Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements”. A Flash Animation by Mike Stanfill, Private Hand
For those of you who are still unsure what exactly Mmamethlake was, here’s the short of it.
We went for four days to a township. For the first two days, Saturday and Sunday, we showed the teenagers from four different churches in the area what we do when we do holiday clubs (VBS-es in the US). On Monday and Tuesday, we helped the teenagers hold the actual holiday club.
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And if you’d like to see photos, you can go here.
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That, my dear readers, was the short, sweet summary. However, what follows is the actual, nitty gritty, details. And is much more interesting, if not more informative.
We arrived at church promptly, most of us promptly, others less promptly, at 8.00 in the morning, all set to leave at 8.30. We were told we would be camping, with little access to running water in a bathroom, in the hot sun, and that the girls should wear skirts. We were all prepared to the best of our abilities, and by the time everyone and everything got to the church, we were ready to go. We piled into about 5 cars and took off for Mmamethlake.
The directions could not have been more ambiguous. First, they were written in a beautiful script, but a very unreadable script. Next, the directions tell you to get to a certain spot, marked by a water tower – of which there were dozens in the area – turn, stop … and then wait for someone to find us.
We finally did get to the church, and went about putting tents up, unpacking cars, setting up the kitchen, putting suitcases away, and re-acquainting ourselves with hats, layers of sunscreen, and the amazing phenomena of shorts (for those of us not wearing skirts, i.e. male beings).
While the boys (and any girls who chose to) had to sleep in tents on site, the girls who wanted to could sleep in a room in a ‘Mama’s’ house across the street. A house with a bathtub (although it must be mentioned that to heat the water, we put water in a plastic bucket, and the water was boiled), a faucet with running water, and running electricity. This meant we had to cross the street in groups of three or more, and particularly at night, with a mature male.
The first day was filled with stuff of the same sorts: setting up, getting comfortable, and eating boerewors (if someone could correct that spelling…).
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The second day we went to their church service – in the large tent – and then had the teens from the four other churches split themselves into groups – the activity, sport, and teaching centers, and the three age groups. The ages of the three groups were: 3-7, the ants, 8-10, the scorpions, and 11-13 or so, the eagles.
The church service was pretty cool; we danced during the worship, and the preacher had a translator.
Then, for the ‘team building exercises’ we all stood in a circle and sat down on the person behind us, and were sat on by the person in front of us. Suffice it to say that we did not succeed the first time.
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The third day we went out to get the kids. Now, when we do the holiday club at Waterkloof (our church) we send out invitations, about one to two months before the break when we do holiday club, to all the kids whose addresses we have.
In Mmamethlake, however, we just invited them the morning of, about 30 minutes before we wanted to start.
First things, we split into three groups; each of us went a different direction. Then in our three groups we further split into groups of about four people, making that there were at least one or two members who could speak Setswana.
We would walk up to a house, go through the gate, and someone fluent in Setswana would ask if their kids could come to the church and play. Most of the time the mom would say that her kid(s) still had to eat or get dressed or something else, and they would come soon.
Soon turned out to be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more. We had planned on starting at like 8 or 8.30, but as the kids only got to the church site at 9 to 9.30 we only started at – you guessed it – 9.30.
This meant the whole thing had to be a little shorter than we normally do it, but that’s okay, because that had been planned for: we only had, remember, three centers instead of our normal six (we’d left out crafts, snack, and one-other-that-I-can’t-think-of-but-I’ll-get-back-to-you-on-that).
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡If anyone else remembers please, please, please tell me!!!!!!!!!
That said, we did start out nice and energetically with energy dances, worship songs, and a skit. The same energy dances we do at Waterkloof: Cotton Eye Joe, Woo-woo Dance and the Cactus Song. The same worship songs, which I unfortunately don’t know the names of. But a different skit; since the younger kids understood no English, and the middle aged kids very little, we from Waterkloof couldn’t do a skit. Approximately ten teens from Mmamethlake put together what I perceived to be a cute skit about friendship… I couldn’t really tell because, obviously, Ek verstaan nie Setswana nie.
Then they split up into their age groups, and proceeded to the different centers.
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I was helping Michelle in the activity center. The first day we decided to play a game where one of a pair of kids gets blindfolded, and the other has to lead him through an obstacle course. Each pair, upon completion of the course, got a piece of John 3.16 in Setswana.
This might have worked with the oldest group, the eagles, but we had the middle group, the scorpions, first, and they couldn’t quite handle the game. So we scrapped that, and just had them put the verse together, recite the verse, and then throw bean bags in a circle.
This actually worked out well for the scorpions, and when we had the ants, it was pretty good too. With the eagles I thought they were a little bored, but not too bored, making this also pretty good.
From what I picked up the sports and teaching centers also went well. I think in sports they played soccer, and in the teaching center they did a craft with handprints (go look at the photos).
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡If anyone knows more about the teaching and sports centers please, please, please tell me!!!!!!!!!
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Also, I can’t recall after how many center visits we took a snack break… help?!!!!!!!!!
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After each of the groups had visited each of the centers, and each of the centers had been visited by each of the groups, we did some more dancing and singing, and the kids were taught a short salvation lesson by Lorraine (I think that was her name, but for some reason I’m blanking out. Plus, either way? I don’t know how to spell it.). The lesson the first day was the story with the beads on the bracelet (we were sinful like a dirty-black cloth, but Jesus’ red blood cleansed us to look like a clean-white cloth, now, we can be baptized in blue water to signify that we love Jesus and want to grow, like a healthy-green plant, and in the end we’ll live in heaven, with the streets of gold) but she used sheets of paper with colored dots.
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At some point, Michelle, Nicole and I were walking back from the house to the church, but Nicole had to get something out of the house, so Michelle and I just waited on the outside of the fence by the road. As we’re standing there, watching the cars go by, this one car goes by, and the guy driving waves to us.
Michelle and I were a little perplexed, but figured that they must be from the church, and timidly waved back.
Next thing we knew, the car was coming back from the opposite direction, and pulled up next to us. The driver says, “I haven’t seen you back in the hood in a while!”
Michelle and I, now even more confused smile, and go back to talking –now quietly– amongst ourselves, politely telling the driver, and the whole party in the car, that we don’t know them.
The driver then continues, “We’re lost, can you help us?”
Michelle says, “We can’t. We’re going to church.” Michelle points in the direction of the church.
So then the driver says, “We’re going to church too!”
A girl in the back seat opened the door and said, “Why don’t you get in?”
Michelle and I said, “No, we have to go that way.”
At that point, just as they were driving away, taking our directional statement as reason enough to leave us alone, Nicole came back across the fence, and we went on our way to the church, laughing at the impossibility of a stranger asking us to get into their car. After all, that only happens in books, right?
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This being the third day of early mornings and late nights, we were all tired, and some of the girls, Livia and Nicole, to be exact, ended up asleep in the house. Michelle and I decided to go back to the church and see what everyone was doing. They were being really productive. They were chewing gum! For a real idea of this ‘chewing gum’, go look at the pictures. We hung out there for a while, and eventually, everyone but Jack, Michelle, David (asleep under sleeping bags), and myself stayed, while I attempted to blow a bubble with gum, a feet I had never before accomplished. Since I had gum in my mouth, I didn’t get much talking in, but Jack and Michelle kept the silence up well.
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That night, our last night, we just sat around in the kitchen hanging out; we drank milo, coffee and tea, we played mind games (e.g. if you have a number with digits ABCDE [such that A?B?C?D?E] multiplied by 4 to get EDCBA, what do the digits each equal?), and then at about nine, Paul gathered us into an actual circle – as opposed to a fragmented squiggle of chairs and bodies – and we discussed our trip.
A lot of people said a lot of really cool things, things that made me (and I assume everyone else) think. People talked about how this changed them, which took up the bulk, and shared some funny stories, which I’ve probably already shared. To List:
*Please note the sarcasm on my part, and not theirs.*
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