Anger

I want to be angry at God. I have seen some of the most atrocious injustices, met the faces of the silent poor, heard the suffering in the voices of those that still have them, and felt the hopelessness that these people fight against every day. I want to be angry at God. I want it to be His fault so I don’t have to look any further into whose fault it might actually be. I want to scream and yell and beg Him for the answer as to why He’s allowing all of these things to happen to incredible, beautiful people. The people I’m surrounded with are angry and upset and frustrated with God, but my heart can’t feel anything at all. It is in those moments where we’re frustrated to the point of the absence of emotion, God reminds us of who He is. I’m re-reading a book called Intercessory Prayer about why prayer is even necessary and how to release God’s power through prayer. In the first chapter (which is the chapter I read this week as I was feeling void of emotion) Sheets explains that the reason we need to ask God for things is because He gave us authority over the earth. Back when Adam was created, God gave him the responsibility of watching over the earth and everything in it. And then, through a simple act of rebellion, our world came crashing down. It’s not that God has done this to us… it’s that we have done this to ourselves. So now the emotion that I feel is sadness… sadness that we as human beings have failed our brothers and sisters by not taking care of them and loving them has God does. He even re-sent us an example in Christ of how to love each other and we still can’t get it right. So my heart is heavy with sadness, but urgency to experience more of what this means and to encourage people to look past their anger at God and to take responsibility so that we can move forward and start undoing the mess that we have created.

So now what? That’s always my next question. What do I need to do now that I have this information? What are some action steps I can take? Well, I can tell you, I can encourage the people around me here in South Africa to think about this as a counterargument as to why God would allow this to happen, and then I can go and do something in the community that surrounds me and encourage you to do the same. This week the non-nursing students are starting their community engagement projects and the nursing students were able to sit in on the introduction of the course that will be taught by Francis Njoroge. It is an incredible course about how to go into a community to facilitate growth and understanding of their own needs and how they can improve their quality of life from within their own context. The non-nursing students will be using the material in this course to start a project with specific African groups of people to try and help them discover some problem areas in their communities and work toward developing solutions to those problems. For me, it’s giving me tools with which to take into communities at home as well as preparation for things to come and it’s teaching me to be culturally relevant and focused on building peoples’ capacity so they can do things for themselves by walking with them toward their own personal goal.

Ok… I have to tell you about the other parts of my fantastic week that don’t have to do with life revelations! Last weekend was a catch-up weekend… on sleep, strength, and homework. We were supposed to go hiking in the Drakensberg mountains to go see some sand paintings done by the bushmen, but the weather here is ridiculous and they wouldn’t let us go in the rain, so we stayed home and hung out around campus.

Monday began homecoming week, which for normal APU students is a semi-big deal, but we went all out. It was like high school spirit week on steroids. We had dress-up competitions between our chalets every day and activities almost every night. We started out the week with by roasting marshmallows and making makeshift S’mores out of Marie cookies and Cadbury chocolate and small marshmallows that we had to double-up. Monday was inside out and backwards day and we all put our clothes on inside out and backwards and walked around campus in that all day long. Mind you, there is a conference going on at the center this week, so we’re having meals with a group of people who look at us like we’re crazy every time they see us.

Tuesday brought an interesting day. I was supposed to be at an HIV and AIDS facility that does research at the same time as treat patients, but instead, they sent me to the clinic next door where I was of far more use. I saw primary health care (chronic patients who need medication and colds) and drew bloods in a room by myself, and spent time with the equivalent of an LVN in the states who was taking blood pressures, giving Depo (contraceptive) shots, and taking blood sugars. He let me do a lot, but I noticed that he was very flirtations with his patients which bothered me a little. At lunch time, he took me on a walk to go and see the community because I hadn’t been there before. We walked the dirt roads and met the women in the community and he literally flirted with every woman we walked by, which made me uncomfortable. When we got back, I had about an hour left and he proceeded to flirt with me for the remainder of the time with me. I didn’t really know what to do. He was talking about flying to the U.S. and paying labolo (the bride price) for me and bringing me back to have his 7 children and kept asking me when I was coming back to see him. I was composed enough, but in my head I was just angry. All I could think of was these poor women who had to subject themselves to being cared for by this man because they don’t have the rights that he does here and they don’t have a voice to stand up for themselves. Ugg. So frustrating. When we got back to campus (after much venting in the car about my anger) we got dressed up for crazy hair and mismatch day and it snapped me out of my anger and helped me focus on the beauty of being in this place aside from all of the things that are wrong with the system.

Wednesday was another incredible day. We dressed in black and white, went to the mall for a cup of coffee, and then headed out to the Drakensberg mountains to listen to the Drakensberg boys choir. They are a group of 4th-9th graders whose main focus in school is singing and they are incredible. I had goose bumps multiple times and you could just drink in the beauty of the music as they did songs from all eras including classical, contemporary, and traditional South African music. They even did “We Will Rock You” by Queen and added a little stomp in with their South African music. Thursday was a very uneventful day out at Caprica (which is the HIV and AIDS facility I was supposed to be at on Tuesday) and I literally did nothing all day because there wasn’t anything to do besides paperwork and do blood pressures which my sister insisted on doing herself. We went back home to twin day and had just a few hours to prepare for an “Air Band” competition which turned into a dance competition. Allison and Teresa choreographed our dance to “Battlefield” by Jordan Sparks and which was so amazing and we came in with war paint and dressed in black and busted out an awesome dance! After the competition (which I still think we should have won) we busted out a spontaneous dance party in preparation for the “Homecoming” dance the next night. Friday was color day and our whole chalet dressed in pink and we ended the day in a Brie (BBQ) and a tacky dress dance. We looked aweful and it was amazing! I got to do big stage makeup on a bunch of people which made it glorious and we just danced our hearts out for a few hours.

All in all, it was a glorious week and I can’t wait to tell you about the weekend, but I’ll save that for another day! Thanks for reading so much! I’ll try to cut the next one down ; ) Enjoy the pictures and leave me some comments! Miss and love you all!