Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Christmas South African Style

Christmas here turned out to be pretty similar to home—lots of food, lots of family, lots and lots of food. Just the meat included seafood, prawns, stuffed chicken, pineapple chicken, beef, leg of lamb, tongue. Ya, you read that right. My host mom asked me to carry over a closed container next door to the feast table, I open it and there’s a two-foot long tongue in all its glory innocently licking the pan. I nearly dropped the pan in surprise.

I made all the deserts for the day which included pumpkin fritters, a couple of huge Christmas trifles, and my specialty peach cake. If you’re up for some pure joy in culinary form, here are a couple of the recipes for you. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Fritters
-pumpkin, boiled and mashed (a pre-made can would probably work)
-sugar
-cinnamon (nutmeg might be a nice addition)
-flour
-eggs
-baking powder


1. Attempt to cut the pumpkin. Look cute until someone(my host dad) takes the knife away and cuts it all up for you. To cook pumpkin chunks, heat up pan with butter and oil, when hot put in rinsed/water soaked pumpkin pieces and cook til soft. Mash like there’s no tomorrow.
2. When cool mix in a couple of eggs, a pinch of baking powder, cinnamon, and lots of sugar to taste. Add flour until it’s a thick batter consistency.
3. Heat a pan on medium-low with oil. Drop in a few large spoon fulls at a time and let each side cook until firm. The middle will be soft and it will turn out thicker than a pancake.
4. De-grease with paper towels carefully. When cool dip in cinnamon sugar. 5. Gluttonously eat all of them before anyone else gets the chance to steal them away.

Christmas Trifle
-sponge cake
-sherry
-several jello flavors
-custard
-whipped cream
-fruit

1. Prepare about three flavors(the more colors the better) of jell-o and set in the freezer.
2. In a large serving bowl (glass looks best) layer sponge cake until the bottom is fully covered.
3. Pour sherry on top until the cake is just about soaked on all sides. 4. Put a layer of fruit on top, canned fruit cocktail works well.
5. Take jell-o out of the freezer. It should be thick without being solid having not set yet. Pour in color layers over the fruit.
6. Layer custard then whipped cream, completely covering the pan.
7. Decorate as desired. Cherries on top are the traditional decoration.

I haven’t had measuring cups since coming here so bear with me and make your own judgments. They’re both delicious so enjoy :)

Some Long Awaited Pictures

Here's a view into what my life here looks like :)
Ready? 1, 2, 3 AWWWWW. All the kids got dressed up for the school concert. It was adorable chaos.
I made all the flower face masks and they loved showing them off.
When all of us volunteers got together for the retreat we went hiking in the Drakensberg mountains. This is where they originally wanted to film Lord of the Rings.
Look! We climbed Table Mountain! This is taken from the top after our hike with Cape Town in the background.
For Christmas the 8 year old next door, Tshialidzi, and I made hot pink, fairy dust sprinkled cookies. Things got a little messy along the way.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Dreaming of a White Christmas

It’s a scorching 34°, the sun is shining, summer is just heating up…perfect timing to take out the snowflake-covered Christmas decorations. Wait, what? Snowflakes? Snowmen? Picturesque cottages all nestled in snow and pine trees? With all this heat I doubt even a snow cone would last very long.

All I can say is I feel incredibly sorry for the poor man in a fur-lined Santa suit as I’m sweating in my shorts. He deserves and a raise and an ice cream cone.

When I came halfway around the world I guess I expected things to be a lot more different. Don’t get me wrong, South Africa is incredibly unique and vibrant in its diverse cultures, long history, breath taking landscapes, and mix of languages. But no matter how far away it is, Westernization still plays a huge role in modern culture here. It can be seen in the music on the radio (the same I blasted this summer around CA), the hair extensions that look like smooth European hair, face bleach creams, and, yes, even the visions of Christmas. Pictures of snow and pine trees for the holiday sure didn’t originate here, that’s for sure. Oh, and I still haven’t heard anything about Kwanza.

While as Westerners we may not have planned for our culture to be broadcast around the world that doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening. There are always gains to be had from learning about other cultures, but what about when it is one-sided? We rarely see African movies/music/stories/photos (other than those of hungry children and safari animals). What is lost in the process?

There’s no way change what’s happening but we can make it more even—to take the effort to listen to what’s happening around the world, hear their stories, learn from their experiences.

Maybe it’s our turn to return the favor and simply pay attention.

Time in the Wilderness

Nothing quite screams “camp” like a simple cabin put out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. Add in a group of high schoolers, a bunch of unhealthy food, Bible studies, rocks to climb, baboon warnings, and some firewood and you’re good to go.

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to help run my church’s high school Confirmation Camp out in the mountains for the weekend. Shane, a pastor-in-training from a nearby town, and I coordinated the whole endeavor and it went of surprisingly well. We even got to see wildlife! I saw plenty of it in the form of sleepy high schoolers at wake up time, but we also caught a glimpse of a huge baboon family while driving on the way out. I’m pretty sure this is the one and only time in my life I’ve had to seriously factor baboons into an event I’m planning. They can be quite the troublemakers and we weren’t sure if they’d be feisty enough to ruin our bonfire plans.

It was humbling though to be part of such an incredible experience for the kids. As city slickers few had spent time (or wanted to) so far away in nature. There were a couple of teens committed to turning their lives around after being in gangs too and to watch them experience swimming in a river for the first time was great. One made it from shore to water in ten seconds flat and began yelling “I’m a fish! I’m a fish!” as soon as he started sinking to the bottom, gleefully smiling all the while.

Beyond all that though, the time away from everyday life was a reminder of how much God speaks through the wilderness. It’s an opportunity to be quiet and simply listen that doesn’t get to happen often in our busy lives. On the final day Shane and I sent them out to the wilderness to pray after the final Bible study.

It’s funny, I spent the whole weekend surrounded by towering mountains, a gorgeous river, and the quiet of star-filled skies. But the most beautiful thing I saw all weekend was watching one of the reforming gang members sitting with his Bible on a nearby rock query and looking up to heaven.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Many Sides to the Story

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Better late than never, right? Sorry, with our volunteer retreat I haven’t had much access to internet recently. Hopefully you all enjoyed your holiday with family and lots of pie! (lots and lots of pie)

For Thanksgiving all of the volunteers and I met up in Pietermaritzburg to make our own turkey dinner and process what we’ve learned so far. But of course, it’s South Africa and not everything’s available that you’d normally expect at the table. We improvised with Brazilian turkeys and butternut squash pie but it all turned out AMAZING.

Even better was the chance to catch up with all the other volunteers. As we’re spread out all over the country each of us has the privilege of witnessing a completely unique side of South Africa. In a country so diverse in its backgrounds, languages, and cultures there’s no end to what can be learned. Between the lot of us we’re learning Afrikaans, Sesotho, Tswana, Xhosa, and Zulu—enough to start our own language school when we get back haha. And that’s not even half of the languages here!

Hearing stories from the rural areas, crèches (preschools), homeless shelters, urban cities, black communities, rich, AIDS home visit nurses, white farmers, after school programs, mosques, poor, coloured neighborhoods, Indian communities, and traditional songs has been an incredible reminder that no story has only one side. It’s too easy to generalize about people and places based on the basic information we hear. But it’s never just as easy as that. The generalizations and labels rob complexities in identity and oftentimes hide the truth beneath the surface.

There’s power in the other sides to the story. It’s a celebration of diversity, of the many ways to be express our humanity through culture. To me, it’s a testament also to how much there is to learn in the world. When we ignore other ways of life we miss out on the beauty and wisdom they have to offer.

Coming into the retreat, I was most excited about getting a chance to relax a bit and eat a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. But hearing the many other sides to the story that is South Africa from other volunteers proved far more interesting and worthwhile than any amount of pie. )

)

If you’re interested in TED Talks, there’s an especially interesting one from a Nigerian female author title something along the lines of “The Other Story.” It’s definitely worth checking out (along with all the other fantastic TED talks out there).

A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words

…which is why I write so much—to make up for the lack of pictures. As a photographer, it hurts a little to not be able to share shots of the kids I work with, my host family, and the beautiful city of Cape Town. However, internet is incredibly expensive and I pay by the amount of Megabytes I use. That’s meant no YouTube, no web surfing, no video Skype, and very little Facebook for the past four months. Tragic, really, for a Gen X but not so hard after awhile.

But there is a bright side! My program director has a link to Flickr account with pictures if you’re interested. Check out the program blog at : www.yagmsa.wordpress.com. The Flickr account link should be on the right hand side if you scroll down a bit.

Enjoy!