Week 7 – “Come down to the river. Come and let yourself in. Make good on a promise to never hurt again…”

I had to double check my previous entry to be sure that I have in fact been here seven weeks. Yowza. I’m not sure if I have much that’s new and totally mind-blowing to talk about (except for that last thing I’m gonna mention)...

I’m still enjoying all that I’m doing in my work at the ASF office. Plans for the chaplains’ retreat are coming along quite nicely. My other big project, compiling the history of ASF, is also going well, but based on the piles of papers and the rate that I get through them, I think it may be a year-long effort for me to get through everything. The commute’s more tiring than the actual workday; it’s not troublesome in any way – just long enough to be tiring between the walking, the train, and the taxi. It’s never boring though. At least once a week something worthy of a story happens.

For instance, let’s talk about taxis. Every day, I go to the row of taxis between the KFC and city hall and find the one going to Omah (I just learned how to pronounce that; I’m not going to pretend that I can spell it) by asking one of the dozen-or-so regular drivers. Taxis have to be full (or have been there 20-40 min – sometimes with me on board waiting that long) before they can head out and drop off passengers at their respective locations. Last week, I was in a taxi (think – 12-passenger van) with sixteen people. Standing room only. A seventeenth almost boarded, but she said “I don’t want to die today.” I almost cracked up as we rode along. It’s the kind of thing that I might have found stressful when I first got here – but no longer. Then, there was the day I got on the taxi just as it was leaving; it was like Christmas. No wait at all. Anyway, this is part of my daily commute, and I’ve been here long enough that more and more of those drivers are starting to recognize me (as the well-camouflaged tall white American girl that I am, haha I know). I walk up and they say “Ooma!” and point me towards the right taxi in the line-up.

Even more exciting than this taxi business (haha) was last Friday’s 7:15am Eucharist at the cathedral (if you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you’ll remember that this would be St George’s in Cape Town). There have not been too many times I’ve gone to church that early, nor have there been (geekfest Star Trek and Stargate conventions aside) more than a handful of times that I’ve been starstruck (no pun intended). What do these things have to do with eachother, you ask? Well, check this out; Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was celebrant in all of his awesome Desmond Tutu glory. We exchanged the peace.

There was something like 75 people there , crowded into the chapel on the side of the main part of the cathedral. I think at least 2/3 were visitors (most visiting from the Semester-at-Sea ship) and at least half it seemed were American; Desmond had people introduce themselves if they were visitors. Three other people in the room were from New Jersey. Sadly, they left too quickly for me to talk to them, but I do remember where they were from. The man was an Methodist pastor from Princeton and the two women were from Plainfield, a town over from where I grew up and a few blocks from my home parish. Again, Cape Town doesn’t always feel too far away.