Diwali
Durban has the largest Indian population outside of India, so Diwali, the 5-day Hindu “Festival of Lights,” is a big deal. It started Sunday, which meant the sky was lit up by the sight and sound of fireworks throughout the evening and into the night. Some people really don’t like this, as evidenced by the number of comments on the website (or possibly app?) for the neighborhood watch that the Beelers’ and Szabos’ participate in.
I came to a conclusion. This is a reasonable reaction to the annoyance of constant firecrackers: “I’m so annoyed. These firecrackers are waking up my children and scaring my pets. Oh, well, it’s one night a year and my dog would probably like to sleep inside for a change anyway.” This is a possibly out-of-proportion reaction: “I won’t tolerate this anymore! These people need to be arrested! Get your video cameras and take footage! We know where they live! Stock up on tranquilizers [presumably for the pets but I’m not sure].”
We spent Diwali evening (I kept trying to figure out why it reminded me of Alaska until Matt pointed out I was thinking of Denali) at the Szabler duplex – on the Szabo side – eating a yummy Tex-Mex dinner. Good Mexican food – or even the proper ingredients to make it – is one thing South Africa lacks. Sonya did a great job and it was a nice evening.
A bit of excitement occurred when there was a noise behind the creek in the back yard that sounded like a person slipping and falling. For the next several minutes we watched with a spotlight but the brush was very thick. We could hear what sounded like someone walking every few minutes but we never saw anyone. There have been numerous break-ins in the area and the Szabos/Beelers have had a fence put around the property after several attempted, and one successful, robberies. There were other similar reports in the area, and we saw a helicopter go over a few minutes later with a search light, but that was all the excitement we had.
Here’s my FB thankfulness post for the day: “Nov. 3 – I’m thankful that despite not getting an extra hour of sleep (no DST in SA) and just wanting a nap and some relief from what I’m now confident is a scratch on my eye instead of sand stuck in it, that my day has been spent going from one church service to another to yet another, and now to what will no doubt be a lovely Mexican dinner spent with friends. I’m tired, mentally-drained, and too busy – and acutely aware that I’m abundantly blessed to be tired, mentally-drained, and too busy in an environment brimming with opportunities for growth both spiritual and social.”
Monkeys Gone Wild
Today we took 60 preschool kids to the zoo. Astonishingly, it wasn’t crazy. We had about 12 adults and several older children to help. We only lost one kid, and luckily Rick happened to come across him as he was up by the entrance waiting for more kids, and brought him back to us before we even knew he was gone (is that good or bad?).
I was actually hoping to not be necessary on this trip. Monday is Matt’s and my day off, but that doesn’t always happen, and it didn’t today, because there was no way of predicting whether the kids would go crazy and overtake the adults. So we were (mostly) happy to go along and help.
The kids arrived in two large groups, transported from their creches to the zoo in taxis and cars. I’ve always found the township kids to be easy to deal with – a few notable exceptions aside – and these little guys ended up doing great. I concluded at the end of the afternoon that these children were actually much more controllable than the group of about 15 older kids from the Westville ecclesia, that we took to the bird park my first week in Africa. Maybe my attitude has changed somewhat as well – I didn’t wear shoes this time.
Most of the animals we saw were birds and monkeys. Monkeys are not as exciting to me when they’re in cages. I can see that in America. On the way to the zoo, Sonya told me they have squirrels in cages at this zoo, because apparently they’re not native to the area. I noted that in America when you see a squirrel running around the zoo it’s a joke: “Hey, look, there’s a squirrel at the zoo.” I wonder if South Africans feel that way about monkeys, and tell their friends, “In America, they have monkeys at the zoo in cages.”
They did have some sort of tiny caged primates. While we were looking at their little human-like faces, an Asian couple approached us and apprehended one of our small children, asking if the lady could take a photo of her husband posing with the child. This seemed bizarre to me, and kind of offensive, but apparently it happens fairly often. We all just exchanged looks as the guy crouched down and put his arm around the little boy. Somewhere right now I imagine he’s updating his Facebook status to say, “Hey, I went to Africa and had my picture taken with a poor black child.” I couldn’t help myself from saying, when they released him, “You know he doesn’t belong in the zoo, right? He’s with us.” They either didn’t understand me or pretended not to.
One little boy called me “Matt” repeatedly, because he always sees us together at the creche. Apparently, loosely translated, that means, “white person wearing a ‘Kingdom of God’ shirt.” He actually speaks English very well, so I asked him finally, “What’s my name?” He replied something like, “Cassija,” which was close enough. “You keep calling me ‘Matt’,” I said. He just grinned at me. I guess it’s better than “umungu” (“whitey”).
Finally, the moment you’ve been awaiting since you saw the title – and the moment I’d been awaiting for 45 days – the monkeys started approaching us on the playground. I couldn’t get very close, but did snag a piece of bread one of them dropped and use it to lure them a little closer. (Probably would’ve been a good idea to wash my hands between the time I did this and when I licked ice cream off of my fingers, since apparently all monkeys carry ebola.)
Once the kids pulled out their lunches, there was a lot of monkey business. They ran up and cautiously grabbed any food remnant dropped on the ground, and a couple of the more daring monkeys went through the backpacks when the children had gone off to play nearby. I asked Matt if he would record while I tried to feed one, and he said that was fine as long as he could also record the monkey going for my jugular. Seemed fair enough, so he followed me around with my phone and we got a couple of interactions. People kept saying something about rabies, but I soon realized the monkeys were much more afraid of me than I was of them. I even got to dance with one.
I thought this was as good as it was going to get because I was out of room on my phone. But I did a bit of quick deleting in the hopes of getting something a little more exciting. I took one last crack at it holding the phone myself, and got this!
Here’s my Facebook status for Day 4 of thankfulness: “Nov. 4 – Today I’m thankful I was necessary as an extra warm body during a trip to the zoo with 60 tiny children. It sounded like absolute madness, but it resulted in several up-close and personal monkey encounters! My day has been officially made.”
Here are a couple of screen shots. 🙂
Next Comes Africa 