I’ve had some crazy and memorable experiences with Siyavuna lately: getting the vegetable truck stuck in a ditch, processing 40 kg of onions only to have the customer refuse them, arriving at a collection point and finding that the door to the building was locked (it was raining), and riding in the back of the vegetable truck while it was full of vegetables (quite a bumpy ride). I’ve also been seeing how issues such as coming up short on money when selling, farmers’ insistence that we buy produce from them that isn’t up to our standards, and farmers’ attempts to sell their produce with another’s card are handled. More routine things I’m getting used to include selling Siyavuna vegetables at the Rotary Club Flea Market that happens every Saturday, loading and unloading at the container where the vegetables are kept at night, helping to get local restaurants interested in buying from us, and, in general, driving: on ill-kept, narrow roads, on steep hills, in the rain, with a truck full of vegetables, on the left side of the road, while looking out for everything from goats to taxis to little children. Who knew working with vegetables could be so thrilling?

Us volunteers have also gotten to do some fun/informative things as a group recently like go on a community tour (though ideally that would’ve been done earlier), visit an AIDS hospital called Genesis (which works closely with GCF), and spend a weekend in Durban. The community tour was led by a social worker at GCF who took us through some of the townships and rural areas and explained to us a lot about Zulu culture and life in the rural areas. Many of the cultural differences were things that would’ve been really helpful to know earlier, but late is certainly better than never! Our trip to Durban was great; we got to see the Juma Masjid Mosque (the largest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere), the Victorian Street Market (a famous Indian market with souvenirs galore), gorgeous beaches, and uShaka, an enormous aquarium with fish of every kind, dolphin and seal shows, and, of course, more shopping. It was great fun.

I also got my picture in the local paper recently: some women showed up at the first collection point on Wednesday (two and a half weeks ago) and talked to us a bit before taking some pictures, buying some vegetables, and generally causing complete confusion. Soon I hope to have the entire article up on here.

Sorry for all the lists! Maybe next time I’ll have more deep thoughts.

It’s been a quiet week here in Margate, South Africa...well, not really. Life is never quiet here, or at least, not for long. I’m learning (though I sort of already knew) that keeping quiet is generally not in the nature of Africans. I’m continuing to learn about communication styles here, or, more often, lack of communication.

This week we had more sickness among the volunteers; when working with the children it’s very easy to pick up any and every illness they have. I’m now the only volunteer who hasn’t been sick once. We were going to go to the Oribi Gorge Swing this weekend to get our lifelong fill of adrenaline, but that didn’t happen because of the sickness; one has to be healthy to have the capacity for that kind of courage! This weekend we also had a water leak problem in the volunteer house that left us without water for most of the weekend, and we didn’t have internet at the house from Thursday night until Tuesday afternoon. These things have all been resolved, though!

Working with Siyavuna is always an interesting time. While vegetables are not my passion per se, the opportunity that gardening presents to these women (and indeed, they almost always seem to be women) is a real joy to be a part of. I’m getting better at quality checking, keeping details straight, etc., but one of the hardest parts of working here is proving to be turning down produce that’s unacceptable for selling. One isn’t supposed to take or pay farmers for produce that we know won’t sell, and farmers have been trained before (and get mentored while) they grow, but often they still bring in such produce in the hopes of getting money for it. There’s usually at least a little bit of produce from each farmer that we can’t pay them for. You have to be consistent in what you’ll accept, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel guilty for not taking something, since the money they could have gotten from a couple kgs of bananas of onions is desperately needed extra income. It’s one case where guilt isn’t helpful; you have to be firm and help make sure the farmer knows why something was rejected so that their farming can improve. It’s still always hard to watch their disappointment. Conversely, though, when a farmer has done well and has lots of quality produce to sell, their pride in what they’ve done is very evident and is a most beautiful thing to see.

Another challenge is that it is impossible to know how much work there will be to do when you arrive at a collection point to pick up vegetables from the farmers Siyavuna has trained in one particular area. (There are a total of seven collection points, each with a specific time and day that the farmers know in advance. The farmers choose the location of their collection point; they are always in some central location, usually a humble church buildings or an old store.) Since there are no quantity restrictions, farmers are free to bring as much or as little produce as they have for selling, and often the number of farmers who show up at a collection point from one week to the next varies tremendously. The average transaction is about R50, or $6.25, so not that much.

I got to go to my first Siyavuna Co-Op board meeting today (Tuesday, November 1st). These happen every month and are attended by representatives from each of the Farmers Associations, the Co-op manager, the general manager and project manager of Siyavuna, a couple advisers, and me, who got to take minutes. I had a moment of deja vu when we arrived at the location of the meeting and I realized I had been there before: Marjorie Jobson, my connection who told me about Siyavuna, took my St. Olaf group here as part of our January 2010 study abroad trip.

The religious experiences here continue to be interesting. The sermons at the church here (Pentecostal/charismatic nondenominational) are totally different from Orthodox ones, and Lutheran ones, for that matter. If I may say so, the sermons at this church tend to be more stream-of-consciousness and are almost entirely composed of scripture and how it directly applies to our daily lives, whereas Orthodox sermons, in my experience, tend to be more focused on history, church teachings, the lives of saints, and only occasionally on how the teachings of the day relate to how we should act. Lutheran sermons that I’ve heard tend to inhabit something of a middle ground; they’re certainly Biblically-based but also focused on how we understand scriptures when dealing with common issues in our lives. I don’t mean to degrade or promote any of these styles as being better than any other, but these are some things that I’ve noticed as patterns in these three very different styles of preaching I’ve learned to appreciate.

A really great message I heard here was by a guest speaker at church this past Sunday. He talked about cultivating meekness in our relationships: living at 80% and not 100% of our capacity as opposed to trying to do everything all the time. This gives us breathing room so that we’re not constantly in debt to someone because we’ve double-booked ourselves or spread ourselves too thin. He was definitely speaking from a place of one who knew what it was like to struggle with this sort of pride (and really, who of us hasn’t struggled with it?). His style was so concise, and he held everyone’s attention so well, that I was surprised when I realized he’d been speaking for over 45 minutes. Long sermons can be anywhere from painful to soul-restoring, and this one was definitely the latter.

I really like how the people in the church here are so comfortable praying openly for each other. Frequently in church and in the small groups they’ll tell each other things that they feel God wants them to hear: “I feel God is telling me to to tell you -----”. This it taking some getting used to; it seems awfully presumptuous to say what a certain person needs to know from God, but it’s an awesome thing to be looking out for each other in that way and to be so engaged in each other’s lives.

Something I’ve learned to feel comfortable disagreeing on, which I can see I will be explaining quite a bit here, is my belief, or lack thereof, in getting “saved”. Most of the South African Christians I’ve talked to so far speak of the moment they got saved as the turning point in their life, which makes sense as they believe it is the event that will allow them into heaven upon their death. This makes no sense from an Orthodox perspective, though, since we believe (I think?) that one’s commitment to follow Christ must be renewed every day, and there’s never one point at which you’ve arrived. I think it must be some combination of both; that one must commit at some point to following God and not living simply for oneself, but that growing in faith is continual process that is never complete as long as one is alive. There also seems to be the belief here that those who have God in their lives should be the happiest people around. I’m honestly not sure what I think about that; it’s one thing to have hope in your eternal future, but we shouldn’t pretend to be too sure what this holds, and in any case, let’s be honest: life on earth is not always a picnic.

I certainly am very blessed, though.