Year in Review

Dear Friends and Family, Greetings after yet another month! It’s a good time to review the work we’ve been doing in South Africa, both to provide an update on projects and an overview of what our work entails. After ten months, we can better describe what “peace-work” is in this place and our role within it, although as always, it continues to evolve based on needs, resources, and how the work itself unfolds.  Our primary work is with SADRA (Southern African Development and Reconstruction Agency), founded and led by Pastor Oscar Siwali. Peace Education/Peer Mediation: Besides supporting Oscar with Peace trainings for school admin and the Peer Mediation programs started before we arrived, we have helped develop a new initiative in Manenberg. Three high schools besieged with gang activity and neighbourhood instability are choosing students for us to train as peer mediators. We’ve met two of the three groups of students, and are working on the logistics for a week-long intensive training, planned for January but dependent on funding. Leadership training: Dan assisted a large pastor’s forum from Khayelitsha, the oldest township in Western Cape, to reorganize themselves and help their leadership function. Oscar did some work with them, but they were struggling to own healthy processes of interaction as a group. Dan spent months working on their visioning, constitution and leadership roles. His being an outsider helps – he’s allowed them to make it their own process in a fresh way. Now other forums are starting to ask for similar facilitation.

Dan and Kathryn with several local pastors.  Oscar is next to Kathryn.

Cross-community dialogues: Kathryn has been more involved with the relationship-building and seed planting necessary to bring different community leaders together. One area has started dialogue meetings, and Kathryn has led the last two, with Dan’s help. Oscar says, “sometimes it helps to have our white faces at the table” and we enjoy this transformative work, seeing people who would normally never talk to each other learn to respect and interact constructively together. Observing/Peace Witnesses: Our original involvement with elections now includes observing the current student protests – much in the vein of Christian Peacemaker Teams – believing that both protesters and police are better behaved when neutral outsiders are witnessing their behaviour. What in fact happens comes into question in volatile situations, and monitors are needed to help with truth-telling. Monitoring and Evaluation materials: Speaking of reporting, M&E is integral to this kind of work, and Kathryn is developing appropriate materials for SADRA to both corroborate and develop our training materials to be more effective. Are students using mediation skills at home? Are classroom conflicts less frequent? Has gang activity and membership changed since starting our program?   Networking: We attend events, such as the Restitution Conference Kathryn is presenting a paper at in November, and representing SADRA, with its unique voice as a locally-based peace initiative to a wider audience. At these forums, we learn and build relationships with those doing similar work, and these connections become potential resources for SADRA. The stakeholders’ meetings we’ve hosted in Manenberg also come under this category – many people work in this troubled spot, but they have not coordinated well, foreign grants are short-lived or have not been transparent, and local people feel unheard. Nurturing learning from each other and filling in the gaps make all our respective programs more effective. Fundraising and partnering:  This has included writing/editing proposals for funding, meeting with embassies and potential funders, and networking with other non-profits for the specific purpose of partnering. SADRA is small and young, and previous funding is not available. For example, an NGO is training classroom support volunteers in one of our schools – we can add conflict management to the training, reinforcing all our programs. It’s also time to find long-term local partners, much like you are to us. Kathryn has presented to several groups about our peace work, so new groups are learning about SADRA’s mission. The long-term stability of SADRA rests on finding regular support from several sectors. Capacity building/Institutional support: As we update our specific job descriptions, this might become a bigger part of what we do, along with fundraising. Oscar has run SADRA programming brilliantly and now needs help with social media, documenting projects, and generally getting the name of SADRA out to the wider community for support. Dan is applying his skills to things like making business cards, a brochure, website design, etc. Other partners – ANISA, Bethany Bible School, Grace Community Churches: We have had some time with these other partners – Kathryn recently attended the intensive meetings with ANISA (Anabaptist Network in South Africa, a local initiative with intentional pacifist presence) and their new coordinator. Dan is speaking at the Bible school’s commencement ceremony this weekend, and planning for peace trainings next year. Recently, we helped co-facilitate a GCC pastoral couples’ retreat.

Kathryn with some of her new friends made after a week of learning and connecting - Lydia (Burundi), Zodwa (South Africa), Kathryn, KK (Lesotho), Naomih (Uganda), Amina (Sudan), and Comfort (Nigeria) in front. May there be peace in Africa!!

For us personally, October included some good family time. During the boys’ school break, we travelled to the Cederberg Mountains and saw rock paintings which are several thousand years old. Then we visited the city of Kimberley where many of SA’s diamonds have come from over the years. We had a fascinating tour there in the mine museum before going on to meet our new colleagues in Bloemfontein. Each of us has been active in various artistic endeavours.  We are all involved in a choral Christmas Cantata (same church as the Easter concert). Besides all singing in the choir, Kathryn has been asked to conduct, and we will sing a quartet as a family. John-Clair has a good classical guitar teacher now at Stellenbosch University, and both boys performed in a school musical as well as a youth drama club show. Jacob is exploring dance school – trying contemporary dance. These times of enjoying artistic pursuits are precious and they give us a different platform to share about our work and invite others into new relationships. We are thankful we're able to get involved in these opportunities. Thank you for your continued love, prayers and support.

Kathryn presents at South Africa's first-ever Restitution Conference

Yesterday's opening of this inaugural conference on the subject of Restitution was a deeply meaningful and spiritual experience. The conference is being held in the Castle of Good Hope, which is the oldest remaining colonial structure in South Africa. All participants upon entering, were guided on a pilgrimage of reflection through the castle grounds. At eight stations, we were led to consider the people most deeply affected by colonialism and apartheid. Moments of silence were also augmented with collective litanies read together as prayers for the country's continued healing. For us, the messages celebrating diversity and prayers for reconciliation across divisions were like a balm soothing our heavy hearts.

Please click on the link below to learn more about this very important conference. You can scroll through the program and read about some of the topics being discussed. Kathryn shares today at 1:30 under the subject heading of, "Coming to Restitution."

RESTITUTION - Something for Everyone

September Update

Hello! It’s been over a month, since our last post. I knew you all were enjoying summer vacations and wouldn’t notice something not arriving from us. But as you finish your Labor Day weekend, I know that we are overdue for an update.

Us pictured here with our director, Steve Wiebe Johnson
and community leaders from the Lwandle township.

The boys are almost done with their third quarter, and have been heavily involved in netball and the school play. We moved in July into a nice big rental house, where we are happy to be able to have pets and to host visitors, like you, as well as meetings and local networking for relationship building. And we have been working hard – as we get used to things here, we take on more responsibilities at SADRA (Southern  African Development and Reconstruction Agency). Among other things, we helped host a training for election mediators, and became official election observers last month. Our mission director visited. We continue with school trainings. Dan works with the pastors’ network, and we are starting to work on some of the needed infrastructure for SADRA, like social media. I’m currently working on developing monitoring and evaluation materials for our peace education projects, such as measuring understandings of conflict and level of gang affiliation, for example, before our intervention.

Dan at meeting of Grace Community Church leaders, Colesberg

Our last update “A week in the life” outlined our preparatory work for a project in the gang-affected high schools, and the cross-community dialogues being carefully encouraged in a couple of areas. It is slow work, and as we get to know locals, more than one has told us that we are wasting our time. I spoke at a Unitarian Fellowship recently, and realized that many people have distanced themselves from reconciliation, and from how deeply healing will need to go. But I am fascinated by what I hear from other folks, and I come back to something I heard at the mediation training that seemed particularly innovative: Stereotypes are the gaps between real and perceived identities, and reconciliation is reducing that gap. Think about that for a moment. I had to, but it fits, doesn’t it? So the rest of this update is going to be more reflective and personal about the themes that we are working on as peacemakers.

Kathryn presenting at election mediators training, Cape Town

Identity work is tricky. In defining ourselves, we carry identity and our baggage with our strongest emotions, and it is very easy to become defensive when put in a mixed group talking about identity. Do blacks ever see me as more than white? You can’t tell by listening or looking at me that I was born in Africa. Then I say I’m American, but how would you know that only one of my grandparents spoke English as a first language? Then there’s my pacifist and Mennonite upbringing with its own flavours and value shaping. And then there’s my unique experience of being raised in an inner-city ghetto in California – my sister is the only other white person I know with this history. Along with the blacks, Hispanics, and Pacific Islanders of my neighbourhood, I was bused to white high schools as part of a desegregation policy in the 1980s*. Black kids wouldn’t sit next to me on the bus because I was white, and white kids wouldn’t sit next to me in class because I lived with black people. So I know what prejudice and fear look like; but from a young age, I could also recognize the common humanity just below the surface.

Dan with teachers in workshop for
conflict management and team-building,
Khayelitsha, Cape Town 

My younger sister and I were the only two white kids in our elementary school of over 700 students. It was an intense place of learning about our civil rights heroes, with special assemblies for Malcolm X, as well as Martin Luther King Jr. One skit we did every year was to reenact the Rosa Parks story; the woman exhausted after a long day who refused to take her place standing in the black section of the bus. It’s a beautiful story of conscientious objection that led to change, and I loved the story, especially because there was a heroine. I suppose I understood that I was never going to be given the part of Rosa when our classes performed this skit for the school, but I didn’t know why I always had to play the bus driver. I asked the teacher this question – while honoured to have one of the few speaking parts, I didn’t like to always be the villain in the story; could I play a different part? This made her laugh, but she couldn’t even answer me – I just needed to be the bus driver. It was not until many years later I put it all together. As the only white child among several hundred students in the upper grades, that was my role. That community, still raw from the pain of the civil rights movement just twenty years before, could not cast me as a different character. There were parents who were vocal in their disapproval of a white girl even being at their school, and my teacher both stuck up for my right to be there, and made me the bus driver.

SADRA has initiated a local cross-community dialogue right where Oscar (our Director) lives – leaders of white and black bordering neighbourhoods sat down together for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and started to get to know each other. We have been using John Paul Lederach’s Little Book of Conflict Resolution, where he talks about how to build new relationships and break old patterns of relating. He underscores the importance of identity, saying “In my experience, issues of identity are at the root of most conflicts.” How we relate to others has everything to do with how we define ourselves. If after defining ourselves we decide that it is not worth investing in a relationship with those who are different from us (also a defined identity), then discussions about reconciliation and restitution become academic. As SADRA, we are trying to integrate identity work into our peace trainings, and sometimes we feel like pioneers on uncharted ground. 

Kathryn with community activists, Manenberg, Cape Town

In July, our family attended the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, where we saw an amazing diversity of talent and thought-provoking presentations. One such was the panel “Theatre as a tool for activism and healing,” with experts from South Africa and all over the world. They concurred that the expectation of theatre to bring cross-cultural healing has both marred Art as genuine expression for its own sake, and skewed the agendas of theatre organisations that need funding. Money is available for the Romeo & Juliet stories of cross-boundary love, but not enough is being done within communities struggling with identity issues. “Social cohesion” has become a catch phrase in development and non-governmental work, and one South African panelist gave this example: the government has just launched an anti-racism song – they throw tons of money at something like this and expect social change. Theatre can be a very effective component for healing, but while trying to prove itself in a cause-and-effect scenario with a happy ending, it can lose the complicated truths and contradictions that arise with our need to both mourn and celebrate. Back to my elementary school skit - who should play the bus driver in the Rosa Parks skit? Should it rotate to be fair? Does fairness matter? Do we get so paralyzed by these questions or political correctness that we fail to immerse ourselves in the good stories?

The politics of identity, Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg

If reconciliation is working to close the gap caused by stereotypes, now is the time to work at that both here in South Africa, where twenty years have passed since their painful civil rights struggle, and in the US as you approach your national elections. Anyone working to expose the gaps between perceived and real identities, who can stay patient and listening instead of defensive, and can live with the mystery of contradiction, is actively engaged in peace-making. Join us in this exciting work, and let us know how it’s going!

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Excerpts from Jonathan D. Jansen’s Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past, Stanford University Press, 2009.

Preparing to work in South Africa, I’ve read a fascinating book written by Jonathan Jansen, the first black South African dean of the University of Pretoria, the center of traditional Afrikaans institutions. This is a dense and academic book on the different knowledges that we carry around with us – such as internal, historic, and embedded.  As he says, “The problem with embedded knowledge is that it is not there; it is the claims, silences, and assumptions about knowledge concealed in the belief and value systems of those who teach and learn. Changing curriculum without changing the curriculum makers is especially difficult under conditions of a sudden and radical social transformation.”  

"For the ordinary white South African, and Afrikaners in particular, the transition remains a traumatic experience. For a psychotherapist’s perspective: ‘South Africa is an intensely anxious society, living with many unresolved fears and collective fantasies, much repressed anger, guilt, and shame. Many black-white relationships are unstable and ambivalent. The necessary collective healing will have to go far beyond the superficial political processes of reconciliation, reparation, and truth-seeking about the past – urgent though those are.’ To understand why this is so, it is important to recognize “the reserves of social knowledge” on which the memories and identity of the Afrikaner are built.” (pg 45)

In the South African experience the victims and the perpetrators had to live together and together make sense of the experiences of defeat and victory.  (pg 57)

"The problem with embedded knowledge is that it is not there; it is not easily read off the outer coating of a public curriculum. It is the claims, silences, and assumptions about knowledge concealed in the belief and value systems of those who teach and learn; concealed behind the classroom door, they influence and direct the substance of what counts as the actual knowledge transactions among participants in the learning process….Changing curriculum without changing the curriculum makers is especially difficult under conditions of a sudden and radical social transformation…What the teachers of the new university curriculum were struggling with was knowledge in the blood." (pg 179)

Notes how we have just exchanged the sensitive word “race” for “culture,” from how blacks are to how they behave.  Race-essential understandings, tensions between deep change and mandated change, and how this is reflected in new curriculum that actually affirms racist narrative are a part of the problem: “Ubuntu’s problem [the new curriculum at UP] is not that it peddles this offensive knowledge on a university campus; the dilemma of this curriculum is that it makes explicit what is often concealed in white understandings of the Other and what is less evident in the knowledge, values, and beliefs that underpin the supposedly neutral scientific knowledge presented across the institutional disciplines.” (pg 194)

"The problem with South Africa before and after Apartheid is that we insist on collapsing race and economics into the same face; whites are rich and privileged, blacks are poor and under-served. This may be true of blunt averages as a national measure of social status, but it conceals the thousands and thousands of poor whites and the struggling classes among them who barely make it. Apartheid was as much a racial system of oppression as it was a capitalist system of exploitation; among the victors, the nationalists want us to believe only the former, and the Marxists only the latter. But it was both…" (pg 215)

Change: Observations from historical inquiry (post WWII Germany):

•        “Perpetrators and beneficiaries of evil systems do not change even in response to direct confrontation with horrific knowledge.
•        The reversal of attitudes is unlikely to come from the participating generation – that is, those directly involved in atrocities whether as known perpetrators or as complicity bystanders. However, not only the passage of time allowed a critical consciousness to emerge; there were also changes in the surrounding environment [compelling writings, etc.]
•        The capacity for the perpetrators to change arose after the political elites recognized more than one pain and ‘the link between the suffering of victims and perpetrators’ was established…not recognition simply of dual sufferings but of their connection as ‘causally related and inextricably intertwined,’ without the danger of sliding onto the quicksand of moral relativism.
•        Crucial role of educational knowledge in this process of reorientation…for the understandable impulse to launch ‘teacher training’ in a new history in post-conflict societies fails to take account first of the cognitive constraints and second of the emotional loyalty to a fallen regime of truth.
•        How adults change recognizes the impossibility of bringing everyone into common knowledge…and resting with the knowledge that insisting on the one great unifying story in not a prerequisite for nation building even though it might be the pipe-dream of the nationalist impulse.” Excerpted from pgs 251-254

Acknowledgment of brokenness   "The origins of brokenness come from the spiritual world of evangelical faith. It is the construct of brokenness, the idea that in our human state we are prone to failure an incompletion, and that as imperfect humans we constantly seek a higher order of living. Brokenness in the realization of imperfection, the spiritual state of recognizing one’s humanness before the forgiving and loving power of God. But brokenness is more; it is the profound outward acknowledgment of inward struggle done in such as a way as to invite communion with other people and with the divine.  Brokenness compels dialogue." (pg 269-270)

The Necessity of Establishing Risk-Accommodating Environments                           

"White students do not rush into pedagogic spaces confessing guilt or acknowledging racism; nor do white parents suddenly own up to years of privilege at the expense of black citizens. Even when such compulsion is felt, it is extremely difficult for human beings to unburden themselves in private or public spaces… When I do such workshops on risk accommodation within the classroom, invariably a teacher becomes adamant: there can be no reconciliation without truth. People need to acknowledge their racism and their privilege as a very first step, or there’s nothing to talk about. This is a particularly Western way of thinking: “fess up,” as if this were an involuntary reflex to some central command. The explosion of talk shows in American public culture in which the most personal and bizarre behavior is displayed without restraint to live audiences strikes many in the Third World as disgusting. This is not the real world. Guilt and shame are more common responses to burdensome knowledge than the apparent reveling in extreme and obnoxious behavior.  It is essential that the teacher create the atmosphere, and structure the teaching-learning episodes so as to reduce the risk of speaking openly about direct and indirect knowledge. Students must be able to speak without feeling they will be judged or despised for what they say. To repeat, this creation of a risk-accommodating environment does not mean that “anything goes” and that a student can spout offensive words about another group without consequences. Long before the pedagogic encounter, the atmosphere should have been set, the terms of engagement explained, the rules of dialogue shared. Such difficult dialogues can take place only if trust in the teacher-leader is already ensured through demonstration of an example of conciliation within and outside the classroom. The notion the ‘the lesson’ starts in the classroom is misguided." (pg 275-276)

A Week in the Life of a Peacemaker - June Update

A week in the life…Hello friends and family!  Remember how we didn’t really have any specific answers to your questions about what we would be doing?  We said it had to fit the circumstances on the ground, and we tried our best to give ideas?  Well, we finally have some answers, and as last week ended, I realized I could just describe our work week!  Questions welcome as always.

SADRA currently has five pillars that it simultaneously works on – peace education in schools, community conflicts & xenophobia, church leadership, women in peacebuilding, and election monitoring/crisis management.  These can and do all flow together, and this is a good week to see how they weave together…

Day 1

As usual, we start the week with a staff meeting – the three of us pray together, review the last week’s program and to-do lists, and then set up the coming week’s work.  We also catch up on some administrative work. This is going to be an interesting week!

Day 2
Manenberg High Schools:  Oscar, Dan and I visit the principals of the three schools we have targeted as most needing intervention for gang violence in the Manenberg township area, which is about half an hour towards Cape Town.  Oscar successfully trained administration at one school during a crisis period two years ago, and student violence was greatly reduced.  We want to begin in these two other high schools, and met last month with school deputies and one principal.  Today we will check in with all of them, and also have an appointment with the remaining principal, as his buy in is crucial.

However, gang violence has become much more complicated under the new democracy, and our advisors have warned us that we will need a multi-pronged approach that also addresses gang violence in families and the community, and that other NGOs have come into the area and failed.  Sure enough, this third principal, tells us frankly about the US-based Ceasefire Program that evaporated without even a final report before finishing their program.  We will need to tread wisely in these schools, but with our interest in gangs and violence reduction, we all feel commitment to follow this through.

IEC (Independent Electoral Commission of SA) meeting: Our afternoon meeting is with a SADRA trainer and advisor Dan and I meet for the first time. We run through our plans for Manenberg with him, as he grew up in that area, and glean his ideas.  He has a history of working with human rights and currently works with the police; integrating police into our plans will be important.  But today’s meeting is primarily to talk about the IEC, where he is an election monitor with Oscar.  He is helping SADRA plan a 2-3 day training (and apply for funding at the EU) focused on crisis management for our region’s 27 election monitors in preparation for the August elections.  These monitors are community leaders, including religious leaders, who become equipped to respond as election tension or violence occurs.

Day 3

Xenophobia and community dialogues: This is a short work day for us, as the boys are taking exams and both done mid-morning.  So we decide that’s a good day to drive all the way into Cape Town (about an hour one way) to visit the French Consulate and the Alliance Française.  These two contacts were made during our meetings with the French Embassy last month in Jo’burg, and Dan and I are able to have a nice long meeting with the AF director.  This is a relationship-building meeting, and we describe SADRA, and he describes the AF’s work in xenophobia and LGBTI rights, upcoming events and how SADRA might intersect. The AF has started an informal community dialogue series, and he invites SADRA to facilitate an evening, something we talked about wanting to do. 

Day 4

Western Cape Department of Education:  Another day of driving – we visit the DoE (north of Cape Town) to meet with the Safe Schools Co-ordinator for the district that includes Manenberg.  She needs to understand our interest there, and we need to know what government efforts are in the area as well as the issues she sees.  She talks about how bullying is a new problem, and how they are piloting an after-school program in two schools (not in Manenberg). Government funding shrinks every year, but as someone that has been trained by Oscar, she knows his programs and is keen to support us in Manenberg however she can.  The meeting ends with her inviting us to help with a mini-Truth and Reconciliation Commission she is trying to get funded to deal with community wounds in the nearby coloured community of Elsie’s River.  Of course, Oscar says yes.

Electoral Commission Launch:  The rest of the day is spent at the official launch of the IEC Municipal Elections – press covers all the political parties that have come to sign the Code of Conduct, including the important clause that election results will be accepted by all parties.  The Western Cape includes 402 wards, 1586 districts, and over three million voters.  Want to understand what can be contentious in an election?  Think about the hanging chad issue of 2000, and multiply that on every level, with added political complexity.  Voter registration has been so hotly contested there have already been riots, tires burned, etc.  At the following reception, we meet more of Oscar’s co-monitors.

Day 5

Pastor’s training follow-up:  We divide up today – Oscar is doing some independent mediation work. Dan does a follow-up training with a fellowship of pastors Oscar has been working with.  The initial two day gathering last month was to give them space to plan and figure out how they are going to work together.  Internal conflict and confusion has crippled the organisation, and members have been dropping. As an outsider, Dan has been able to guide them through a process of discernment, and today is meeting with several of the leaders in follow-up.  Their constitution and leadership roles have been hazy at best, and the founder/president needs to be brought on board of needed changes and transparency.

Women’s meetings:  Meanwhile, I drive to the local government office to try and set-up meetings with the women leaders.  I met two of them earlier, and after getting some good ideas on women’s rights at the training in Jo’burg last month, I feel ready to talk about women’s issues in Strand and our township, Lwandle.  Both women are out sick, but I get their contact information to try later in the week.  In an ironic twist, I then get sick and still have not had those meetings.  Any actual trainings will need to wait until after the election, but if I can get in some informal discussions soon, that will help direct our work.  I do meet with the local councillor, however, and hear about how some contenders for office are being physically threatened, and there is some real fear about the election.

Xenophobia: That evening, I drive to Cape Town for one of those discussions hosted by the AF – they are showing a new documentary on xenophobia made by the Scalabrini Center for Refugees. Besides being a topic we work in, I also want to scope out who comes to these events and their format.  I have another aim, too; I invite two young men to join me whom I met at the Peacebuilding Institute last month. One of them is getting a degree in Peace Studies, and has requested we consider how he might contribute to SADRA.  He is also here from Zimbabwe, so this is the perfect event to see him in action.

At home, I re-write our Manenberg plans in light of things we have recently reflected on, to be sent out to the school principals with Oscar’s approval.  I also draft a concept paper on a new pillar that we have been talking about – Food Security.  I can’t let the cat out of the bag just yet, but there are several factors coming together (funding possibilities Oscar and I learned about in Embassy visits, situations we viewed with rural pastors on our drive in March, rising food prices and the increased need for sustainable agriculture) that are seeming more and more relevant.

Day 6
Just kidding… Not going to go on.  On weekends we do cultural things like go to weddings, concerts, museums, and different churches, etc.  Sorry this is so long – but it feels like you need the details to keep up with all this!  I hope a window into one of our weeks helps you understand how we are working with Oscar, and what is ahead for us. Now the boys are on winter break, so it’s harder to both get in full days like this, but it allows me to write to you. On the home front, we recently did a search for a rental home, as our current lease is up next month and we are ready for a more permanent place that accepts pets, so we will be moving soon.  We found a lovely, partially furnished house on a hill with a view, and a guest suite that you will hear more about next month.


All our love, and thanks for reading,

Kathryn and family

May Update

Hello Everyone,

It's been a while since we've sent out anything, and we're trying something new this time. That is, Dan writing the update. Novel concept, but let's hope it ends there.

About us... The boys have settled into their routines quite nicely now. Academics are not overwhelming and I think they're doing well. After school activities include JC being in a play written by another student, and both boys participating in Netball. That's quite interesting, because traditionally it's more of a girl's sport here, and most boys won't do it for that reason. But, since we don't know the sport, our boys don’t have any of that baggage, and have become quite popular for their trendsetting, even to the point of other boys joining too. Tomorrow, they have their first real match. Jacob tried out an Irish dance class during April, but made the decision that he really doesn't want to continue. Sad for us, but we'll do our best to support him. On the flip-side, he got to play baritone/euphonium in a brass band for Mother's Day! This was at the Rustof Methodist Church, which happens to be walking distance from our house! It was something we discovered after attending a Methodist church carnival-style fundraiser a couple weeks ago. 

They accompanied the hymns and it was magnificent! It was so great to see him up there amongst the adults playing away. A really nice Mother's Day gift for his mama, although that might not continue, either. JC is meeting with a guitar instructor to see whether she is capable of teaching him anything. We'll see if that goes anywhere. And finally, both boys were invited last week to attend a youth group that includes some kids they know from school. They both really enjoyed it, and it seems like they may have found the group with whom they want to continue being involved. That's a joy for us and we think it seems like a very positive place for them to engage. So, we continue to find avenues of involvement for the boys and feel like the effort is paying off. Anything that's helps get us out of this small apartment helps.

Update on us and our work... We’ve continued in Peace Education, but we'll talk more about that next month. Yesterday, Kathryn headed off to Johannesburg with Oscar. They are visiting embassies in Pretoria on Thursday and Friday for the purpose of networking about SADRA and finding opportunities for partnership. Oscar comes back on Sunday, but Kathryn stays to participate in one week of the Mennonite Central Committee created program, Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API). Dan will go up the following week. This is a fantastic initiative which we've been aware of for many years. It used to be held in other locations, but has in recent years been held in SA. It brings together people from many nations who are working in their own ways to build peace in their countries and communities. The whole program is four weeks long, offering four one-week modules. The modules are being led by experienced Africans from multiple countries who have been doing this work for many years. We are really looking forward to this time of connecting with like-minded colleagues and expanding our personal contacts, while bolstering our peacemaking skills. To learn more about API, visit this web page.

http://www.staugustine.ac.za/short-course/applied-ethics-peace-studies/africa-peacebuilding-institute-16th-edition

This week, Dan is leading a workshop for members of the Great Commission. This is a group of pastors of un-affiliated evangelical churches to which Oscar has been a part of for a number of years. He has encouraged them for a long time, and they finally organized it, to hold this workshop to address internal structural conflicts and issues. They managed, however, to schedule it when Oscar is not available. Therefore, I get to lead it. The advantage here, that Oscar has pointed out, is that I'll be able to facilitate without any baggage, being an outsider with no agenda or background knowledge.  I find it a little intimidating and perhaps ironic that I will leading this group of about 40 pastors in their organizational structuring and yearly planning, but when the door opens, and you get pushed through it, then I guess there's no turning back.

About our trip in March - The boys had a school break, and we literally used the entire two+ weeks for an extended road trip. On March 18 we picked the boys up at school, car already fully packed, and took off north to a small town serving mainly as a stopover station, Beaufort West. Stayed there overnight in a little guest house which had two friendly cats, and a parrot aviary in the backyard with birds from all over the world. Leaving the next day, we continued to the town of Cradock to meet Pastor Lawrence Coetzee who leads the small congregation there of the Grace Community Church, one of the Mission Network's long-time partners here in SA. Had a really nice time getting to know him and his family. Dan had the privilege of being invited to deliver a message for the church worship Sunday morning. We won't see these folks very often, but it was great to establish a personal connection.

Moving on after two nights, we continued to another of Mission Network's partners, Bethany Bible School, in Mthatha. Here we were coming to meet Pastor Reuben Mgodeli

 and learn more about his work coordinating the Bible school. He had made some accommodation arrangements for us with his close friend, the Bishop Sithole, who leads a Zionist church... and here's where the most interesting part of the trip began. Being Holy Week, the Zionists were in full praise and worship mode. Part of their beliefs includes honoring ancestors through singing, dancing, incense burning, offerings, and some spiritual cleansing rites. We inadvertently became their honored guests and were centrally included in all these things. Imagine 50 or so people dressed in a variety of colorful robes, squeezed into a round hut, singing and drumming and dancing in circles around a live sheep and chickens in the center. There's more to all this, like Dan & Kathryn being ceremonially re-married the next day, but suffice it to say that we were exposed to some unexpected, in-depth cultural learning and really generous hospitality. An experience we won't soon forget.

Next, we stayed with Andrew and Karen Suderman and their two children Samantha and James in Pietermaritzberg. They are a Canadian family sent via Canada Witness, and have been in SA about 7 years. They have a guest room that all four of us managed to fit into for the next six days. We also met friends of theirs who relate to the Anabaptist Network in SA, and celebrated Easter with them. A couple highlights were playing board games with Andrew, like Settlers of Catan and a secret agent game. We all went to the beach in Durban one day as an outing. We loved our time with them, but it may be one of the last, as Andrew had recently accepted an offer from Eastern Mennonite U to come teach Theology. They will be leaving here the end of August. It's a great opportunity, and I think very good fit for them, but we're still a sad to see them go, as we'd been looking forward to being country colleagues for the coming years. But there will be another family moving here from Canada later this year, so we're excited about getting to know them eventually.

The next part of our journey was more family-oriented, as we actually went to visit Kathryn's cousin Melisa Borror and her family who live in Lesotho, where her husband Kevin is program manager for MAF. They have three kids, of more similar age to our boys, so there was more kid engagement at this stop. We had work reasons for visiting Lesotho as well. In 2014, Oscar did some mediation training with church leaders in Lesotho, so our going there provided an opportunity to reconnect for possible follow-up work. The big event here was Kathryn getting to go to the High Tea hosted by the Queen of Lesotho. That just worked out via a Bible study she attended that Melisa leads, and someone had a ticket available. So she got to hobnob with African royalty. More fun for the rest of us, was our big day out with them to the mountains where we went pony trekking. Such a beautiful setting, and really thrilling, albeit tenderizing, way of seeing it! It was great to establish a connection with these relatives whom we didn't really know before.

Finally, we headed home, with one more stopover. It just happened to work out that we could attempt to meet leaders from another of the Grace Community Churches, this time in Colesberg. We had arranged our own guest house accommodation there, but managed to connect with Pastor BJ Gaiya to share a meal that evening, with his wife and another couple from the church. The next morning he took us around to see the site where they plan to build a church and his garage where they currently worship. Again, folks we won't see regularly, but really wonderful to make face-to-face connections for the future.

We arrived home, safe and well, after over 3500 km on the road, on the night of April 3 pulling in around 7 pm. The boys went back to school the next morning. We could barely have made the trip any longer. We are grateful for our safety and health on the road and greatly enjoyed getting a grand sense of the scenery and history of various parts of our new home country. (See Kathryn’s review of one of our travel books – on the blog – if you haven’t seen it already!)

For those who pray, we invite your prayers for our safety in travel this month, for our work plans in their development, implementation and effectiveness, and for the boys' continued relationships and activities. Thank you for the constant support in thoughts and prayers. We do feel and cherish those. Thank you for even sending gifts! What fun! We think of you, friends, often and love hearing from you. Peace and joy in your journeys.

With love, Dan

Review of "South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland", Lonely Planet Series

Trying to understand South African history is like looking through a kaleidoscope.  Every author, every museum, every movie has an angle or a lens that they tell a story through.  This is true all over the world, but I've been surprised that I can't find even a museum presentation that attempts to give me a big picture.  Perhaps this is because the country is in a transition – they are re-imagining history and story-telling, for good reason, and so you get shards to put together like a Gaudi with his mosaic art.  

The National SA Museum, for example, has a big sign at the front of their main exhibit about how they had to take down most of the exhibit when apartheid was abolished because the “Africa bushman” dioramas are racist.  The Voortrekker Museum in Pietermaritzburg, which I was counting on to piece together the fragments I'd gathered from Boer War memorials about the Afrikaner story in the middle part of the country, had beautiful detail about oxcarts and how the French crown prince died here in battle and the Hindi influences on community building, but it felt obvious that “larger picture” exhibits had been pulled and not replaced or summarized.  

There are great exhibits put together at the Jewish Museum, the Slave Lodge, the District Six museum on Coloured (read Indo-Asian) displacement, our own Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, and several others we've seen in the last couple weeks.  But you have to connect the dots yourself – I carry the timelines around in my head – for example, Judiasm wasn't allowed by the Dutch, thus the first synagogues came with the British; the British were not very interested in the area until the end of the 18^th century – hmnn, were they preoccupied with another colony till then?  I feel like a detective sometimes, in a very well-researched area.  Do those living here know the other stories?  Realize how it affects their stories?  What stories do we not know in our own American history?  I was shocked to learn about the Japanese internment camps in the US during WWII, long after I received a political science degree.  

Anyway, this is supposed to be a book review, so I'll get off my preaching stool and tell you about this peculiar book choice: 

South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland, Lonely Planet Series, by Jon Murray, Jeff Williams, Richard Everist,  3^rd ed, 1998. 

I am hardly an expert on travel guides, and I don't mean to say that Lonely Planet is the best series – but allow me to point this book (or other editions of it) out to you.  I read a lot about where I travel, and I've read what I can get my hands on about South Africa, and this book caught my attention, in that it answered questions that I've asked, but couldn't find answers to.  It also gives history in reasonable bits throughout the book, by town and district. (FYI - This book did beat out the other two guidebooks in our car, Footprints and DK Eyewitness Travel – my poor family surely got tired of my daily narrations of the countryside...)

Q:  Why was the British relationship with the Afrikaners (read: Boers) so confusing?  

A:  Because the Brits were confused!   

“However, because of changing policies their [British] armies and officials often had no idea of whether they should be restraining Boers, protecting blacks, enforcing British treaties, revenging Boer losses or carving out new British colonies. Nobody knew what orders would arrive on the next mail boat from England.”  Pg 23

(If this snippet intrigues you, there is a lot more in interesting anecdotes you can read about.)

I also had heard of The Difaqane, seen panels that talk about this mass migration and conflict between South African tribes, and wondered at how that ties into the larger picture.  This book explains most clearly how it was “a time of immense upheaval” as Zulu warriors successfully conquered neighbouring tribes including total war and forced migrations for survivors.  This book is the first place I saw that connects this African-on-African violence to the Great Trek of the Afrikaner farmers leaving the now British-run Cape. 

Q:  How can black Africans claim their lands were stolen while the white Afrikaners simultaneously swear the lands were empty?

A: “The Boers, whose Great Trek coincided with the difaqane, mistakenly believed that what they found – deserted pasture lands, disorganised bands of refugees and tales of brutality – was the normal state of affairs. The Afrikaner myths, now dying hard, that the Great Trek was into unoccupied territory or that the blacks and the Boers both arrived at much the same time, stem from this. The difaqane also added emphasis to their belief that European occupation meant the coming of civilisation to a savage land.” Pg 20

Sure, I had guessed at something like that answer already, but without the logic, you still wonder in the back of your mind.  

You see other big picture things, too, like how the British predictably make some conquest decisions to “keep it from the French,” and that they liked to solve territorial problems between others by simply annexing the disputed area.  And there is still a lot more to understand.  

Road Trip

Dear friends and family,

We leave Friday for an 18 day road trip to visit partners around the country, and we wanted to get a note out to you before we leave. The boys end their term and are released early Friday morning for a two week break. We're taking this chance to drive north (of course, I know) to visit Grace Community Church in Cradock this weekend—they have a pastors' seminar on Saturday where we can meet everyone, and then we'll be at one of the churches Sunday and visit the local community. Then we're on to Mthatha to have a day or two with the head of Bethany Bible College. Both of these communities had MMN workers in the past, and we are all interested in continuing the relationship, listening to their current situation and learning how we might be able to help with future capacity building.

We then keep heading north to Pietermaritzburg to stay with the other MMN family in South Africa, the Sudermans, whom we stayed with in August. We will also meet the two new Mennonite Central Committee couples that have moved there (that reminds me to bring our hymnal for some yummy four-part singing) and learn about what the Mennonites are organizing and getting involved in—one couple fills the new Peace Coordinator position. It should be nice to spend some time with these folks, find some support for our work with Oscar, have time in the Peace library, and re-acquaint ourselves with the Anabaptist network based there. We'll stay through Easter, and then go around the mountain to the neighboring country of Lesotho to visit my cousin! She and her family live in the capital Maseru; her husband is a pilot with MAF and I haven't seen her in years. Both the Suderman and Derksen-Borror families with whom we're staying have kids, albeit younger. That will be a nice energy to be around, and more importantly I think we will all enjoy some contact with North Americans for a change. And this last place has Great Dane puppies to play with—how we have missed our pets…

So the last couple weeks has seen us continuing to get established (something might actually make it into our bank account yet!) and learning and meeting people. It is also the start of the grants and funding season, and we have started helping Oscar with a stack of calls for proposals. Grant writing is much more sophisticated here than Chad or Uganda, and we are doing our best to keep up. I've decided that writing for grants is a pernicious mix of heady, theoretical university paper-writing and the self-promoting canned stuff of job applications. And maybe I'm just ready for a change of scenery—but Oscar has let us know that he is ready for us to be shouldering tasks once we are returned in April.

The boys have not found school too challenging yet to have been stressed with exams (we'll see how the term results are) and they are curious what this road trip will be like. We're happy to show them more of this country, as this little corner is just that. Jacob was inspired by seeing online videos of his Irish dance school doing their annual St. Pat's presentations, and so he volunteered to do a short demonstration at the all-school assembly on Friday. We're pleased to see him put on his dance shoes again after these three months, but he also went to bed sad after practicing, so hard times do still come as well as go.

The big accomplishment this week is that we are completely off our US phone plan—we all have South African phone numbers now. We don't expect you to call us, but we can connect with you for free using What's App if you have a cell phone. Or let us know if you have a different favorite way of connecting. Facebook Messenger has worked for video calling, and we have Skype, too.

I know some of you have mailed things—it takes a while for things to reach us, and it's been suggested that we have the tracking number of packages to see if they get stuck somewhere. Time to do our last errands for the trip, get the proposal off, clean out the fridge, and say goodbye to our sunny beach—it will be fall by the time we get back.

Our love to you, and thanks for your prayers for travel mercies: that's for the car, for our cultural learning and connections, for happy spirits in the closed confines of the car, health and rest on the way. And we love to hear your news! E-mail what is going on with you—we love to read!

Kathryn, for Dan and the boys, too

Review of “Invictus” movie (PG13 - 2009):

Want a beautiful picture of reconciliation, based on a true story?  Want to understand Mandela’s unique vision for transformation?   Want a great sport movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon?  This is it!

First Month in South Africa

It’s been a long, lovely month of finding our feet in our new place. Finally having a phone line and internet at home is a big relief, and we have learned how to get around, do our shopping, and get Oscar to slow down just a little bit. We were surprisingly tired, although reflecting on how pressed we were in our last couple months in the States, you probably anticipated our need to “just be” a little bit.  I’ve had neck tension and inflammation, and rest and regular visits to an osteopath has managed it, as well as trying some acupuncture again.  John-Clair missed a day of school last week for a stomach bug going around school, Jacob had a bad jelly-fish sting, and Dan twisted his foot, and now we’ve all taken short turns with the flu, so we’ve all had some reasons to take it easy. But we’ve been settling into our new reality—how far away you all are, the noise of the ocean and the strangeness of the languages around us, the immense complexity of the context of South Africa, the uniqueness of this place.  As Jacob reflected the other day on our way to school, driving past a neighboring township, “It’s kind of weird to live in Africa but in a place where they are used to seeing white people.” I asked if that felt like a good or bad thing, and his response summed it up for all of us: “Both.” Understanding South Africa As some of you have seen from our Facebook pictures, Oscar is taking us around to meet and talk with local government leaders, school staff, and pastor’s forums. He’s enjoying orienting us – directing us to cultural learning such as Robben Island and local museums. Oscar has also given us several good books to read as part of our orientation to our work, including A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652-2002 by Sampie Terreblanche. (We will put reviews of all the good resources we come across on our blog, which will be made public soon.)  I get bogged down in economic discussions, of which we hear many, with talk about the devalued rand and “the black economy vs the white economy.”  Terreblanche, among many others, says that while democratic rights are much improved, systemic change has not happened, government promises are unkept, etc. With a particularly approachable government councilor, I asked the question I’ve heard bantered back and forth for a long time, “Are people really better off now – is your average black South African really better off than he was twenty years ago?” “Oh yes,” he smiled at me, “we are living freely now. We can live with our families, we are united and can go where we want and everything is better.” I was embarrassed by my question, and still not understanding; then we visited the Labor Museum.

Entrance to the museum

Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum “The apartheid dream required the geographical separation of the races” says one plaque. But whites needed the labor of non-whites – what to do? This museum is full of documentation and pictures of the tragic situation that developed: workers that lived in their designated home territories sometimes had to travel as much as 8 hours a day to get to a job, leaving family at 3am to arrive home at 11pm at night, in some instances. Many others opted to move to a hostel, or “bedhold,” and leave their families for 11 months out of the year. Families were not allowed in hostels, and in fact, if you were caught in the hostel neighborhood without a pass, you paid a fine or served prison time. Hostels were strictly guarded with one road in, much like the forced labor camps they developed from. In Strand today, where Lwandle is located, we drive circuitous routes on the limited thru streets to get around. There is much more we learned about – women that smuggled themselves into the hostels to be with their husbands to start families, the lack of food and sanitation, and always, at the end of the day, the constant heritage of this unjust system of exploitation and brokenness. Two hostels were built in the larger Cape Town area. Lwandle hostel was built in 1960 to house 500 men – by 1990, two thousand men, women and children were squeezed into these curtained rooms with bunkbeds. Sometimes sixteen lived in the space for four men the size of a prison cell, the women and children hiding in the cupboard when the guard came around. One woman explained why she took such a risk: I came here to have children because my husband did not have enough time to be at home. He would take leave for only four weeks. We were not able to sit. We did not know each other because we married at a young age. We wanted to know each other very well. In fact, he wanted me to be close to him.

You can see how blocks are laid out, with very little vegetation, and the remaining frames on the roofs for solar water heaters

Inside the block, looking at the cabinets the women had to hide in

How 16 people fit into a room with two bunk beds

Then, as our guide was explaining that by 1991 there was a push to start a school for the children, I slowly begin to get it. I read on – 500 children living in Lwandle, and the government refusing to provide a school because they cannot acknowledge that those children are there. I realize that as we have toured the schools for mainly black and colored neighborhoods, signs over the doorways read things like “established in 2006.” My blood runs cold as I realize there were no schools for black South Africans in this entire area until recently, and in fact, no houses, or families living together, or churches, or shops, or beaches they could go to…

Beach sign

Nathan and Kathryn listening to our guide

I have imagined the end of apartheid as like the end of segregation in the US – and obviously, there are similarities. But I’m finding that much is different, yet even in its different-ness it has a lot to say to the US story. I will be sharing that with you, as much as you want to read of it, and we love to hear back from you your own thoughts on our common stories of injustice, racism and systemic brokenness. To finish the Lwandle story – with the end of apartheid, people didn’t need passes to be wherever they wanted and discrimination laws ended.  Government built schools for the children, families were allowed to live together, and to buy homes in the area (although speculation by whites and lack of resources for blacks made this, what should have been an equalizer, like starting the race several laps behind - Oscar’s words.) Families continued to live in the hostels, but openly, and now they could spread out, live outside of it, open small businesses; and so the various townships developed in the area – low-income housing, with informal housing (read: shacks) that more recent immigrants have put up alongside.  And back to 1991 – the museum noted that the need for a school did not go unheard – a Dutch Reformed Church let their buildings be used for an informal school, supported by the Inner Church Group of Somerset West, the white neighboring suburb. So while I had to leave the museum now even more embarrassed by all that I had seen and heard, I could also be hopeful.  Working with Oscar, who has given himself to the work of holistic transformation, gives us even more hope for a changed future.

Small businesses like these are now allowed in the township