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SAPC — NEWSROOM"Being Present" With the EDOW
Pilgrimage to South Africa Why there's no after-school program in Ilinge Sister Monica looked at us, a smile playing about her eyes. " Homework ?" she asked. "These kids don't have homework. There would be no point to it. They are lucky—and we are lucky—if they get a meal and a chance just to be children for a few hours." Thus did our "American solution" run headlong against the reality of an African problem: the fact being that the children in question are orphans of the AIDS pandemic that racks Africa, and that they are, as likely as not, HIV positive themselves, at the ages of 6, 8, or 10 years—a condition they inherited at birth from their now deceased mothers and fathers. Their lives are often too chaotic and precarious for school, let alone any homework that might be assigned, even if there were buses to carry them the many miles to the nearest school to get the assignment and the instruction that would be needed to carry it out. If Monica Vega is lucky, she will be able to find anti-retroviral therapies for the most needy of them for another year. Monica and her co-worker Sister Heidi Schmidt are Anglican nuns working with AIDS orphans in the isolated, dirt-poor, almost resourceless Ciskei village of Ilinge. The place is a product of the odious resettlement programs promulgated by South Africa's Apartheid government between 1950 and 1970 to separate races. As you read about Monica and Heidi, don't imagine gentle-voiced penguins with rimless octagonal glasses. These are muscular, practical, jeans-clad women with a talent for hard work, devotion, and love. When one of us asked—mindful of Susan's coming sabbatical study—how the reconciliation that was promised by Archbishop Tutu's Peace and Reconciliation Commissions works itself out in the reality of this hinterland village, and what we could do to help, Monica replied as follows: "When Jesus took leave of his disciples, he didn't say, 'Go ye into all the world and get grants, network, form committees, and solve the world's problems. He simply told them to be present where the Word is needed. That's what we do here; we are present for these children and for the Grannies who are raising them. As for what you can do? Pray, pray, pray."
The Ilinge children's center was just one of dozens of emotional wallops that our group of 20 pilgrims from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington found waiting for us in South Africa. Welcomed—tired and jet-lagged—by the kindness and hospitality of the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross brothers of uMariya uMama weThemba (Mary Mother of Hope) monastery in Grahamstown, we found our balance in a week of monastic (semi)discipline, beginning with Vigils at 6 AM, continuing through five daily offices ending with Compline at 8:45, and interspersed with visits to various programs of the Anglican/Episcopal Church that range from basic ministries like the Ilinge Children's center through after-school programs that are grooming university-bound African youngsters, to farmland restoration, to the hardscrabble College of the Transfiguration, where students from all over Africa are prepared for the Ministry by a faculty of six. (Typical teaching load: Pastoral Care, Church History, Old Testament, and The Church's Response to AIDS.) And—oh, yes—bSouth Africa is possibly the most beautiful country on the globe, with mountains, beaches, wild animals, and a deeply religious population. When our days at the monastery were over, we traveled to Capetown, site of our companion diocese, visiting some of the notorious "Townships" that are the urban cousins of the rural desolation of Ilinge, seeing a mix of poverty, spirituality, sunny entrepreneurship and criminality that contrasted almost unbearably with the calm, whitewashed splendor of such (formerly) whites-only areas as Stellenbosch and Hout's Bay. With all that, we were impressed by the optimism and good will that we found on every side, with the pride that came from a peaceful and democratic referendum on an equal-rights Constitution, and with the freshness of the people's escape from Apartheid into an era of hope. We saw all around us the truth that until all are free, no one is free. Before leaving Africa, we participated in a beautiful Mass at St. George's Cathedral, thrilling to the majesty of a high Anglican Eucharist, replete with smells, bells, and the pealing of the merry organ. As for Sisters Monica and Heidi, they are looking forward to installing the new water tank and supply system that the Washington pilgrims were privileged to buy and donate. It will allow them to convert their home into a retreat center for African youth next year, and to implement educational programs on home care, gardening, and land use for the impoverished people around them. We look forward to showing you their faces, and telling you more at an Adult Forum early in the New Year. # # #
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