That trip through South Africa was enlightening for me. I didn't mean that as a pun when I wrote it, but turns out it is one. I traveled with the bare minimums.
Defining bare minimums will be different for each person. It was the first time I traveled with a laptop computer so as to keep in touch via e-mail. Other than that bunch of cords and
hardware, I kept my accumulation of books, clothes, toiletries & toy to a minimum. I needed to be able to pull it all in a small case behind me or carry it in a backpack. Other than when I was using the rental car, I boarded buses and trains, walked from border post to border post across the Limpopo River and wandered in search of food. The foraging for food usually involved corner stores or bakeries and sometimes a KFC.
Between projects and friendly accommodations, I stayed in hostels or guesthouses and used public transport. There were many times when I only spoke to people or had any human touch when exchanging money for goods. There were often shy smiles or polite words exchanged. I was in limbo, a marginal existence with no daily connections with family or friends or associates. It was both freeing and frightening.
I journaled and read. I thought and walked and prayed and explored who I was in the absence of others who might want to try to tell me. I was becoming me in ways I had not before. There I was at 34, discovering, peeling back layers and having to be comfortable in my own company.
I wasn't always comfortable. Sometimes I thought, "This is how people become homeless!" They become disconnected from their networks and just wander. I wondered, "Should I disappear, how long would it be until someone noticed?"
South Africa was not a peaceful place and violence on trains in that area was especially common. Fire bombs would often be thrown in to fast moving carriages where the wind rushing through open windows would whip the flames into unsurvivable infernos.
At one point I was helping with projects at a remote school in Transkei, the area beyond the Kei River, and I fit in quite well. I could have stayed and was tempted. But I realised that God was not yet done with His project, me. When the time was right, the project finished and the truck was making it's next trip to town, I was on it.
Enroute we came across an accident where a young boy had died. There was a bit of chaos around the crash site and then this one small body alone, flung into a field. I walked over and squatted beside him. I prayed, not necessarily for him, but just in communion with God. I thought of the boy's life; too short, much potential probably unrealised, many dreams unfulfilled. I thought too of the suffering he would avoid, of the heartache he'd not feel, of the disappointments he'd not face.
It was an odd, and an enlightening moment for me. God was there with me in that midst of it. Near the southeast coast of Africa, on a dripping wet day in the middle of nowhere according to most people, a boy had died and the world was irrevocably changed.
When we continued our journey, reached a dusty road and then the small town, I again set off alone, but in companionship with God in a way that was different from when I had arrived. Another layer was peeled off.
I am not now nor do I think I ever will be invincible, fearless or immune to suffering in this world. I do think that season in South Africa was formative for me, a furnace of sorts where I was refined, polished or softened up a bit. Choose your own metaphor. Though it was a difficult season, it did not toughen me up so much as it gave me a sensitivity to the big picture of God at work beyond my comfort zones.
It made me appreciate relationships and networks, but not to cling to them out of fear. It made me see clearly how fragile a life can be, not only a life that has ended but lives that continue but in isolation. Of what value is the person who seems to offer nothing productive to society? Of what value is the life that fits none of the normal molds? Are only those with fixed abodes and regular income normal? Is normal necessarily good?
When that journey ended, I carried both more and less with me. Fewer possessions. More insight. Less of preconceptions and comfortable molds. More of God and acceptance of deviation from the norm.
I wonder how such a journey would be similar or different at my age now? What would I learn? What would I be reminded of or see anew? Maybe I'll need to plan a journey; Europe this time? More expensive, but there are huge portions of it I've not experienced.
Defining bare minimums will be different for each person. It was the first time I traveled with a laptop computer so as to keep in touch via e-mail. Other than that bunch of cords and
hardware, I kept my accumulation of books, clothes, toiletries & toy to a minimum. I needed to be able to pull it all in a small case behind me or carry it in a backpack. Other than when I was using the rental car, I boarded buses and trains, walked from border post to border post across the Limpopo River and wandered in search of food. The foraging for food usually involved corner stores or bakeries and sometimes a KFC.Between projects and friendly accommodations, I stayed in hostels or guesthouses and used public transport. There were many times when I only spoke to people or had any human touch when exchanging money for goods. There were often shy smiles or polite words exchanged. I was in limbo, a marginal existence with no daily connections with family or friends or associates. It was both freeing and frightening.
I journaled and read. I thought and walked and prayed and explored who I was in the absence of others who might want to try to tell me. I was becoming me in ways I had not before. There I was at 34, discovering, peeling back layers and having to be comfortable in my own company.
I wasn't always comfortable. Sometimes I thought, "This is how people become homeless!" They become disconnected from their networks and just wander. I wondered, "Should I disappear, how long would it be until someone noticed?"
South Africa was not a peaceful place and violence on trains in that area was especially common. Fire bombs would often be thrown in to fast moving carriages where the wind rushing through open windows would whip the flames into unsurvivable infernos.
At one point I was helping with projects at a remote school in Transkei, the area beyond the Kei River, and I fit in quite well. I could have stayed and was tempted. But I realised that God was not yet done with His project, me. When the time was right, the project finished and the truck was making it's next trip to town, I was on it.Enroute we came across an accident where a young boy had died. There was a bit of chaos around the crash site and then this one small body alone, flung into a field. I walked over and squatted beside him. I prayed, not necessarily for him, but just in communion with God. I thought of the boy's life; too short, much potential probably unrealised, many dreams unfulfilled. I thought too of the suffering he would avoid, of the heartache he'd not feel, of the disappointments he'd not face.
It was an odd, and an enlightening moment for me. God was there with me in that midst of it. Near the southeast coast of Africa, on a dripping wet day in the middle of nowhere according to most people, a boy had died and the world was irrevocably changed.
When we continued our journey, reached a dusty road and then the small town, I again set off alone, but in companionship with God in a way that was different from when I had arrived. Another layer was peeled off.
I am not now nor do I think I ever will be invincible, fearless or immune to suffering in this world. I do think that season in South Africa was formative for me, a furnace of sorts where I was refined, polished or softened up a bit. Choose your own metaphor. Though it was a difficult season, it did not toughen me up so much as it gave me a sensitivity to the big picture of God at work beyond my comfort zones.
It made me appreciate relationships and networks, but not to cling to them out of fear. It made me see clearly how fragile a life can be, not only a life that has ended but lives that continue but in isolation. Of what value is the person who seems to offer nothing productive to society? Of what value is the life that fits none of the normal molds? Are only those with fixed abodes and regular income normal? Is normal necessarily good?
When that journey ended, I carried both more and less with me. Fewer possessions. More insight. Less of preconceptions and comfortable molds. More of God and acceptance of deviation from the norm.
I wonder how such a journey would be similar or different at my age now? What would I learn? What would I be reminded of or see anew? Maybe I'll need to plan a journey; Europe this time? More expensive, but there are huge portions of it I've not experienced.
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