ESAKUZELAYO; KUYANYIWA!!!

"What we came for, the shit is hitting the fan!!!" I think you get the gist of it! That's my title in Zulu. When I came home with the list of the books Samke didn't quiet understand how many they were until I started unpacking them. All 29 of them at a cost of $687.72! I think I'm going to establish a fund to keep me from loosing every cent I have and all of you to donate to it!!!

I have to read these things before the end of November and the list of what you read per week is scary. It means I will have no life. I think even if I hadn't come with Samke it would have been the same cause at the rate these professors are going we are gonna have no life.

Last Tuesday we went Pub Crawling and I think that will be the last. For those of you who don't know what a pub crawl is... It is when you go from one pub (bar) to another drinking. We started at 22H00 and we were going to finish at 02H00 the next morning. US nite life is bad it ends at 02H00! There were five pubs, I think, I'm not sure, can't remember, was I there too???

These professors don't know that we must also party in the middle of all this. There is already reading material for when classes begin next week and I'm already behind so shouldn't be spending my time writing this stuff but I must read. I wish I had kept up my high school reading habits but I think varsity life made me lazy to read and I am all the poorer for it.

Besides these books, there is also the chapters and books that these professors have posted on the Internet. We are expected to download them and read and prepare responses to them. Ah, Dr. Smanga Kumalo and his reading reactions from Systematics theology 1. That was just for a chapter of the systematics material notes.

I struggled to get the students in my class to read a couple of chapters per week, if I had done this I am sure they would have poisoned me very early in the year. So those that will be coming after this better pray I don't teach them cause whilst I haven't started reading this mountain; I like the system already. We need to rad more on issues we want to know about so that we don't feed people heresy and think we know the answers, whatever your field may be.

Samke is Sick!

We left home not feeling to great, we were both just recovering from the flu. Samke's took a turn for the worst on Sunday in Rocky Mount and we tried to get some medication but the pharmacist just told us the best would be to see a Doctor. So on Monday I went off to collect my medical insurance card only to discover there was a problem with our registration and so the insurance wasn't confirmed. After a whole day of running around with a certain good Samaritan lady who had cared for me at school from one office door to another. She decided to then take us to the 'urgent care facility' somewhere across town. This is like a clinic for people without medical aid, you just walk in and register and wait for your name to be called.

This lady left us there and went to run her errands, bought us some lunch and left us again. You often forget what these waiting moments can do to your brain and you curse the little blessings that Pharos Medical Scheme for Methodist minister lacks but here at times like this you miss Pharaoh.

Samke was ultimately seen and it was Bronchitis as I had suspected. She was given medication from the samples cause the doctor just thought it might be too much if she gave her a script.

Anyway, the consultation was ultimately $100 (+R700) plus another $15 for medication that didn't have a sample. So I suppose these clinics are not like sober Manto's clinics back home and 'beetroot and garlic should keep the doctor away indeed!'

Sake is feeling much better now and by Tuesday night we were out partying again!!!

Rocky Mount Weekend

We spent the weekend at Wil's Mom's house out in Rocky Mount. It is about an hour drive through beautiful countryside. North Carolina is like a big a forest and the human dwellings are carved out within it. I first noticed this 'deforestation' from the plane on our way in the first day. It kind of worried me cause with each carving was a new townhouse development coming up. It is kind of like the Million Rand Squatter Camps we call townhouses/security estates back home. It is fun to live in one but the exception is that here they are not gated communities like we have.

Anyway, Rocky Mount is rather peaceful and nice. The houses are well maintained and the gardens to. This is a picture outside the house, Wil's mom takes care of the garden and it looks great.

Now you actually get to see all four of us together and don't we just make an awesome group? Yolanda is from Costa Rica and therefore speaks Spanish, if we were going to spend more time with them, I'm sure we could learn a little more of Spanish too.

Having said that, we then went and had supper at a Mexican restaurant and of course wanting a taste of everything we ordered this meal on the menu, which promised to be a little of everything. So it came to us in two plates and that's just the way it is. The food was god and some of it (beans on Rice, I must teach them ow to make pap!) really tasted like home food.

I can understand why so many people around here struggle with weight issues and how this could be bad for us; but I'll be damned if I let that happen. In the restaurants, you buy a glass of a soft drink and the will just keep it coming and refilling it as you go. Of course they can only do it with soft drinks cause the other stuff; for those of us who take it; it just never fills up the tummy like coke!

On Sunday we went to the church where Wil grew up and it's the church that had helped in collecting the goods for our apartment. The worship was wonderful and free in Spirit. It was good to see a relaxed pastor even when technology failed him; it wasn't the end of the world. "So it happens in America too!" I thought to myself. The pastor delivered a challenging message and the music and all the stuff kinda reminded me of home in West View. I missed their later services, which is apparently a more traditional service, the choir mistress was in robes and playing a grand pipe organ; it rocks man! I still say; whoever thought auditoriums without the pipe organ are a church needs to have their heads screwed on properly, these barren warehouses we sometimes worship in are nothing but a bad remind of 'cotton sortin' factory floors.

Anyway, I must stop now!

How we travelled!

A picture says a thousand words!!!

Well friends, we are finaly here and this posting has been a long time coming. I am sorry to have taken so long to set it up but as they say; better late than never. You no longer will need to ask me how things are going just check it up for yourself.

Wil and Yolanda came and picked us up from the Raleigh/Durham airport at about 09H40. It was great seeing them and Wil was wearing his Bafana Bafana jersey which he had purchased here in SA in 2001 when I last saw him. Now some of you may wonder who Will is?

In 2001 when I was in Phase 1 in Soweto, I hosted a student from Duke Divinity in the US. He was on his Summer break and of course they do projects. So I lived for about three months with this 'white guy' in the heart of Soweto. We caught taxis together and he lived like one of the township fellas. He amazed many of us and made an impact in many of the people's lives he touched. He became more than just a friend but a brother to me. He later went to Costa Rica and became a missionary there. That is where he met and married Yolanda.

Anyway, Wil and Yolanda are here in the US, on a sabbatical from Costa Rica.This is where God's timing and planing is just too much for us to sometimes understand. I should have been here a long time ago, if it had happened like that, I would have probably been alone (without Samke) and Wil would have been in C. Rica working there. God's timing is such that when Prof Neville Richardson and Dr. Dion Forster heard of my interest in Duke and began to help me; I truly believe that God was there alongside them. I am truly grateful for their assistence. So we came this year, Samke and I and Wil and Yolanda are also here.

THE APPARTMENT

It is an upstairs appartment overlooking the pool and here it gets to 100F so the pool is very handy.

The appartment is good and furnished with bare furnishings. Wil had suggested that he would ask his home church to set something up so that we didn't have to carry pots and pans from South Africa to the US.

They arrived in this Monster of a van/truck that was full of stuff. This truck is a donation to their work in C. Rica from the churches here. It' s a V8, 7.3 liter turbo-diesel machine. "It's really neat!" as Wil would say.

This was not all. Some of the people in the church had also taken a collection in preparation for our arrival. So Wil had a 'magic envelope' that we then used to go and buy the extra stuff that was needed for the house. Of course the TV was NEEDED! Samke was to take up a new position as the 'House Executive,' now all "HE's" need a TV set to watch the latest episode of desparate housewives. Now I'm gonna get in trouble so I better stop! By the way; what's on desperate housewives? Now that I think of it, it could be a lot of things!!!

This whole week is truly dificult to write or even think about as I think of the many blessings that the Lord has done for us.

We never slept cause after this we then went off to the varsity where we met the ladies who had worked tirelessly in making sure our arrival was smooth. Duke was beautiful as ever. The new buildings that they were working on around 2004 were now in full operation so the place looks stunning. Ah! Of Couse, the Majestic Chapel! The center of this campus and a real churhc even on the inside. Someone was practising onthe organ and it just made being around here all the more beautiful.

Anyway I will keep you updated as to our comings and goings, I'm tired now and am sure you can't read so much.