the roads became a threadbare carpet...

The late summer rains are still coming with a dogged persistence. Despite this effort, the grass continues to turn a pale gold and leaves drop off trees in lazy intervals scattering the muddy roads like a threadbare carpet. The rains create rivulets of water that cut shallow canyons in the roads and create an ever-shifting landscape. Monday, the inconstant weather of the hotter months shouted at us once more and clouds ‘threw down their spears ’ in an out-of-season thundershower, but for the greater part, I believe the softer, and more constant rains have replaced the violence of the summer thunderheads that build up like dark towers against the late afternoon sky. There is a chill in the morning and evening air and ‘is not night and more night coming on all the time ’ as the days grow continually short.

It has been eight school days since the holiday. Already it seems like some time ago that I walked the cool, flat sands of the Strand along False Bay just around the west side of the Cape Peninsula; my feet numb in the frigid waters of the southern Atlantic as the constant blast of air swept across the waters and mixed with Delani’s remonstrance to the temperature of the water on her feet. Her idea of walking along the ocean being a hundred yards further in shore where things are a little less…liquid. I being of the opinion that if one is to walk at the ocean, one is shorting oneself a bit of soul-food by avoiding the surf.

It was a week of spending time with her mother and father and friends. We took a drive around the Cape peninsula and parked the car staring out into the windy driven waves of False bay as we neared the unprotected tip of Cape point. We stopped in at Cape point and made the steep walk up to the lighthouse with Japanese, Dutch, British, American, etc. Cape point is one of the few places in the world that is not ruled by the equation that number of tourists = loss of wonder. The enchantment never ceases and each time I’m there, leaning against a stone wall etched with a history of fickle romances and high school match-ups from all over the world, I am like a small boy in a pair of new rain boots and staring at the biggest mud puddle he has ever seen. We continued on around the peninsula and stopped in Hout Bay for a supper with some friends and slipped back out into the night with the sand whipping against our legs and our faces turned away like Bedouins in the desert. We had a nice supper with our semi-bohemian, translator, professor, poet and friend, Marius Swart and his fiancé Elsabet. I failed to mention he is also a fantastic cook and made us a lovely chicken dish of which I am completely ignorant other than it contained lemon grass and had a pungent and mouth-watering aroma.

Michelle, Delani and I left Cape town at our backs and climbed the pass out of the Strand and through mountains and spectacular valleys and along the coast to Mossel Bay. We passed through the city of George and up through one more pass with breath-taking vistas and dizzying heights. Delani has an affinity for liver paste that comes in a sausage-like tube and so I casually struck up conversation as we headed up the pass and I said, “Hey, you know what would be really nice?” “No.” “If we had some of that liver paste and some crackers, we could stop along one of these lookout spots and throw it off the cliff.” She didn’t laugh. I still haven’t tried liver paste to say the least.

I don’t wish to bore you with endless descriptions of the weather and my week in the Cape, but it was a wonderful time to rest and unwind after the school term, but now that is in the past and I am fresh from training (during the first half of the holiday) and realizing just how little I knew about what was happening in my classroom. The students are an endless stream of questions, funny stories, laughter, complaints and explanations. They find wonderful reasons for unfinished work (including a dead-serious, “the dog ate my detention slip”) and make waking up at a quarter to five in the morning a non-event. I spend the time in class running between offices and answering questions and the times in between, swinging from monkey bars with a sandwich in my mouth or breathlessly racing from an outstretched hand in an endless game of tag that takes recesses for school and sleeping.

God is teaching me many things. To be careful of what I say, or perhaps the more ugly term, gossip. To enjoy a walk for what it is and not to for what it might do to help my blood pressure. To realize just what it meant for Jesus to die on the cross for my sins and to face the full, unchecked fury of God’s wrath towards millennia of rebellion and sin in one moment on Golgotha. No wonder the sky turned black and the earth shook, no wonder they call Him Savior. Good Friday is nearly here and I am trying to bring my students to a realization of what was in the cup that Jesus spoke of in His prayer in Gethsemane, but I must confess, I feel so inadequate to explain the wrath of God and I do not think that I begin to understand it. I have been reading in Exodus and am now in Leviticus in my devotions and I am wonderstruck at the life of Moses. To take counsel with God Himself for forty days and nights on a mountain consumed in fire. To have your face so incandescently lit with the glory of the Almighty that you have to put on a covering so people can look at you. To be buried by the hand of God. No man knew God like he did, face to face. What a legacy.

Well, I must finish this post somewhere. So, goodnight.

R&R in the Cape...

I'm sitting in Delani's mother's house in the Strand. A suburban off-shoot of Cape Town right on the coast of the beautiful False Bay. I just finished a week of ACE teacher's training in Ladybrand so I only get one week of the two week school holiday. The training was worth the loss of a week. ACE is a good system when implemented correctly and there were significant deficits in my ability to properly administrate the procedures.

I don't know how many know just how ACE curriculum works, but let me just give you a quick overview. The students work in a PACE, which is a small booklet (generally around thirty to forty pages in the elementary grades). This PACE is the teacher and the children work individually at their own pace (although we do try and help them in the setting of goals). The students set within a determined framework, how many pages to do a day etc., we as the "teachers" are merely facilitators to that learning process and clear up any confusion from the PACE instructions and with more abstract concepts. So, for this week we were students. There were twenty-five of us who were taking the training and for the week we worked in individual offices just like our students, had to raise our flags for the supervisor or monitor just like our students and worked in PACEs just like our students. I think with the wrong facilitators it could have been deemed condescending and trivial, but our facilitator was great and it was just a fun time to learn with other educators and to get a feel for what our students do everyday.

The training was held in Ladybrand, which was fortunate for me, I could go home every night. It started at 7:30 am and went to 4:30 pm everyday. Since I live 30 minutes out of town, that meant waking up at the same time as I do during school, but that was no problem really...I was already used to it. The training not only sharpened our procedural skills, but the devotional times and the times of sharing really helped us to refocus our mission. It was stressed all through that this was a calling and the number one reason for being there was to bring the children to Christ. It is so easy to get into the necessary academic pursuits of the day and forget this number one impetus to waking up and making the thirty minute drive, five times a week.

I was able to finish the training early and take Michelle Waterson's (a colleague at the school) car to Graaff-Reinet where she was already visiting with Delani. I arrived in Graaff-Reinet (about a seven hour drive with all the road construction) and on the way at one of the construction stops I saw a Ron Jon Surf shop sticker on a truck in front of me. This at first made no impression as I am very accustomed to seeing these...in Florida. It suddenly hit me what I was seeing and I was so shocked that I did something very uncharacteristic of me; I walked up and tapped on the guy's window. He seemed somewhat annoyed, but rolled down his window in any case. I asked him if he had been to the surf shop and in an unmistakably South African accent said, "yes." I began to explain I was from near there when the girl in the passenger seat said in an unmistakably American accent, "I'm from West Palm Beach." The more I travel, the more I find this world is very, very small these days.

In any case, Michelle and Delani and I all rode together to the Cape to split fuel costs. Michelle is originally from the Cape and her parents are here and of course, so are Delani's parents. So, back to the beginning, I am sitting in Tannie Melinda's sitting room and tapping out a few words here to bring you all up to date. I am about to start working on my newsletter for this past month, or perhaps it should be for April...I guess I'll work all that out before I send it. I realize that this may be a bit rambling, if so I am sorry, but I'm tired. It has been a good Sunday with a good service this morning at Delani's old church. We will be having tea with the Pastor and his wife at some point in this week.

Well, goodnight all. I know this has been a bit disjointed, but I hope it is understandable at least. Thanks so much for all the prayers and support.