Finally, a chance to breathe

You haven’t heard from me in awhile and I’ll try to explain.

Generally speaking, I feel like I can handle my work load. I stay busy, but tend to get things done with enough room to do some exploring and dreaming as well. However, through January and February there were about eight weeks straight that I felt like I was constantly behind. There was just too much to do! And by the time I got home I was too exhausted to do much more than put dinner together and read or just hang out. So I’m sorry for being a bit out of touch, but things are at a much better pace now.

What was I so busy with at work? The new term supposedly started on February first, though due to serious complications we had to postpone a week and then things started slowly after that. Meanwhile we had to register all our students, a relatively new process. We were also busy renovating the flat that the school has been located in and our new flat which is now accommodating the fledgling Visual Arts Department. There is no way for me to communicate how complicated these things were. We originally pictured ourselves getting all the painting done over a weekend. In reality, with the help of several volunteers, it took a month. Procuring materials for all the renovations was also a mission. It nearly became my fulltime job for several weeks. One day I spent over 5 hours at one building supply store, getting yanked around because the check form TLF was for too high an amount and they refused to reimburse us the difference. And then there were issues with my ID, since I’m not South African. I’ve also spent countless hours phoning, faxing and visiting stores to get quotations for our finance department and then countless more hours hounding the finance department to release us the money.

Registration also was far more complicated than we anticipated. And this was made more complicated when one of our supporters, who has been providing instruments and facilitators for some of our music classes since 2006, suddenly decided to pull out a week before the scheduled start of classes. We’re still wrestling with obtaining our own instruments, but we did manage to find new facilitators for all the classes, actually increasing our capacity with ten new facilitators in total! Now classes are running smoothly and with plenty of fresh energy with our new team. The start of classes has also meant my return to teaching. I now facilitate painting class on Mondays and Wednesdays and am truly enjoying it.

During all this madness I was concurrently working on TLF’s [re]branding homelessness initiative. We launched our international design contest on February 1st. Please check it out at www.rebrandinghomelessness.org.za. It represents a lot of work and we’re excited to see the proposals in May. In the middle of last week I sat down in the office for a few hours and for the first time in two months, was caught up on work. Since then the pace has become manageable and I’ve even started to claim some of my overtime hours.

In my last blog I mentioned that Robin and I temporarily moved into our friends’ flat for December and then moved back to our old place in January. We liked moving so much we decided to do it again at the beginning of February. This time the move was just to the adjacent flat. Robin and I are thrilled to have our own space- a three bedroom flat with kitchen, bathroom, patio and outdoor toilet. The toilet was a bit of a struggle at first, since it didn’t lock. Our toilet paper was disappearing, so we started keeping it inside. Then we would find remnants of phone book pages, which were obviously someone’s replacement for the toile paper. Just yesterday we finally got a lock for the toilet. On facebook I posted a bunch of pictures of the renovations we did of our little flat. We painted, cleaned and really transformed the whole space.

In February, Robin’s step-Mom also came to visit. It was great to have her with us and Robin got some time to travel with her. Robin and Margit treated me to a trip to Jozi for an amazing play and a visit to the Apartheid Museum in Soweto. It was a beautiful little vacation. I think Margit got a taste of everything while she was here: wild animals in the reserve, city life, the arts, a run-in with the police and even a first hand experience with crime.

Which brings me to the next reason I haven’t been writing much. On Marit’s last night with us, someone apparently climbed through Robin’s window (between the bugler bars) and stole Robin’s computer. This has been devastating, since all Robin’s pictures, music and writings for the last four of five years were on that computer. It has also meant that we can no longer listen to music, watch DVD’s, do yoga (from our Rodney Yee videos) or write at home. That Monday night was the beginning of a week of crime in our area, culminating in a violent crime against one of our fellow volunteers. Since then there have been many new safety precautions put into place and I do feel safe again. I believe that all of these things have been a spiritual attack on us and what we are doing in this city. The hardest hit has been the anti-human trafficking coalition which lost much important information when Robin’s computer was stolen in the same week that another computer broke and an important notebook was lost. We really feel this is confirmation that our work here matters. Please pray for our safety and the success of these projects.

I have now officially requested two weeks of leave to travel in Zimbabwe with Mandla. The highlight of the trip will be visiting Victoria Falls, but I’m also excited to visit the place where he grew up and meet his old friends and family. Pray for our safety as we cross borders and navigate through the country.

Until next time!