Today is a holiday, the Day of Reconciliation, which is celebrated every year in South Africa on the 16th of December. So instead of getting ready for work after doing my morning stretches, I went for a walk. First I walked around the Guest House yards a few times. I saw flowers that I hadn’t noticed before.
Then I walked outside the first gate and around the outside of the House of Mercy. Again there were places that I don’t usually walk when I am just going home. Finally I walked outside of that gate and down the driveway which is paved with bricks set in circles for the entire length until I got to the street.
I was reminded of how it was when I walked on the Jamestown College campus when the students were away on vacation for the summer. Things were very quiet, but the grounds were obviously tended and cared for. There was a peacefulness in the entire place.
Then when I went for the 10 AM Mass in the St. Francis chapel, I was able to carry a pen and some paper with me. Usually my pockets are too full when I go to work as I carry foot rub lotion, gloves, mask, keys, and other things in my pockets when I am working. So then there is no room for a pen. So today after Mass I was able to copy the words of a song that I have liked. I wanted to share these words with you that are meaningful to me. The song is by Estelle White.
1. Oh, the love of my Lord is the essence
Of all that I love here on earth.
All the beauty I see
He has given to me
And his giving is gentle as silence.
2. Every day, every hour, every moment
Have been blessed by the strength of his love
At the turn of each tide
He is there at my side
And his touch is as gentle as silence.
3. There’ve been times when I’ve turned from his presence
And I’ve walked other paths, other ways
But I’ve called on his name
In the dark of my shame
And his mercy was gently as silence.
___________________________
I hope that things are going well for you.
Cecilia
Friday, December 16, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Holiday Exodus
Many people are traveling for the Holidays. The school year has ended so the school children have 4 to 6 weeks of vacation now, similar to the summer vacation in the United States. And of course this is summer here in South Africa. Besides the children being on vacation, many adults have a long vacation at this time of the year. Some places of business close down for 4 weeks. Others take the time off for the Holidays.
Here at St. Francis Care Center we are also experiencing people leaving. Last week the man who lives in a little house just outside of the Guest House went home to another African country for several weeks. The House of Mercy, which is a facility dealing with addictions, closed down for a month. They are situated very close to the guest house where we live, and we even share clothes lines in the few feet between our buildings. Our house mate, Steven, who works at the Care Center is going home to Malawi next week.
Then there are the other people from the Care Center who are leaving. The teacher of the children from the Rainbow Cottage is leaving today, as is the receptionist at the Care Center. Our Center manager and our head housekeeper will be gone for the week surrounding Christmas. Some people go on holiday to family, others go to recreational sites. But this is the biggest time in the year for these activities.
And many of the patients who are well enough to go home with family for a few days will also be leaving soon. In addition to that, the 12 patients who have been at the hospice since last July that came from the nursing facility that had the serious fire will all be discharged at the end of December if not sooner.
Tim and I will be here at the Center throughout the Holidays. Tim will be helping Father Stan with the Church services. We are scheduled to pick up the donated food from the grocery store on the weekends including Christmas and New Years weekend. And we will be working during the week also.
We wish each of you a very Blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year!
Tim and Cecilia
Here at St. Francis Care Center we are also experiencing people leaving. Last week the man who lives in a little house just outside of the Guest House went home to another African country for several weeks. The House of Mercy, which is a facility dealing with addictions, closed down for a month. They are situated very close to the guest house where we live, and we even share clothes lines in the few feet between our buildings. Our house mate, Steven, who works at the Care Center is going home to Malawi next week.
Then there are the other people from the Care Center who are leaving. The teacher of the children from the Rainbow Cottage is leaving today, as is the receptionist at the Care Center. Our Center manager and our head housekeeper will be gone for the week surrounding Christmas. Some people go on holiday to family, others go to recreational sites. But this is the biggest time in the year for these activities.
And many of the patients who are well enough to go home with family for a few days will also be leaving soon. In addition to that, the 12 patients who have been at the hospice since last July that came from the nursing facility that had the serious fire will all be discharged at the end of December if not sooner.
Tim and I will be here at the Center throughout the Holidays. Tim will be helping Father Stan with the Church services. We are scheduled to pick up the donated food from the grocery store on the weekends including Christmas and New Years weekend. And we will be working during the week also.
We wish each of you a very Blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year!
Tim and Cecilia
Friday, December 2, 2011
Aids Day World Wide
December 1st is the day that Aids is discussed and written about around the world. I found that the December 1 issue of The Times newspaper published in South Africa on International Aids Day had some interesting facts.
"More than 42,000 babies born in South Africa last year began life HIV-positive. A Medical Research Council study presented at the national Aids conference in June showed that the national mother-to-child HIV transmission rate was 3.5%. In 2008 the figure was 8.8%." So progress is being made. " Lead researcher Ameena Goga said that national average trasmission rate of 3.5% was based on HIV tests on babies up to eight weeks old. But if the study had been on 18 month old babies the trasnmission rate would have been 'likely to exceed 5% because of mixed feeding practices and shortages of prophylactic drugs.'"
"South Africa also has the most children under the age of 14 living with HIV in the world - 333,941. . . . UNAids reports that more than 29,000 South African children under 14 die from Aids every year."
So there is progress being made in the fight against HIV/Aids. But there is still a great deal of improvement to work toward. There is stigma in South Africa that prevents testing and early treatment. There are many new cases of HIV in all age groups. And there are some areas of the country where the Anti-Viral medications are difficult to obtain.
The St. Francis Care Center can now be proud of the fact that there have been no children at their Rainbow Cottage that have died of AIDS in the past three years.
Cecilia
"More than 42,000 babies born in South Africa last year began life HIV-positive. A Medical Research Council study presented at the national Aids conference in June showed that the national mother-to-child HIV transmission rate was 3.5%. In 2008 the figure was 8.8%." So progress is being made. " Lead researcher Ameena Goga said that national average trasmission rate of 3.5% was based on HIV tests on babies up to eight weeks old. But if the study had been on 18 month old babies the trasnmission rate would have been 'likely to exceed 5% because of mixed feeding practices and shortages of prophylactic drugs.'"
"South Africa also has the most children under the age of 14 living with HIV in the world - 333,941. . . . UNAids reports that more than 29,000 South African children under 14 die from Aids every year."
So there is progress being made in the fight against HIV/Aids. But there is still a great deal of improvement to work toward. There is stigma in South Africa that prevents testing and early treatment. There are many new cases of HIV in all age groups. And there are some areas of the country where the Anti-Viral medications are difficult to obtain.
The St. Francis Care Center can now be proud of the fact that there have been no children at their Rainbow Cottage that have died of AIDS in the past three years.
Cecilia
Monday, November 28, 2011
A Day of Compliments
This is Cecilia writing for Tim and Cecilia.
I was working at the Hospice this morning, collecting the breakfast dishes from patients in bed who are too sick to eat in the dining room. One patient told me that he was having many pains and wished a rub. I said that I would return when all the dishes were collected. The first time I returned he was making a dash for the bathroom to vomit after his food and medication. I returned later and following his directions, rubbed his back, his legs and feet, his neck, and finally his head.The last request was a bit unusual, but following his directives, I did rub the sides of his head. When he was satisfied, he said that "I will love you until you die". Now this seems an extreme compliment for a rub. But other people in South Africa had told me that they loved me on the first day we met, so I am thinking that it is just a cultural thing with people who know many languages but not much English. But I do think of it as a compliment.
The next compliment came from a woman also confined to bed. She is so thin that my fingers and thumb can reach around her upper arm as well as many places of her legs. She had me rub her back, her arms and her legs. Then she said "You gave me such a nice rub".
Then there were several patients who I rubbed and exercised because they have experienced strokes with paralysis. All of them have increasing motility since we began the exercises, which they and I can both rejoice about. This is another kind of a compliment.
That is all for today. But I am hoping to do more frequent blogs when things in my life seem to warrant a comment.
Cecilia
I was working at the Hospice this morning, collecting the breakfast dishes from patients in bed who are too sick to eat in the dining room. One patient told me that he was having many pains and wished a rub. I said that I would return when all the dishes were collected. The first time I returned he was making a dash for the bathroom to vomit after his food and medication. I returned later and following his directions, rubbed his back, his legs and feet, his neck, and finally his head.The last request was a bit unusual, but following his directives, I did rub the sides of his head. When he was satisfied, he said that "I will love you until you die". Now this seems an extreme compliment for a rub. But other people in South Africa had told me that they loved me on the first day we met, so I am thinking that it is just a cultural thing with people who know many languages but not much English. But I do think of it as a compliment.
The next compliment came from a woman also confined to bed. She is so thin that my fingers and thumb can reach around her upper arm as well as many places of her legs. She had me rub her back, her arms and her legs. Then she said "You gave me such a nice rub".
Then there were several patients who I rubbed and exercised because they have experienced strokes with paralysis. All of them have increasing motility since we began the exercises, which they and I can both rejoice about. This is another kind of a compliment.
That is all for today. But I am hoping to do more frequent blogs when things in my life seem to warrant a comment.
Cecilia
Friday, September 16, 2011
September - - the Marcy viewpoint from Africa
A bit of news - - - a bit of reflection - - - a bit of hope
We recently visited the internationally acclaimed Apartheid museum in Johannesburg. Through photos, interactive displays, film clips, two longer films, and hundreds of actual items and displays with aural or written descriptions, the visitor is taken on a journey of understanding of what apartheid did to this country. The basic principle behind apartheid is simple -- separate everything; cut a clean line through a nation to divide black from white and keep them divided. To help the visitor begin to understand what this entails, each person who purchases an admittance ticket is randomly assigned a color -- black or white -- and goes into the museum at the corresponding entrance where, for the first ten or fifteen minutes, he or she is cut off from those of the other color, and is exposed to different kinds and qualities of displays. After rejoining those of the other color, one learns about segregation, the history of myriad cultures, race classification, beginning of black consciousness, resistance and armed struggles, and peace negotiations. It’s a journey of tyranny and freedom, of tragedy and heroism, of chaos and peace. We had planned to spend a few hours, and ended up staying the entire day, leaving with a feeling of hope for the future.
A few weeks ago we were visited by some U.S. military officers. When they came to the clinic, I (Tim) was impressed by the questions they asked. Hardly a week goes by when we don’t have visitors from some country or another, some governmental group, some organization, some special interest group, or just curious people -- and most ask the same questions; but this group (actually, three groups of six or seven each) asked good, probing questions with in-depth follow-up questions, and they welcomed and took time to discuss issues with us. A few days after they left I found out that they were 19 newly appointed generals and admirals. The U.S. embassy had organized this visit as part of their overview of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in action, and to deepen their understanding of the HIV/AIDS problem in South Africa.
Cecilia and I have recently been given another responsibility: food pick-up. Much of the food that we eat here (patients, staff, Fr. Stan, Cecilia, and I) is donated. One of our bigger donors of both cash and food is a middle to upper-end department store chain called Woolworths. At the end of each day, their grocery department gathers together the food items that they consider unfit to sell to their clientele (opened packages, close dated, less than perfect fruits and vegetables, mistakenly overstocked items, etc.), and donates them to various charities. They have increased their offerings to us from two to three days per week, so on Friday and Sunday evenings we take the pick-up to their store (about 10 Km away) and pack their 6 to 16 cases of food into the truck, and deliver them to the centre’s kitchen where it is unloaded by the kitchen and security staff. As we’re allowed to (within reason) help ourselves to this largesse, our personal diet has broadened considerably.
The current state of the African continent is not a pretty one. I would imagine that most of the world has heard of the famine in Somalia and Kenya, but there are other systemic problems in other African countries as well. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Africa as the second largest continent accounted for less than 1% of annual global capital flows, a decline from 4.5% in the early 1990s. At the same time the continent accounted for less than 2% of world trade, also down from earlier. Without South Africa, the rest of Africa’s share of world trade was just 1%. In a tri-dimensional measure of development (a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living), all except 13 of the 55 least developed countries are African.
Can Africa escape its misery? Africa has enough resources to feed its own people. It has enough energy resources to supply its own needs for the foreseeable future. It has enough mineral resources to supply not only its own needs in most areas, but also excess to help other countries who are not so blessed. So what are the causes of Africa’s lack of development, or its uneven pattern of development? I’d like to suggest six primary causes.
1) The continent’s vast size and diversity are reflected in the regional distribution of human and natural resources; the lack of infrastructure retards the movement of resources from where they’re found to where they are needed. 2) The contrasting lifestyles of urban and rural environments makes it difficult to deal with development challenges. 3) International trade agreements entered into when most African countries were gaining their independence were biased more toward the benefit of the foreign countries (extraction of natural resources, cheap labor, mineral and land rights) than for the benefit of the African people. 4) Much of Africa’s wealth is concentrated in a few people. One common statistic bandied about and not much contested is that 95 to 98% of the continent’s wealth is held by a fraction of 1% of the people. 5) Corruption is rampant. Relatively uneducated people vote into power those who promise them most, but then those elected use the office to enrich themselves and their friends and relatives. 6) By-product of colonialism. In many ways the contemporary map of Africa remains a colonial map. This is reflected in the existing national boundaries, which bear little relation to natural divisions (mountains, rivers) or to indigenous concepts of space (ethnic areas, traditional kingdoms, and the like). South Sudan, which has just seceded from Sudan has become an exception to this. One consequence of this is that most people identify themselves primarily as their ethnic group rather than as a citizen of their country. Here in South Africa we have Zulus, Afrikaners, English, Swazis, Xhosas, Bantus, etc. (There are eleven official languages in South Africa.). It is difficult to get these different peoples to work together enthusiastically toward a statehood with which they don’t identify readily. But there is hope; progress is being made.
I’d like to conclude this month’s blog with A LORD’S PRAYER FOR JUSTICE by Ronald Rolheiser.
OUR FATHER . . . Who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who by victim of circumstance, bear the heat of the day
WHO ARE IN HEAVEN . . . Where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well
HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME . . . may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor
YOUR KINGDOM COME . . . Help us to create a world where, beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other
YOUR WILL BE DONE . . . Open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor
ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN . . . May the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on earth
GIVE . . . Life and love to us and help us to always see everything as gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right and that we must give because we have been given to. Help us to realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them
US . . . The truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different from the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.
THIS DAY . . . Not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity
OUR DAILY BREAD . . .so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus
AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES . . . Forgive us our blindness towards our neighbor, our self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it
AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US . . . Help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded, cursed, and ignored us
AND DO NOT PUT US TO THE TEST . . . Do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before your gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems
BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL . . . That is, from the blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more.
AMEN
We recently visited the internationally acclaimed Apartheid museum in Johannesburg. Through photos, interactive displays, film clips, two longer films, and hundreds of actual items and displays with aural or written descriptions, the visitor is taken on a journey of understanding of what apartheid did to this country. The basic principle behind apartheid is simple -- separate everything; cut a clean line through a nation to divide black from white and keep them divided. To help the visitor begin to understand what this entails, each person who purchases an admittance ticket is randomly assigned a color -- black or white -- and goes into the museum at the corresponding entrance where, for the first ten or fifteen minutes, he or she is cut off from those of the other color, and is exposed to different kinds and qualities of displays. After rejoining those of the other color, one learns about segregation, the history of myriad cultures, race classification, beginning of black consciousness, resistance and armed struggles, and peace negotiations. It’s a journey of tyranny and freedom, of tragedy and heroism, of chaos and peace. We had planned to spend a few hours, and ended up staying the entire day, leaving with a feeling of hope for the future.
A few weeks ago we were visited by some U.S. military officers. When they came to the clinic, I (Tim) was impressed by the questions they asked. Hardly a week goes by when we don’t have visitors from some country or another, some governmental group, some organization, some special interest group, or just curious people -- and most ask the same questions; but this group (actually, three groups of six or seven each) asked good, probing questions with in-depth follow-up questions, and they welcomed and took time to discuss issues with us. A few days after they left I found out that they were 19 newly appointed generals and admirals. The U.S. embassy had organized this visit as part of their overview of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in action, and to deepen their understanding of the HIV/AIDS problem in South Africa.
Cecilia and I have recently been given another responsibility: food pick-up. Much of the food that we eat here (patients, staff, Fr. Stan, Cecilia, and I) is donated. One of our bigger donors of both cash and food is a middle to upper-end department store chain called Woolworths. At the end of each day, their grocery department gathers together the food items that they consider unfit to sell to their clientele (opened packages, close dated, less than perfect fruits and vegetables, mistakenly overstocked items, etc.), and donates them to various charities. They have increased their offerings to us from two to three days per week, so on Friday and Sunday evenings we take the pick-up to their store (about 10 Km away) and pack their 6 to 16 cases of food into the truck, and deliver them to the centre’s kitchen where it is unloaded by the kitchen and security staff. As we’re allowed to (within reason) help ourselves to this largesse, our personal diet has broadened considerably.
The current state of the African continent is not a pretty one. I would imagine that most of the world has heard of the famine in Somalia and Kenya, but there are other systemic problems in other African countries as well. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Africa as the second largest continent accounted for less than 1% of annual global capital flows, a decline from 4.5% in the early 1990s. At the same time the continent accounted for less than 2% of world trade, also down from earlier. Without South Africa, the rest of Africa’s share of world trade was just 1%. In a tri-dimensional measure of development (a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living), all except 13 of the 55 least developed countries are African.
Can Africa escape its misery? Africa has enough resources to feed its own people. It has enough energy resources to supply its own needs for the foreseeable future. It has enough mineral resources to supply not only its own needs in most areas, but also excess to help other countries who are not so blessed. So what are the causes of Africa’s lack of development, or its uneven pattern of development? I’d like to suggest six primary causes.
1) The continent’s vast size and diversity are reflected in the regional distribution of human and natural resources; the lack of infrastructure retards the movement of resources from where they’re found to where they are needed. 2) The contrasting lifestyles of urban and rural environments makes it difficult to deal with development challenges. 3) International trade agreements entered into when most African countries were gaining their independence were biased more toward the benefit of the foreign countries (extraction of natural resources, cheap labor, mineral and land rights) than for the benefit of the African people. 4) Much of Africa’s wealth is concentrated in a few people. One common statistic bandied about and not much contested is that 95 to 98% of the continent’s wealth is held by a fraction of 1% of the people. 5) Corruption is rampant. Relatively uneducated people vote into power those who promise them most, but then those elected use the office to enrich themselves and their friends and relatives. 6) By-product of colonialism. In many ways the contemporary map of Africa remains a colonial map. This is reflected in the existing national boundaries, which bear little relation to natural divisions (mountains, rivers) or to indigenous concepts of space (ethnic areas, traditional kingdoms, and the like). South Sudan, which has just seceded from Sudan has become an exception to this. One consequence of this is that most people identify themselves primarily as their ethnic group rather than as a citizen of their country. Here in South Africa we have Zulus, Afrikaners, English, Swazis, Xhosas, Bantus, etc. (There are eleven official languages in South Africa.). It is difficult to get these different peoples to work together enthusiastically toward a statehood with which they don’t identify readily. But there is hope; progress is being made.
I’d like to conclude this month’s blog with A LORD’S PRAYER FOR JUSTICE by Ronald Rolheiser.
OUR FATHER . . . Who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who by victim of circumstance, bear the heat of the day
WHO ARE IN HEAVEN . . . Where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well
HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME . . . may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor
YOUR KINGDOM COME . . . Help us to create a world where, beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other
YOUR WILL BE DONE . . . Open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor
ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN . . . May the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on earth
GIVE . . . Life and love to us and help us to always see everything as gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right and that we must give because we have been given to. Help us to realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them
US . . . The truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different from the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.
THIS DAY . . . Not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity
OUR DAILY BREAD . . .so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus
AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES . . . Forgive us our blindness towards our neighbor, our self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it
AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US . . . Help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded, cursed, and ignored us
AND DO NOT PUT US TO THE TEST . . . Do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before your gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems
BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL . . . That is, from the blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more.
AMEN
Monday, August 1, 2011
July Journey
This is Cecilia writing the blog for Tim and Cecilia this month. I wish to write about “journey” as in “all life is a journey”.
But we did start July with our journey home from our retreat in Durban, South Africa. The trip was mostly on toll roads that were in good condition for safe driving. But about half an hour from home, Sister Margaret’s car broke down. She phoned another Sister who picked us up and drove us home and then went back to rescue Sister Margaret and her good old car.
Much of July was filled with strikes by various workers. The steel workers and the petrol delivery workers were some of the first to go on strike throughout South Africa. The strike actions that were shown on television had hundreds or thousands of people in the streets demonstrating. Most of the actions were non-violent. And many times there were people dancing in the protest. Both of those strikes have been settled after several weeks of negotiations.
Meanwhile our health care workers at the St. Francis Care Center also planned a strike for higher wages. There were threats of possible harm to people, so all the children in the Rainbow Cottage were sent to stay with temporary foster parents. And as many of the adult patients as possible were sent out. So the adult census went from about 35 to 16.
It was also decided that if the strike was finalized by the union, that Tim and I would move across the street to stay in the guest room of the friary so that we would not have to cross the picket line to get into the hospice. The union and the care workers decided not to strike, so we continued to live in the guest house. And the patients are gradually returning to the center.
Currently the miners of South Africa are striking. There are about 150,000 coal miners plus gold and diamond miners. These strikes are being negotiated and will probably be settled this week.
There is a certain tension that accompanies all of this strike action. And somehow it makes a person tired even when living just at the fringe of the events. Now Tim and I and Sister Dierdre are planning a one day journey to Pretoria to renew her passport and to explore the city.
But we did start July with our journey home from our retreat in Durban, South Africa. The trip was mostly on toll roads that were in good condition for safe driving. But about half an hour from home, Sister Margaret’s car broke down. She phoned another Sister who picked us up and drove us home and then went back to rescue Sister Margaret and her good old car.
Much of July was filled with strikes by various workers. The steel workers and the petrol delivery workers were some of the first to go on strike throughout South Africa. The strike actions that were shown on television had hundreds or thousands of people in the streets demonstrating. Most of the actions were non-violent. And many times there were people dancing in the protest. Both of those strikes have been settled after several weeks of negotiations.
Meanwhile our health care workers at the St. Francis Care Center also planned a strike for higher wages. There were threats of possible harm to people, so all the children in the Rainbow Cottage were sent to stay with temporary foster parents. And as many of the adult patients as possible were sent out. So the adult census went from about 35 to 16.
It was also decided that if the strike was finalized by the union, that Tim and I would move across the street to stay in the guest room of the friary so that we would not have to cross the picket line to get into the hospice. The union and the care workers decided not to strike, so we continued to live in the guest house. And the patients are gradually returning to the center.
Currently the miners of South Africa are striking. There are about 150,000 coal miners plus gold and diamond miners. These strikes are being negotiated and will probably be settled this week.
There is a certain tension that accompanies all of this strike action. And somehow it makes a person tired even when living just at the fringe of the events. Now Tim and I and Sister Dierdre are planning a one day journey to Pretoria to renew her passport and to explore the city.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Blog for July
Cecilia is writing again this month for Tim and Cecilia.
Tim and I just returned from a 8 day silent retreat. It was the longest time that I have been on a retreat. Perhaps that is true for Tim also. It was a directed retreat which was also new for me. We met individually once each day with a director who talked with us about how the day was going and gave us scripture readings to consider until the next day. There was Mass daily.
The setting of the retreat was fantastic. It was near Durban, South Africa, on the Indian Ocean. The house was on a bluff overlooking the ocean and it took about five minutes to walk to the public beach. I did walk there every day and used that setting for meditating. I was also fortunate to have a bedroom with a window on the ocean side, so I could watch the waves and hear the water noises day and night. Truly awesome!
Besides the beauty of the ocean, there were also gardens in the front and back yard of the retreat house. Sometimes there were visiting monkeys in the yards. But there was always the beauty of flowers since the temperature is warmer than Johannesburg even though it is winter now.
We returned to work on Monday, and it was great to be told by both patients and staff that we were missed while we were gone.
Tim and I just returned from a 8 day silent retreat. It was the longest time that I have been on a retreat. Perhaps that is true for Tim also. It was a directed retreat which was also new for me. We met individually once each day with a director who talked with us about how the day was going and gave us scripture readings to consider until the next day. There was Mass daily.
The setting of the retreat was fantastic. It was near Durban, South Africa, on the Indian Ocean. The house was on a bluff overlooking the ocean and it took about five minutes to walk to the public beach. I did walk there every day and used that setting for meditating. I was also fortunate to have a bedroom with a window on the ocean side, so I could watch the waves and hear the water noises day and night. Truly awesome!
Besides the beauty of the ocean, there were also gardens in the front and back yard of the retreat house. Sometimes there were visiting monkeys in the yards. But there was always the beauty of flowers since the temperature is warmer than Johannesburg even though it is winter now.
We returned to work on Monday, and it was great to be told by both patients and staff that we were missed while we were gone.
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