drive to get to my own.

the wildcat leaving tour

It's just gone midnight here in South Africa and I'm likely going to be up for a while because I'm in one of those moods. I find that in my life particularly I am fueled by emotion. Thought, understanding and reason may well be my trademark to many people but in truth, and I believe this to be a truth to most people, those things are best used to set one's direction. The power behind your movement and drive must be emotion, passion and a deep desire to see your goal achieved. Tonight I am full of emotion. Right now there's a touch of sadness, joy, honour, humility, thanksgiving, regret and probably a few more, all burning inside of me, creating something like a fire that is going over the last four months, refining and showing things to be as they truly will remain.

And what crazy fool would go to bed with all that happening eh? jokes.

But yeh, there's a lot going on inside of me so I will likely be up for a while yet. I suspect I will speak to Ru and tell her about the last two days, I will catch up on some journal and prayer (the two go hand in hand very nicely), write this blog entry, plan a number of letters to write to my team and other friends here, and muse over all these things as I plan the final team devotional that I will leading in two days time. This my friends is what the heart and mind of Phil gets kicks out of!

Right, let me go finish making my cup of tea and I'll be back...

...and back. As I write I'm wearing black suit trousers, a white shirt, a black tie with the button undone but not enough to see Jonno's white t-shirt I borrow underneath. It is probably my favourite thing to wear in the whole world. I am wearing these things because tonight was our last church home group. We had a sit down meal so we got everyone to dress up. Naturally I took this as an excuse to wear my favourite clothes ever and have not yet taken them off. We just did Izzy's final devotional and all the guys were in their pjamas (how the heck do you spell that??) and there was me still looking like I could do a set in the Copa (thank you Aaron). Anyways I ramble, sorry. I am just trying to set more of a scene than I normally do in these entries.

Ok so my plan for this entry is as follows. First I will briefly summarise the last 10 days or so, something I will affectionately called the 'Wildcat leaving tour', and second I will do something I've been thinking of for a while. I want to try to give you guys a flavour of who I work with and around here so I'm going to write some testimonies and thumbnails of some people I've spoken to both on personal time and work time. I hope you will be as inspired as I have been by them, or if not that, see that I have been inspired and send yourselves or your kids out to this place one day.

So first off. I don't remember if I mentioned that we had a lot of social engagements lined up, but as of tonight we've gotten through 9 of them. It's gone so fast but they've been great.

#1: Baby sitting the best kids in the world. All hail the Ng-Yu-Tin family!

#2: Church home group. I led the evening and shared a message on the need to overcome the barriers that life puts in our way in order to have God's love and truth truly come to fruition in us. It went very well and I enjoyed it muchly.

#3: Actually turned out to be a night off because only the girls went out to our scheduled event!

#4: We went into the community and to a church there. We had traditonal Zulu food (which wasnt half as unsual or scary as we'd been warned) and then in the service I ended up doing some Zulu dancing and giving an encouragement in front of everyone. In Zulu culture there is still a sense of male protection and standing up and looking after the group so as the male leader I get looked to a lot for this kind of thing! But I enjoyed it and was yet another move to increase my comfort zone!

#5 & #6: We spent the weekend in an area known as the Drakensburg which is a national heritage site and has lots of green, mountains and hills. We went with the school we work in and with fifty 13 year olds. It was a lot of fun and it was actually a really nice last weekend here.

#7: Last church service. We went to the church we'd been to most and said goodbye to our friends there. It was very sad actually and felt like only yesterday that we'd first come.

#8: Big meal for our staff friends. We cooked for 30 staff friends and kids to say thank you for all they'd done for us. We made Lasagne becuase it's our speciality ('our' meaning Abby and Jenny's). It went so well and I go such a kick out of being a waiter. Plus I got to speak many people I have come to love so so much. And got a genuine offer of accomodation for when I come back here, which will be asap!

#9: Big mea for our cell friends. Only 15 this time and we had fajitas. However this was so very sad. I think it was the first goodbye where we won't see people again. Other goodbyes have been at times when in all likelihood we'd see people before we went. This one wasn't. When it came to goodbye I felt sick inside and I felt so close to my team because we all felt the same. One of the most amazing thing about being part of Church is the speed at which people become part of your social family, meaning people who you might not know all that well but you still value so highly and would do so much for. We'd met so many people in cell who obviously didn;'t know us, had little to gain in welcoming us, but who gave so much to us and whom we love now so so much.

Ok so that's an update. I will post this and start a new one with part two. Stay tuned. I promise it'll be worth reading.

The fullness of reflection

Two weeks sure goes fast when you're not paying attention to it eh? The joyous thing about writing an online travel journal is that when you're not busy you have lots of time to write and nothing to write. When you're busy you have a lot to write and no time to do it. These last two weeks have very much been the latter so I'll try to fill you in without getting too bogged down in dull detail. As you may have noticed from my posts, I detest dull.




So the show went pretty well. pretty well being an understatement. very well is closer to the mark. the day began at 8am when we headed down to the school to help preparations for the 10am opening. To be honest I was suprised at how organised they were. You see Africa might have the heart that the West has lost, but it's not yet got any vestage of organisation or efficiency sadly. It makes life frustrating at times. Anyways, the run up to the show had been scattered with comedy fits of disorganisation and last minute rabbits out of the hat, so it's fair to say I didn't know how it'd turn out. But, like I said, at 8am on Saturday morning things seemed in pretty good shape, and it actually continued that way throughout the day...mostly.




The show itself took place at 11am and the first show was fantastico. We had it all recorded onto DVD so I'll have a copy when I get home. It includes a comedy event where I nearly face planted into the stage because the makeshift step up to the stage elected to sneeze as I glided across it. However I did manage to both stay on my feet and grin and wave at Jenny and Izzy at the back, unfortunately I forgot there were 500 people sat between me and them so they all saw my stupid wave as well. Score. They loved it. Anyway, less about me, the kids were amazing. They sung songs including Jonah Man Jazz, Twinkle Twinkle and High School Musical (oh yes), did a prodigal son adapted play, and also did some traditional Zulu singing and dancing. For sure Izzy and Jenny were delighted at the results.




However in Africa not all goes to plan, so the second show didn't go quite so well because a number of the kids were taken home after the first show and so we couldn't do much but put on a semi-capacity second show!! Oops. But hey, the first show was amazing and had the biggest crowd.


In other news, work has been slow. I've found in increasingly hard to balance working in the office at DMPR and the school. DMPR work is requiring constant and regular work sessions however with PE lessons and other school show prep it just didn't happen. So I have two or three projects that are 90% done but I just can't find sufficient time to finish them off. Muchos frustrating.

It is also fair to say that the goodbye section of our time has begun. Last time I said that one of our friends had left, these last two days two of my best friends here have left. It's been pretty sad to be honest because they were great to have around and helped out our team a lot with their experience of living here and being on Oasis team two years ago. They've been a massive part of my time here and I will miss Naomi and Ru a lot.

The other way we know we're leaving (aside from looking at a calendar) is that we're having to organise and invite people to leaving dos (that's the plural of 'do' not the Spanish number). I think we have four planned so far and also a last church and more goodbyes here and there.

A lot of people ask us how we feel about leaving and its hard to say. There are a lot of emotions going on...excitement, sadness...ok so there's only two but still, they don't get on well. I think I know where I'm going next i.e. my MSc and I know why I'm doing my MSc i.e. because I want to become skilled in the effective organising and management of people in order to use those skills in the charity/church sector (you could argue that both those things fall under the title 'kingdom building). So I feel happy that this has been a splendid step towards that but I know where my next stop is...

However, again, it would be amiss of me to finish on a low so I shall finish by talking about the fact that I jumped out of a plane 9,500 feet last weekend. Oh yes. I was strapped to a man and he was strapped to a parachute. The common name for such a feat is a skydive. Abby on our team is a qualified skydiver and has been on about us doing it here, so amongst other conditions, I would do it if she organised it. She did. Originally me and Kat were due to go but after we came back down intact, Ru, Jonno, Hannah and Izzy all went up (and down).

Its very hard to explain how it feels to fall 4000ft at 127mph. It's impossible to take it in at the time. Someone said that it doesn't really feel like you're falling but rather just being suspended in the air with the air rushing past your face. I tend to agree. I think if you did it more and more you'd take more in but your head just doesn't come to terms with the whole experience quick enough. Well mine didn't anyway. It was however, if indescribable, amazing. I wasn't actually very scared, I think partly because I'd abseiled 107m down a waterfall two months ago and that Kat was a wee bit 'tentative' about it shall we say, and in fact that calmed me down lol. The only uncomfortable bit was the speed at which my guy said 'right we're going' and ushered me into position. They move you so fast that you really don't have time to be scared. One minute you're on the edge the next your falling.

Kat had a DVD made of her fall but because I went first I am on it as well and you see me fall away from the plane. It a scary thing to see trust me. Kat said after I went was the time when she was most scared.

After we got back down we watched the other guys and watching it adds to your own experience simply because you see what you actually did. I remember watching Jonno and Ru fall and thinking 'surely now they must open the chute' but they fell and fell and fell. We actually feel for 30-35seconds but for me anyway I lost any concept of time.

It was a phenomenal experience, not sure I'd ever had the free money to do it again but for sure I'd like to. The more I look back on it, the fuller the experience becomes and you realise more colourfully what actually happened to you. Interestingly the same can be said of my time here in South Africa.