idelette

Last month this Topsy Foundation television commercial by Ogilvy Johannesburg and Egg Films won a Gold Lion award at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. It tells the true story of Selinah, an AIDS sufferer who experiences the ravaging effects of her disease being reversed over a period of 90 days through the administration of anti-retrovirals (ARVs).

Also kinda makes me rethink my definition of miracles.

Now meet Selinah, before and after.

Question: What does this do for your perception of AIDS?

Via AIDS: Reverse your perception – Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns.

I swam across the Pacific Ocean

with a backpack and skyblue sleeping bag.

I flew into the unknown and unknowingly

moved my life

from the front

to the back

of the Afrikaans-English dictionary.

Some days my clothes fit all backwards.

Question: If you had to paint a word picture of the place you find yourself in right now, where are you?

I am from.
By Idelette McVicker

I am from small.
I am from a world laid out with thick legal walls
that said: You may live here.
But another has to live there.

Laws divided
us and
them.

What the Fathers didn’t know
is when they kept us apart
they walled everybody in.
My spirit, my body, my world kept
white and small.

I am from small.

I am from broken.
As I looked to feed
my own deep hunger
I gave
and my woman bread fed curiosity, desire and
conquest.

I am from raw.
I am from separate.
I am from yearning.
I am from strife
streams of words that stabbed, cut deep, divided.
I am from silence.
I am from raw.

But I am also from Large.
From loud singing voices
and angry shouting fists.
I am from bold colours and even bolder prints.
I am from feet that dance
and waves that crash on untamed rocks.
I am from kilometers of white powdery beach.

Beautiful. Ever wild.
Large.

I am from history.
Hundreds of years of language and Story laid into every school brick.

I am from Love.
A mother who would sit into the early hours to sew my designs.
Who would tenderly hold me with her smile and her hand.

I am from a rising tide against injustice that finally erupted
in a big, beautiful birth.

I am from Hope.
because I have seen worlds change–
shift–
with consciousness, words, action
into Freedom.

I am from Large.
A little girl looking up and out
to the dark mountains
through the car window
knowing instinctively
my world would be a lot larger than the small I could feel
all around me.

I am from Large.

From Nan Fe with love

My lovely friend Andrea sent me this picture she took at the SA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010.

It sits so right:

“We must use time wisely and forever realise that time is always ripe to do right.”–Nelson Mandela

And if you didn’t quite get that in English, read the Chinese characters. I love when my world collides like this.

(Thank you, Andrea!)

Question: I would love to hear some of your favorite Mandela quotes, sayings or thoughts on this remarkable leader.

Tomorrow is Nelson Mandela’s birthday and also Mandela Day. It’s a global initiative proposed by 46664 and the Nelson Mandela Foundation as a day to honour and celebrate Nelson Mandela and his legacy. Watch this space for more thoughts on that tomorrow.

A simple act–like folding a cotton shirt–can launch me into another world and another time.

Tonight I put away my Amahoro T-shirt. I held the butter fabric in my hands, felt the weave under my fingers and looked at the logo one more time.

It’s been about a moon and a week already since we had our last meeting. A woman knows these things.

I remember being handed the registration pack on the Tuesday morning I arrived. I looked at the T-shirt and saw everyone in the room wearing them. I had missed the announcement about a group photo (that would have explained the sea of similarity), because I had just flown in from Canada. But I went to my room that morning and made a conscious choice to be part of the group: I put on the T-shirt.

I grew up wearing a school uniform from the first day of Grade 1 (or Sub A as we called it then in South Africa) until the last day of Grade 12. I was a proud student of Paarl Gymnasium, but wearing that uniform day in and day out literally led to a number of Theophostic prayer sessions. I’ll admit that.

That morning, however, I desired so badly to be part of something Larger than my story. I kicked at the spirit of segregation that still wants to come and cling to me like white skin. I waived my right to express my creative self. And I put on the T-shirt.

So, tonight, when I folded the shirt and put it away in my closet, I held it a little longer. I didn’t wear it for very long that day, but putting it on was part of my becoming whole during those few days. It was part of my belonging and identification with Africa, my new African friends and a river inside me that is rising.

I miss Africa tonight and I miss that moment in time at Amahoro.

I’ll admit that too.

Photo credit: Jaimi JJ Kercher

It happened the moment I took the airplane breadroll into my hand, broke it open, feeling both the warmth and the artificial microwave crustiness in my palms.

A friend had warned me that it happens to him after every Africa trip.

The tears came, first gently, but then I felt the swell. The wave of emotion riding up in me, like the breakers at Onrust beach near Hermanus where I’d spent Decembers as a girl. Big and powerful. I surfed the emotion, honoring the experiences of the past days and my body’s need to make sense of it all. I felt it, acknowledged it and reached for the Kleenex. I sat silently while passengers around me ate their breakfast, tears falling into my empty tray.

I don’t quite know what triggered it. Seeing a fellow passenger’s screen, perhaps, with the words: Flight time to Amsterdam: 1 hour. Maybe the finality of the moment; in an hour I will enter Europe and my few days in Kenya will be over.

Perhaps the breakfast itself. Even airplane food plated in stark contrast with the rice, beans and chapati of the past few days.

Or reading KLM’s statement in the breakfast container, explaining that they only use Rainforest Alliance Certified Coffee. It reminded me of our conversation at Amahoro on “Christ, Creation and Community.”

Thanks to Amahoro Africa I was introduced to a community of believers. l was embraced and offered a place at the Communion table with my fellow Africans.

Reclaiming my heritage, something that was stolen from me by a thick curtain of shame, was one of the deepest healing moments on the long journey to Freedom out of Apartheid.

“Oh, so you are an African.”

The two and a half days I got to spend in Nairobi sealed my African-ness. Talking to new Kenyan friends, sharing stories and drinking sweet, milky tea, getting red African soil all over the soles of my shoes, facing off mutatos as we crossed the busy streets of Nairobi. And then hearing friend after friend–once they hear I was born and raised on the continent–say: “Oh, so you are an African.” As if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Hearing those words were like being given brand-new clothes.

Even in my last hour, navigating through Nairobi traffic in pouring rain, my taxi driver Patrick and I were talking: about his work, his ministry and where I was from. (I’m making peace with the fact that answering that question stopped being simple the day I set foot in Taipei.) When he heard where I was from, again, he said those words that have become healing balm: “Oh, so you are an African.” And not only his words, but the matter-of-factness, the simplicity of his acknowledgment, was like wrapping a bright blue kikoi around my shoulders.

Those words have settled my soul.

So, when I broke the bread and the tears came, it wasn’t for anything in particular and yet it was for everything I’ve experienced these past few days. It was for every story that grabbed my heart. It was for every story that drew tears from me. It was for the music, the sun, the tropical afternoon showers. And it was for my own story.

It was for being reborn.

I flew Kenya Airways this morning from Mombasa to Nairobi and smiled when I read the KQ slogan: The Pride of Africa. I smiled, not because I thought it was ironic. I smiled because that very African pride was beginning to creep right into my own heart.

This past week I have shed yet another layer of Apartheid shame. I am even thinking there might not be too much left of that old story. Halle–Africa-lujah.

You see, this week I recognized myself as a white African. From the moment I set foot on this continent to the moment the music started playing and we worshiped together African style (meaning I needed space around me, so I could move) there was no way I could deny Africa beating right inside of me. The heat. Some chaos. The skies. The unmistakable beat. It all felt very close to the core of me. My blood and bones felt connected in a way to this continent that I am proud of: I was born here. Raised here. I was knit together in Africa.

The morning I walked into the Amahoro meeting, African friends embraced me and welcomed me into a circle, not of race or nationality, but of humanity. Friends.

Two days of big smiles and even bigger hugs. Two nights of dancing to Kenyan music and oldies, giving in to the beat inside of me. Two days of story, deep wisdom, honesty and sharing meals.

A Table Prepared for Us

Then on Thursday morning we celebrated communion. This must stand as the most meaningful moment at Amahoro for me this year. The table was set and we were invited up in groups of two. Kavira, a beautiful counselor from Goa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was sitting a few seats away and our eyes connected. We nodded and walked up to the table together.

My hands were shaking as she served me the bread and then the wine. My beautiful African sister from a country I have carried in my hearts and prayers for many years, was serving me the Eucharist. My heart exploded as I leaned over and served her the bread and the wine. We shared in the body and the blood. The moment was so big for me, I even forgot to say the beautiful words:

This is the bread of amahoro in Christ.
This is the cup of ubuntu in Christ.

Not only am I welcome at the table, there is a place prepared for me. A place where I can stand and be, right here on African soil.

So this morning, when Grace picked me up at the airport in Nairobi, we drove slowly, first through an industrial area and then weaved our way forward through hawkers, alongside trucks and local taxis. I sat in the back, soaking in every moment of thick heat and noise, savoring it, loving it. I watched this new, yet familiar world pass by outside the window and I noticed that feeling inside of me again: pride.

It surprized me a little. But now it’s beginning to make sense. Now that I’ve found my place again–restored to my origins and the continent where God had chosen for me to be birthed into–that shame is fizzling out. And it’s being replaced by pride.

This past week I have heard story after story of men and women who have risen up in their communities and cities to bring solution to the problems in front of them. I have heard heart stories and hard stories. I have heard my African friends tell their stories and struggles with truth, tears and hope. I have been wowed, astonished and humbled. I have been made proud.

I am flying back home to Canada seeing Africa, but also myself, through some very new lenses. It dawned on me that Africa doesn’t need my rescue or even my generosity. Rather, I am drawn to her. She is in me and I am in her. The relationship is mutual and it’s called Love.

There’s a scene in the movie Invictus that still lingers with me: Young boy standing outside the rugby stadium, catching the action from two nearby police officers’ car radio. The racial divide is tangible and the boy tries to steer clear. As the game unfolds, however their lives move closer; the young boy hones in. He gets closer and closer, in order to hear better. Love–for their country and the game–begins to unite them. In the end, the Springboks’ historic victory connects them, even for just a moment, across so many differences.

I was thinking of that scene yesterday when I learned about a new project in South Africa called Screens4Hope.

Imagine that same boy multiplied across the country in remote farming and mining communities, informal settlements and rural areas. That’s who we’re talking about.

Now think about the FIFA World Cup Soccer starting in a few weeks in South Africa.

These children will do whatever it takes to catch some of the action of their beloved game, including sneaking into adult establishments like bars and shebeens–not safe for children.

Screens4Hope has created a strategy to provide these children with television sets in a safe, communal environment. A place where they can catch the World Cup, just like the rest of the world. They are calling on companies, churches and individuals to sponsor a television set in these remote communities.

“They might be far away from the glitz and glamour of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Cape Town and Rustenburg where the FIFA 2010 soccer matches will be played, but still they are part of Mzansi*,” says Screens4Hope.

This is their mission:

Screens4Hope is an initiative of the Trail of Hope Foundation.

Growing up in South Africa, there used to be a television jingle for a furniture store called Joshua Doore: It said: “You have an uncle in the furniture business.” Today is one of those days when I wish I had an uncle (or aunt) in the furniture/electronics business. Maybe you do?

* South Africa

Tinyiko Sam Maluleke brings a voice of Reason to the political and emotional landscape of South Africa, walking out the death of white supremacist Eugene Terre’blanche.

A few great snippets:

Let it be so.

Read the rest here.

“Where are the voices of moderation? Where are the people preaching reconciliation and nation-building? We can’t rely on Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu anymore. They won’t be around forever. When our children ask us in the future what we did to save South Africa, will we say, ‘Well, I wrote a bunch of angry comments in an article about Julius Malema. And then when things really got bad, I wrote to the editor.’ That’s just not good enough.” –Sipho Hlongwane

Title aside, Hlongwane has written an excellent opinion piece on what is required after the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre’blanche two days ago. Read the rest of the article here.

(HT to @Tendaijoe and the US Mission to South Africa facebook fanpage.)