The Christmas season here has been fun and, as expected, completely different from Christmas at home. On Monday 12/20 two other volunteers and I went to a “Carols by Candlelight”, an event at a park, on blankets, by candlelight, put on by the local Lion’s Club (similar to the Rotary Club). It was part performance and part communal singing of Christmas carols. There were clearly a lot of tourists in attendance, and more retired folks than young people, but it was still a lot of fun.

On Christmas Eve all the volunteers went to the house of the couple who started Give a Child a Family (the Woodhouse’s) to celebrate a Swedish Christmas (“julbord”) with them! The Woodhouse’s invite the volunteers to their house on Christmas Eve every year, though this year even more members of their family were present than usual, so together I think there were twenty-six of us. The food, a mix of Swedish and South African, was spectacular, with nothing too outlandish (the most unusual food was pickled fish; delicious, I might add). After eating and reading the Christmas story, we played a game involving rolling dice to determine the order in which we got to take a present (we had all been instructed to bring one gift worth R50, or about $6.25, to the gathering, so everyone got one gift). There was some singing of Christmas carols, and before long it was time to go to a Lutheran Christmas Eve service at the church of our friends, Anna and Ross (a Swedish couple who met when they were both volunteers at GCF). After that was over we went to their house for julgrot (a kind of rice pudding Swedes eat on Christmas Eve), more games involving throwing dice to see who gets which present (we had each brought a gift for this too), and my favorite piece of Swedish culture yet: Kalle Anka. An article in slate.com describes this tradition this way:

“Every year on Dec. 24 at 3 p.m., half of Sweden sits down in front of the television for a family viewing of the 1958 Walt Disney Presents Christmas special, "From All of Us to All of You." Or as it is known in Sverige,Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul: "Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas."

Kalle Anka, for short, has been airing without commercial interruption at the same time on Sweden's main public-television channel, TV1, on Christmas Eve (when Swedes traditionally celebrate the holiday) since 1959. The show consists of Jiminy Cricket presenting about a dozen Disney cartoons from the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s, only a couple of which have anything to do with Christmas. There are "Silly Symphonies" shorts and clips from films like Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Jungle Book. The special is pretty much the same every year, except for the live introduction by a host (who plays the role of Walt Disney from the original Walt Disney Presents series) and the annual addition of one new snippet from the latest Disney-produced movie, which TV1's parent network, SVT, is contractually obligated by Disney to air.

Kalle Anka is typically one of the three most popular television events of the year, with between 40 and 50 percent of the country tuning in to watch.” .....

I found it to be a highly goofy and entertaining show! It did make me miss Christmas programs that are sort of classic in the U.S. like “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, but I’ll have a chance to watch that again soon enough.

On Christmas Day we just went to church in the morning and had the Christmas Party for the children at Give a Child a Family right after that, which basically consisted of Santa (one of the female volunteers) giving all the children their presents. They were very excited. One of the volunteers also made a movie with pictures and videos of all the kids, which we showed to them that evening, and they were, as you might imagine, wild about seeing themselves on video, so much so that at its conclusion they demanded to see it again. Other than that it was a very relaxed day, marred only by the fact that we had no internet that day and so none of us could Skype or talk to our families. Internet continues to be sketchy here so if I say I’m going to talk to you at a certain time and don’t show up online then, it’s because I don’t have internet, not because I’ve forgotten or found something better to do! (I mean really, what would I rather do than talk to one of you lovely people?)

This week SDC and the Co-op are closed, which means I’m at GCF this whole week making myself as useful as possible (working in the kitchen, with the children, etc.). Back to work next week!

A great article that explains a little more about SDC and the project I'm involved with:

http://www.siyavuna.org.za/profiting-from-organic-farming-farmers-weekly-article/

I got to hear another awesome sermon at Gates of Praise today; it went something like this. Many of us, after we “get saved” (or however you want to describe what happens when we choose to follow God; for many, myself included, it doesn’t happen this way) enter a period of contemplation and even complacency where we are basically reveling in our blissful new state and waiting for God to work exciting things through us. This state, however, shouldn’t be, and isn’t, the end of our journey. While our Christian walk must happen from a place of rest, if our contemplation doesn’t lead us to action, we need to reexamine our rest! All true prophecy involves action (James 2:17: ”Faith without works is dead.”). In order to acquire this power to rouse ourselves to action, we must only claim the inheritance that’s already ours in Christ, but that the devil keeps trying to convince us doesn’t belong to us; in doing so we must remember that the devil only has as much power as we give him. Throughout this sermon I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes: “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis). It’s often very hard for us to act according to our full powers in God because we’re afraid of how painful the resulting changes in our lives might be, or because we simply don’t understand or believe that we have so much power at our disposal. This balance between rest and action, and (regarding the latter) not underestimating what we can do in Christ, is, of course, a lifelong struggle. I continue to be impressed with this church’s messages of action outside the comfortable boundaries of the church walls; clearly it’s important to go to church if we are committed to walking with God, but what we do in church on Sunday mornings is never going to be more than the starting point for that commitment.

On a lighter note, I had a fun experience in Swedish culture yesterday when we went to the house of a Swedish couple (former volunteers and friends of POR) to celebrate St. Lucia, generally celebrated on December 13th (see link below for the history of this holiday). All the volunteers (including Adam, the one guy) wore white dresses, and the women wore tinsel on our heads and around our waists, though I wore holly because I got to be St. Lucia! We walked into the room with lit candles singing St. Lucia songs in Swedish (I had a cheat sheet) and then repeated the performance for a German couple across the street. I can only imagine what any South African who saw us must have been thinking; five young white people dressed in white robes and tinsel and carrying candles is certainly an unusual sight!

http://www.newsweden.org/luciahistory.htm

Recently, after a few key people agreed to this plan, I decided I’m going to stay with Siyavuna for another three months and not work with Give a Child a Family at all. I’ll still live at GCF for a total of six months, as planned, but I won’t be working with the children. Instead, I’ll get to learn more about Siyavuna, both their day-to-day operations and their model for growth and development into new communities. I’m thrilled with this; I’m really looking forward to being a part of this organization’s groundbreaking (literally) and marvelous work. Helping poor South Africans in rural areas (many of whom have very few legitimate job options) learn how to grow organic produce and sell it seems like a fairly obvious way to help them become more self-sufficient and less poor, and indeed there are many South African organizations that teach poor rural people how to farm, but there is actually only one other organization in South Africa that teaches people how to farm and gives them a venue to market their produce. In an area of South Africa as fertile and tropical as the South Coast, where many crops can be planted all year round, this seems like an idea whose time has come. During the second half of my time here I’m hopefully going to be involved with replicating this system in other communities, so I hope I’ll have learned enough by then to be a genuine help in such an endeavor.

On November 24th and 25th the female volunteers took part in a seminar called “The Question” which has different versions for men and women. It consisted of a series of recorded talks given by Craig Hill, a pastor in Colorado Spring, CO. The sessions centered around your identity in God, who you should let define your identity vs who you actually let define said identity, etc. The seminar had many useful insights on relationships and ample chances for ministry and counseling regarding how each of us got to be the way we are (our families and such). It wasn’t the kind of seminar I would’ve chosen to take part in voluntarily, nor was it something I think I particularly needed; in fact, I didn’t agree with the premise of many of the things about women and men that the seminar assumed. However, I got something out of it and I definitely think doing it in this group resulted in us getting to know each other better.

Another significant thing (for me) that happened recently was getting to go to the annual Christmas Dinner at Gates of Praise, the church by GCF I’ve been attending, on November 25th. The church was transformed with decorations, the food was great, and afterwards there were a few performances: hip hop dances, a Christmas drama performed by my home group (we started practicing two days before the dinner), and....a Sacred Harp song that I taught a few of the South Africans and performed with them! I have no words for how awesome that was. It’s safe to say a great night was had by all.

In general, the Christmas season here is marked by increasingly hot weather (call me crazy, but I miss St. Olaf winters something awful) and a huge number of tourists. Since Margate is a major tourist destination in general, but especially during the holiday season, many of its shop/restaurant owners depend on the tourists that flock here in November-January to make a living. In addition, the stores here go as crazy as American stores do in the Christmas decorations, Christmas music that starts in mid-November, Christmas merchandise, and other things I’d somehow hoped were confined to American consumerism.

The volunteers got back this past Sunday from a nine-day trip through KwaZulu-Natal. It was out first week of leave (we get one week of leave every three months) and most all of our plans went smoothly! We got to do things like go to Shakaland (the home of King Shaka, former King of the Zulu Kingdom), see numerous animals in the game parks imFolozi/Hluhlue, go on a boat tour in St. Lucia, and camp and hike in the Drakensburg mountains. It was a lot of fun, and a great bonding experience for the seven of us volunteers too! We took entirely too many pictures, and rest assured mine will be on facebook soon. The volunteers will be going on another week-long trip in early 2012, but I might opt out of that as I’m going to be getting some time off when my parents come visit. Dates aren’t set yet but that will presumably happen in late January or February - stay posted!