It is many days since the last blog and I apologise for that. I did try to start this blog a few days ago but there have been some changes in our circumstances which meant I found it difficult to find time. Perhaps also it is because I have been watching cicket on the TV with some crucial matches in the World Cup last week. By the way there is much lamentation here in SA about the woeful performance of their team's middle order – something about not having the bottle!
So why have things changed? I guess it is because we are beginning to develop some good friendships and because we have got involved in some social action in particular with the Foetal Alcohol Syndrome house (called "the fasshouse"- FAS) that is some 100 yards away over the rough ground outside our church compound.
Looking back we realise that it was silly for us not to have visited the FAS house earlier but when we got here in November everything was shutting down for the long summer holidays so the house was closed. However in February Alastair and Emma got stuck in with Alastair driving the minibus collecting pregnant women to come for their interviews and Emma playing with the children in the afternoon.Added to this we have developed a good friendship with Lian who runs the FAS house.Lian lives with her husband Peter in a cottage on a farm a few kilometres outside De Aar. They invited us to a lunchtime brai (barbecue) and we enjoyed the peace of the Karoo and some interesting discussion about living in this part of the world. We came away with a fascinating book called "Circling the Great Karoo" by Nicholas Yell which describes a motorbike trip the author took on the dirt roads of the Karoo and visiting many remote spots. It is a great insight into the life of the people of the Karoo, their history and their way of life. I wished I had read it before we came here.
We have not been invited out to the homes of the parishioners of the church and worried about this until I was talking to a Dutch Reform priest who has ministered in the coloured location for 26 years who said that in all those years he had not been invited to any of his congregation's houses!
However at almost the same moment our lovely churchwarden Eugene and his equally delightful wife Ria invited us to supper. This was ostensively to say good-bye to Alastair but it turned into a fascinating evening with Eugene and Ria being very open about what it is like to be a coloured person in South Africa today. They are in an uneneviable position with the black Africans now having the power and taking the jobs through the policy of affirmative action and the whites still running the businesses and making the money! So they feel that they are now the section of South African society that are at the bottom of the heap. Eugene and Ria are both schoolteachers and at the point in their career when they could expect to be headteachers of secondary schools. They are extremely able people and highly qualified yet they fear that at the two locals local school where there are vacancies for headships the jobs will go to black Africans who are not so competent. This is something that is happening all over South Africa and whereas we can see the need for affirmative action for the black African population, it is usually to the detriment of standards and efficiency. This is one of the dilemmas left over from its colonial and apartheid past.
(It is rather difficult to concentrate on writing this as outside the window on the vine and bushes of the yard there is a wonderful display of birdlife – one of the great joys of living here.)
Our friend Alastair Blaine left us on Sunday March 20th to do a little more travelling before returning to England. He has been a great success here in the parish and received a lovely farewell from the church congregation. For us it was good to have him with us to give us some company and help us to feel less isolated. He was prepared to work hard at some of the clearing and cleaning jobs in the church and Sunday School house, to help with long drives to outstations relieving both of us clergy and he wrote a short history of the church here using old sources we came across in our clearing out. With his departure I have taken over driving for FAS and although I cannot do it as regularly as he did, it is a way of feeling we are contributing to their work. It is hard to get the church here to think about the social gospel as for much of the time they are bound up with their own problems. I know that many individuals do a lot of "good works" but the idea of mission through concern and help for the poor, vulnerable and oppressed is not high on the list of priorities. I am not sure that in the few weeks left for us here we can do anything about this except by setting an example.
Are the times changing? Recently we have been bold enough to ask the question that we have been wanting to ask for a long time, "Did 1994 ever happen here?" In these remote areas of South Africa it is not easy to see where there has been progress towards the breakdown of the apartheid system. This is not just the result of white Afrikaans rigidity but also the suspicion there is between the black Africans and the coloured community. They are still very separate communities and sadly the churches reflect this. The white Dutch Reform Churches are slowly dying because many of the white people are moving away. They seem unable to open their doors to people of other colours and still live in fear. But we cannot claim to be any better as our own congregation is almost entirely coloured (whatever that means!) and is not particularly welcoming to any newcomers. The social life of the town has changed little and the High School (previously the preserve of white people) still has no black or coloured teachers. It is going to be a very long time for those barriers of fear and distrust built up amongst the people during apartheid years to be overcome.
There are changes happening in St. Thomas and it has been quite a revolution. It is the kind of
change that has happened in many parishes in England over the last few decades. The parish has been led by a few powerful, well-meaning and generous people who have been in positions of leadership for a long time. It has been difficult for them to let go and this has caused a certain amount of friction as there are a number of eager and able younger people who would like to have their say and perhaps do things differently.
The parish is divided into wards and parishioners in each ward are expected to meet to pray together, to care for each other and run money-making schemes. Not many wards do this but the Montana ward does and it has meant that it has become a powerful group within the parish.To their credit they organised themselves so that several of their members ( young and very able) were elected to positions on the church council (see photo below) and since then they have quietly been revolutionising much of the way the parish is run. In time the hope is that it will not rely on the rich and powerful making contributions to keep it afloat but that all the people will contribute because they feel more part of the parish. Things have begun well and it is being ably led by our churchwarden Eugene who we have mentioned before. I have played little part in this except to give my encouragement and support and try to appease those who have lost power and influence. It does give me great joy that such a change has been made during the time I have been here.
We had a visit from the Archdeacon of the Karoo (who is also the Dean of the cathedral) last week-end and I think he was duly impressed by the change that has taken place. He was doing the swearing in of the churchwardens and church council both for St. Thomas and the churches of the outstations. It was quite a gathering and our first attempt at introducing new technology into the church as we had a video projector for the service.
Eugene on the left, and the other new warden , secretary and treasurer
So are times a changing? In many ways, no. De Aar is so isolated that it will take many more years before the kind of integration you see in other parts of South Africa will come here. However in many little things there are signs of change and the life of St. Thomas is one. My hope and prayer for St. Thomas is that somehow it can be a community that could live the "new South Africa" and therefore be an example to the rest of the town. What a wonderful gospel they could tell then!
A lovely one of Billy on his own little climbing frame in the churchyard
I tried to upload a third photo of the Dean etc at lunch but it wouldnt have it - sorry Dean Simon!
