Ch. 7: In the Sky

Mikail and I had our hands full. Paints, brushes, paper, and most bulkily, bags of potatoes. It was the last day before spring break, and the coordinator for our volunteer group was already on her way to Johannesburg, so she had asked us to fetch the materials from the SHAWCO office. SHAWCO is a student volunteer organization at UCT which buses university students into the townships to run various programs from tutoring to the arts for students of all grades. My program is an arts workshop, and we go into Manenburg, a coloured township, every Friday for three hours. Today we were going to be turning potatoes into stamps, dipping them in paint, and making pictures. A plan obviously devised by someone not wearing light-colored clothes.

Most of our group is American exchange students. Anxious to take advantage of the break from classes, many planned trips to Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, or other places in South Africa. When Mikail and I got back to the SHAWCO van, we found that most of our group had left early for these trips, and we were down from about twelve to about five. Mikail and I were both leaving the next day: he to Swaziland to conduct AIDS research, and I to Kruger national park to see animals. Of the other students, one was a South African and therefore less anxious to see the continent, and one, Terrance, had made certain that his travel plans did not conflict with our SHAWCO activities. In the van we discussed our strategies for keeping the butter knives out of small hands while still giving students creative control over the shape of their potatoes. It was going to be tough to control around fifty energetic 3rd through 7th graders with so few of us.

As usual, the kids had no trouble entertaining themselves, but it was our place to guide them through activities that “develop character, confidence, and self-expression,” as the SHAWCO material words it. One unique problem today was that the kids wanted to eat the potatoes – raw – more than paint with them. At the end of the activities we had a pile of works which were the pride of their creators, but would be forgotten about after playing outside for thirty minutes. When it came time to leave, we faced a gauntlet of hugs and piggy back rides. Terrance’s path contained the most such obstacles, and we waited in the van as he made his way through them, telling children that he not see them next week, but the week after.

He finally climbed in the van and we pulled out of the school. “They’re so CUTE!” he shouted as we waved goodbye. A black southerner, Terrance’s accent was unique among the American students, and even more so in South Africa. But this didn’t deter him from using his voice – to praise, to comment, to laugh -- always with enthusiasm. In the van he warned us that he was going to say something scandalous, and then bemoaned the low turnout in light of the view of Americans as interested in service only on a superficial level. This engaged us all in a discussion of the matter, which lasted until we let Terrance off on Main Road. “He’s a character and a half,” someone observed with a chuckle.
The next day I was to leave with three of my housemates – Anne, Aadesh, and Daksha – for our Kruger park safari. Kruger, in the northeast corner of the country, is the most famous of the national parks in South Africa, and is known as a haven for the kinds of animals that are always poking their heads out of Noah’s Ark on the walls of babies’ rooms – elephants, zebras, lions, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, crocodiles, buffalo, and many more. I got onboard late in the planning stages – I was mostly interested in an adventure with my friends, and glad for the chance to see the countryside. On the day we left the wind blew like I had never seen it here. The cab picked me up from a café on Main Road, where I had been drinking hot chocolate and watching the few people on the streets fighting to walk. On the way to the airport the rain started, and soon we could barely see out of the car windows.

The weather was pleasant in Johannesburg, and by the time we arrived at Kruger it was 100 degrees. In Cape Town, however, the weather worsened. The rain continued through the week and flooding began in earnest. The sea, too, was losing its calm.

So while Cape Town was flooding, we were with Noah’s animals. A Shangaan man who had been a tracker for 6 ½ years drove us around in a safari truck, and taught us about the animals’ behavior. We camped in luxury campsites, and our meals were prepared by chefs. One night I received a text message from Garth of the Khoi Khonnexion: an American student at UCT had been swept out to sea – was I okay?

The following Friday we were back in Manenburg. We had a better turnout of volunteers today, but our task was much more difficult. We were somber as we stood in a circle and held hands, and I taught the children “May the Circle Be Unbroken,” which they picked up quickly:

May the circle be unbroken,
By and by, Lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waitin’
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Poetry, one of the volunteers, went to the front of the room. “Can you point to the sky?” she asked. They did. “Do you remember Terrance?” They did. She quivered a little, “Terrance passed away last week, and now he’s in the sky.” She was one of his best friends, and had been with him when a freak wave came and swept him off of a rock. We passed out paper and pencils, and the children made cards for his mother. Many of the cards were addressed to Terrance himself: “We miss you Terrance,” and “I love you.” The children were shocked, but I believe their art was therapeutic – remembering him through pictures and words. And Terrance’s mother, over the ocean and in a hospital bed, will no doubt be comforted when she sees the impact her son made on these children. As for us, it has been hard not to notice the silence where his Alabama voice used to be.