Painting by Heart: The Circle Begins

We arrived in Johannesburg on Friday just as the sun was setting. Our driver Howard Johnson piled all 10 of us and our luggage into his van and drove us to our temporary home. Mosaiek (the church we were partnering with) owns a retreat property called Origins about 45 minutes outside of the city. Once we left the lights of Johannesburg, we were travelling in the pitch dark and Howard began describing the surroundings to us. As we entered the Origins property, Howard named all of the animals that inhabited the property, lions and rhinos among them. At one point, he stopped the van and told us that if he were to turn off the van's headlights, we would see hundreds of eyes shining in the dark, just watching us. As we entered the secured gates enclosing the housing, we noticed powerful electric fences topped by barbed wire which Howard informed us were "game fences" to keep the wild animals away from the inhabited part of the retreat center. The next day, when we mentioned Howard's wonderful introduction to our rural surroundings to one of the local team leaders, he had a good laugh. The "game fences" are there to keep people out and the only animals that we were likely to see and hear would be cows, sheep and the Origins mascot, a dog named Bushman. That gives you a good idea of the fun that Howard had with us and why he became an integral part of our experience. Howard is a bush-guide for hire and we all would love to venture off into other parts of Africa with him. He was a true blessing to us and experienced everything that we did on the trip.

As it turns out, Rita Dickerson (my roomate at Origins) and I did have our own little wildlife encounter. We shared our room with a cute little frog. I found him charming, but Rita was less excited about this third roomate, so in essence, I became a frog-wrangler whose main responsibility was to chase our new African friend out of the room daily.

"Afro"

This photo gives you an idea of our surroundings at Origins. We didn't have much time there during the day, but waking to the beautiful surroundings each morning was so refreshing. I already mentioned the fences surrounding the property and we were faithfully watched over by guards who patrolled the property at all times. Origins is in a location known as "The Cradle of Humankind," called that because the oldest evolutionary fossil thought to be human was found here. It seemed so fitting that as "Awakening Artists" coming to awaken creativity in the South African churches, we should be cradled in the location of God's greatest creative work--humankind. So, the circle for Saturday is that of this cradle's location and significance in which we were nestled.

Our first day, Saturday, began with a visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. There was such an overwhelming amount of information that it was impossible to take it all in, but I found that having read Cry the Beloved Country, I had a good background for what I saw. It was impossible to view this history without comparing it to America's own history of slavery and the civil rights' struggles of the 60's. While our civil rights movement occurred 50 years ago, it has only been 10 years since Apartheid ended in South Africa and one can't help comparing the slow but sure racial progress in America with the long journey South Africa has before it.
We next visited the Mosiaek Church campus for some very helpful cultural training regarding the differences between White North Americans and Black Africans, two halves of the circle formed by the peoples of South Africa. By the way, in South Africa, the races are referred to as either white, black or colored. Some of the differences described to me were very evident in our encounters and did a lot to describe what we saw and how I ended up being effected by the black Africans. Americans are "Me" oriented, lead with the question "Who are you?," live for the future, value our children above all as our future and identity, and see the world in black and white. The black Africans think in terms of "We," and are more concerned with who you are versus what you do. They define themselves by the past through family history, respect their elders as the most valuable members of their community, and see the world less in a "glass half empty or glass half full" manner and more as an onion of layers of truth.

The day ended with a South African "braai" (barbeque) at a home looking down on all of Johannesburg. I met two women that evening that were to spend a great deal of the week with us, Estelle and DK. Both are on staff with Mosaiek. Estelle's job is to organize trips for visiting teams, and DK is the director of the Emthonjeni Community Center that we would be visiting during our stay. I learned that both of them loved to paint and create.