Report 5
October 24, 2000

Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, October 24, 2000

More than anything Africa is about change; beginnings and endings. Since our arrival, we have been under the hosting direction of Reverend Spiwo Xapile, with whom we parted with on Monday evening. We all had dinner together in the hotel with Spiwo and his wife Zethu. Life never makes leaving friends easy. Late that afternoon we had all hugged Veronica our Xhosa driver goodbye. Each day we paid Veronica money for her work and each day she bought more planks for the one room she was going to build in her church neighbor's yard for herself and her twin 10 year old boys. Veronica had truly been a teacher to all of us on how life is for 80% of South Africa's black population. The stories about Veronica are many.

Dr. Jan Du Toit

Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. a blue van was overpacked and we drove north to meet our next teacher, Dr. Jan Du Toit, professor of Industrial Psychology at the University of Stellenbosch. ( Jan's picture appears on the first report with Spiwo and myself ). Jan is a tall white Afrikaner who loves this country with a great and wonderful passion. He has dedicated much of his free time to working with Spiwo and the black township. A film has just been made of these two men and their work for the blacks of South Africa. Last year Jan was shot in the township but that made him all the more determined to continue his work.

To travel with Jan is to see an Africa that a tourist misses. For 13 hours we drove east using mountain roads with hairpin turns and narrow cliffs, followed by desert valleys, and I truly think most of the ostrich flocks that God created. At one point on a particularly steep mountain climb, we came upon a truck that had jackknifed and was totally blocking the mountain pass. To wait for the truck to be removed would take 5 hours, so Jan simply looked at the map and found a serviceable dirt road and more running ostrich.

By 8:00 p.m. we were into Eastern South Africa and we had crossed over Africa's highest bridge. We had reached the shores of the Indian Ocean. We found Jan's summer holiday home. 13 hours of traveling meant we had seen vistas the camera cannot capture, stopped at places in small towns and with strange Dutch names. We even helped Pat Murphy buy a high-English Ostrich hat. The end of the day came when we pulled up to a roadside restaurant and sat down for supper at tables with oil lamp lighting. For two hours, in the lamplight, the six of us sat and listened to Jan talked about South Africa; its heartache, it's glory, it's history, and it options. We fell into bed knowing that we had been promised that we would see elephants the next day.
-Chuck MacDonald

Chuck MacDonald and his wife, Beth are parishioners at St. Joan of Arc. Beth is director of a Montessori school.

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