My First Step in Gugulethu

As you have probably noticed, I have been pretty busy in the past couple of days to not be updating my blog daily. I am enjoying everything that I am doing but hate that I don’t have to blog daily. [Probably because I am that OCD about having one blog per day.]

On Sunday, we went to church at the JL Zwane Community Center in the township of Gugulethu. Boy, was it an experience. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see. We’ve heard that the townships are filled with poverty. However, when looking at the building you wouldn’t think that. It was pretty colorful, filled with decorative art. We were warmly welcomed by Edwin, a leader in the center. He is the main coordinator of the Homestays that my group will be participating in this week. Then we met our host families. I can’t deny that I was extremely nervous about this part of the process. How often do I [or anyone else for that matter] go into a stranger’s home and expect to call it my own for a period of time? Not often, especially in a foreign country. My roommate, Nichole, and I are staying with a man named Zukile. He is not married but has a girlfriend that will also be staying with us for part of the time that we are staying with him. He was unbelievably welcoming, greeting us with a big, warm hug upon meeting. And after he explained that he was proud to have chosen us based of off short bios, I knew that I was going to be okay. He even brought the bios to his place of employment and showed them off. As he is proud to have us, I am proud to have him. I hadn’t known him for an entire day before he was showing me off to people in the church. It is completely wonderful to have a sense of community and family here in South Africa. As you know, I was feeling very homesick last week. While I still have my bouts of “homesickness,” I know that Gugulethu will be a loving home for this upcoming week.

Church was a very new experience. I was able to sit with my Host Father and his friend Samantha. The service was mainly in Xhosa. So when it came to singing, I really had no idea what was going on when it came to comprehending the meaning of the words. Samantha was helpful in pointing out where the congregation was in terms of the singing, and after the first time, she expected me to sing too! I had no idea what I was doing. The melodies weren’t too difficult to follow along with and I couldn’t help but become immersed in the power and joy of the others singing around me. Though I was clearly different, I felt at home. The people of this congregation find comfort through a strong community bond here. In Gugulethu, there is great hardship. People die from AIDS here often, and poverty hangs like smog in the atmosphere. Children are orphaned and run their own households, and parents have to bury their children. However [and yes there is a big however], you don’t see hardship at JL Zwane. You see joy. You see compassion. You feel uplifted. You feel hope. There is hope for a better future. There is hope for a more prosperous Gugulethu. It is difficult to not be carried away by this feeling. Much of my last leadership class talked about how leaders can’t make social change alone; they need support and action from the community in which they plan to make change. At church on Sundays, people can come together to gain support from community leaders and from each other to keep their hope alive for a better future and to re-affirm that the people who are no longer with them are in peace. I think that all people need some outlet upon which to gain support through easy and difficult times. How else will we find the strength to move forward? As a person who has only been to one other church service besides this one, I was very moved by the experience and look forward to attending church again next Sunday.

On this day, we didn’t see too much of the city besides the drive in to Gugulethu. But I did see the garbage covered roads and the broken down shacks. It’s hard to believe that after the church service, I went back to my nice student housing and prepared for a trip to Canal Walk, a shopping center similar to Mall of America. Now that I think about it, I definitely bought something that I didn’t need just so my trip wasn’t a waste because I knew that I didn’t need to go and could have used a good two hour nap. Guilt. It’s a concept that I have begun to grapple with on this trip. There are two Trishas. The first Trisha knows what she is sacrificing to come on this trip and has worked very hard to have the means to enjoy herself [to a certain point]. She knows that after the year she’s had that she deserves this [in a non-conceited way]. However, the other Trisha feels completely wasteful. The 30 something Rand [just over four American dollars] she spent today could have made a great impact in someone’s life in Gugulethu. How do we find this balance? How do we accept what we rightfully earn? Do we really rightfully earn things? How can both of these “Trishas” coexist in one being? I’m not sure; let’s hope that I learn more about this in the days to come.