Report 2
October 20, 2000
Cape Town, South Africa, Friday, October 20, 2000
Those of us who remember world geography knew of the perilous struggle early sailors had trying to get around the Cape of Good Hope. Five of us stood on it's highest point Thursday and knew that we were viewing one of the world's most beautiful sites. However, if you climb down a bit to the eastern side, you are stunned by the fury of the winds and the sheer straight drop hundreds of feet to the rocks below. Your feelings in a matter of minutes go from awe to fright and that is what one feels most of the time in South Africa. It is always about contrasts. The bustling glamorous city wrapped in a ring of abject poverty, the scars of Apartheid that get in the way of conversation, and the increasing talk about HIV/AIDS in restaurants…it is all about contrasts.
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Yesterday Reverend Spiwo shared with us a document that stated that by 2005 South Africa would have 2 million orphans. To survive as a nation this would mean that 4 out of 5 families in South Africa would have to become foster homes. Friday we spent the morning with some of those orphans. It can never be too easy to be in a room full of small wide-eyed children starving for some adult touch. The longer we stayed with them, the stronger the emotional winds blew inside of all of us.
Both Thursday and Friday seemed to be about the ends of things. Thursday the five of us stood at the very end of a continent, Friday we stood in the hallways of a hospice surrounded by too many people at the end of life. The Sisters of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, allowed us to walk among and visit with their patients. These very brave and lonely men, women, and children facing their sickness with little or no medication and are truly life's orphans. They are taken to the Sisters of Charity because nobody wants them and for them, the end of life is hard.
Before we left the Twin Cities, one of St. Joan's parishioners had given Pat Murphy a generous check and said that we were to use it for a nice meal out. On the way back to town from the Sisters of Charity's hospice, Pat Murphy quietly announced that she had slipped the money into the hand of the sister and there would be no paid for 'nice' supper. Nobody objected or spoke. We were deep into our own thoughts and emotions trying to deal with the contrast of it all.
-Chuck MacDonald
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