Date: Wed, July 23, 2003
Subject: Long, but worth it, email

Hello everyone! Ready for a long email. Don’t forget you can just skim through as much as your heart desires. Just to warn you, I decided to kill two gosh darn birds with one stone so instead of writing in my journal and writing to you, I am just going to write to you as my journal entries. So, the point is that these will be long but my hope is that they will be worth the read, so kick back, take a load off and let me tell you what has happened the last three days I have been in South Africa! (for those of you busy type, I encourage you to print these entries and read them at some point because you will learn a lot about South Africa through my experience, and we all need to be more educated about what is going on here, trust me. So print it and keep it next to your bed, at the breakfast table, or at the potty and I don’t think you will feel it is wasted time:) )

I was pretty annoyed when I had to pull my box and two nifty wheeled suitcases all through customs by my self, I looked like a goon, especially when they tipped over constantly and I had to get all set up again (I walked backwards the whole time mind you)… wow if I write this detailed for the next three weeks you are all going to hate me, guess what we had on the plane to eat…just kidding…Ok, I am setting up a story here. Well, with my frustration with my luggage you can imagine I was pretty disappointed when I got stopped for them to search through my big box which my dad had packed to the inch and I just knew if they took anything out I would never get it back in. So I went over to the checker, break open your belongings and snoop around guy and guess what, he asked if my box was for charity and when I said yes he decided to just look through my suitcase! That was a delight, and then he said “so are you a religious person?” and I said, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I didn’t get into my whole religious verses relationship with God debate so I just said yes and he said, “will you pray for me.” I was so excited! I thought, well isn’t it just like God to set me to work right away before I even got out of the airport! So I asked if he wanted prayer for anything specific and he proceeded to tell me about his son being on drugs (which is even scarier here because of the increased chance of getting AIDS). I had him write down his and his son’s name (Eccol and Jamil) and told him I would pray for him. Before I left the airport I was prompted to go back and give him the one John and Romans I had and told him to read it and then he could be praying for his son two and then we would both be praying for him. He was very grateful.

So, there was my first amazing experience. The next great experience was unpacking and finding lots of gifts and cards scattered everywhere, thank you Dad and Sandy, I was so encouraged. The rest of the day was getting settled, eating and looking around, pretty uneventful until the evening when I had dinner with Jim, a Westmont Alumni who is working with my old CA pastor now a missionary here, Dennis Wadley, and his family. They are all working with Bridges of Hope who is based in a Township called Philippi. Let me tell you about what a township is. A township can also be called a squatter camp, and basically it is “government subsidized housing” another words, shacks, where running water is not common and either is electricity. These townships were never meant for people to live there for long periods of time but after the apartied ended, which was in about 1994 (it began in 1948). It was set up so that the blacks would have a place to go while better housing was built for them to get back on their feet after being oppressed, which is an understatement, they are still oppressed, for such a long time. Well, housing is just not built fast enough, many people are coming to the Cape flats to find jobs, now that there is affirmative action for blacks to get into the job market, yet the jobs are still very few. So what you get is many, many, blacks in very impoverished conditions, who are unemployed. About 80% in the townships are unemployed. The problem is that even though the blacks are ready to work they do not have the money to start up there own businesses, the whites are still in control of much of the money because of the Apartheid. Let me explain something really quick, I will refer to blacks as blacks and not any American PC term because that is what they do down here, they think African-American in the states is ridiculous because the blacks there aren’t Africans at all they are Americans, just like whites here aren’t “American-Africans” they are Africans, they are just white. I think they make a lot more sense then we do, we are pretty ridiculous. Ok, really quick, the majority of South Africa are blacks, over 70%, the rest are Indians, colored (mixed, from the Dutch settlers and their ill-treatment to the black slaves, you get the drift), and whites, which only make up about 14% (it’s funny cause we seldom think of white Africans). Anyway, I was explaining why they didn’t have jobs cause I was trying to explain the townships so I could go ahead and paint a picture of the place I was yesterday working with the blacks…but before I do that I want to give a quick summary of Apartheid to those of you who are like me and know little, which is manly because most Americans and surprisingly a lot of white Africans have been sheltered from proper media information about what was going on in the world around them, the media was very slanted toward the minority, the whites and it caused many to sit on their hands or be ignorant. This may not all be correct, I have a lot to learn, but this is how I understand it so far…

Well, going to have to keep you in suspense because the INTERNET cafe is closing now. You know what, these emails are going to be really long so I think what I will do from now on is send a comprehensive version as well as a cut and paste version of what I specifically am up to, just my highlights without the history and the less major experiences. Sound good? OK, I will continue writing tomorrow about apartheid and then let you know about the awesome things I have been a part of so far!!! So stay tuned!

Good night all!
Blessings,
Jaime