So my last post was a little angsty. I think everyone in my GL group (nicknamed the Stormers, after the rugby team) was feeling it this week. Service week was heavy. Our friends in the group who did their service week before us warned us that it was emotionally exhausting. It was one of those things you can't really imagine until you're engrossed in the situation yourself- because we had no idea what we were in for. It's still hard to process everything that's happened. I don't think the real gravity of it all will hit me for a while. I'm still in shock-mode.

I think I was a little bit in shock all this week. I didn't cry once, which is a pretty significant deal for me, as I cry pretty easily with really moving things. I have several friends who told me about how they were, on multiple occasions, completely reduced to tears, either while at the township or just in thinking about it. One girl in my host family group broke down because, while we were handing out donated chocolate bread and juice to kids at Ms. Fiela's, she realized that she was directly controlling how much those kids would have to eat that day.

Thursday, I did not want to go to the township. At all. I woke up with a pretty intense headache, and had zero desire to be around chaotic, screaming kids. When we got there, we went to the blacktop behind the primary school, rather than the small, concrete community center room we had been in on Tuesday. For the first few minutes, while we were setting the speakers up and waiting for school to let out, I was debating asking another service leader- maybe from arts and crafts- to switch with me, because I didn't think I had the energy to be dancing and jumping around with the kids. Before I could make up my mind, though, the kids started coming over. One of the other music/dance leaders, Kelsey- one of the friendliest, most energetic, most sincere people I've ever met- started a dancing name game, and soon we were all dancing together... me included. You guys, I did the wop. I wopped. Or whatever. Me! Imagine that. It was all because a little girl came up to me, while I was standing sort of outside the dancing circle, and grabbed my hand. She was quiet, very shy- and when I asked her "Don't you want to dance?", and she shook her head no, I realized how much my not dancing could be impacting her willingness to try it. So I sucked it up, wopped, and by the end of the day, a big group of us- ages 3 to 20- had made up a dance to do together when we go back in a week and a half for a final celebration day with the township. After that, my family group went to see Ms. Fiela at her house. We handed out yogurts to the kids, took a few pictures, and heard some beautiful stories from Ms. Fiela. 

Even after such a nice end to yesterday, today was the only day this week I felt genuinely saddened to leave Sir Laury's. It's not that I didn't care the other days, but the selfish desire to alleviate the shock and emotional weight I felt pressing on me was enough to offset what I was feeling about staying versus leaving. Today, after spending hours spinning kids around and letting them jump on me and having little girls braid my hair, none of that baggage mattered at all. Two spunky but sweet six year old girls really took a liking to me today, for some reason. I had to peel them off of me at the end, promising I'd see them again in a week and a half when we come back. I don't want to imagine how I'm going to feel when, in a week and a half, I can't make that same promise another time.

I don't think it was until today that what we were really doing in Sir Laury's clicked with me. We kept talking about how the intangible effects of what we were doing would be so much more beneficial and lasting than any tangible things we could provide the community with, and I thought "Yeah, yeah, I get it... making connections and all that." Sometimes things like that- big ideas, especially ones that are repeated over and over- have no substantial effect on you whatsoever... until suddenly, they do. They're just words you may think you understand, but really have no grasp on, until- due to some shift in the cosmos, or whatever it is- they actually sink in, and suddenly they seem so real and so significant that you want to kick yourself for ever thinking you knew anything about it before that moment, or for taking for granted what it really meant. Or maybe that's all just me, but anyway...

A happy end to a rough week. This weekend, I'm going to Stellanbosch with a big group. I think we're going to two wineries and one brandy place, and then staying the night in a hostel. Stellanbosch is supposed to be really quaint- and also a college town! Next week is "education week" for the Stormers- we'll be visiting Robben Island, a vineyard, going to the Cape Point (the southernmost point of Africa!), and we have a free day (along with a lot of free afternoons) for adventuring and chilling out.

My roommate just walked in and said "I had wild beast for dinner." (She meant wildebeest.) When in Africa...

-M

PS: A lot of the kids in the community wear Toms Shoes. I had never been convinced that the Toms organization really lived up to their mission statement before then. It was cool to see some of the Global LEADers walking around in their Toms holding the kids' hands who were wearing theirs.