Walking in Soweto

Hector Pietersen museum; shanty town

On Sunday our group went to Soweto. It is always inspiring for me to walk on streets where history was made.

We stopped at the Hector Pietersen memorial museum established in honor of all the students that died in the 1976 Soweto uprising and the events that followed soon after. Henry Pietersen was the first student that was shot and killed by the police on June 16, 1976 which is why the place is named after him.

The movie Sarafina is loosely based on the events of that day. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarafina

Anyone who claims to fully understand this complex nation is truly a genius in my opinion. It is hard for me to make sense of the relationships between all the races and the apparent mistakes ( at least to me in my ignorance) that the government of the day is still making.

I am still trying to understand the love/hate relationship between the different black races, the Afrikaaners who are viewed as the former perpetrators of apartheid but who were themselves opposed by the English who were attracted to the vast natural/mineral resources of the land and wanted some of the wealth for themselves and the Indians and "colored" ( yes that is a politically correct term in South Africa) who came due to trade and slavery.

Whew! That was a mouthful and by no means comes close to capturing the truth of the complexity that is South Africa.

Gogo and her adopted granson Phillip from buildafuture organization; Teju, Gogo and Jenna(in the ugly shirt)

We also visited a "shanty" town;Motsoaledi and met with Gogo; a local granny who has a soup kitchen that feeds about 100 children (a lot of whom are aids orphans) every saturday and provides a safe place for the children to play everyday. The organization we visited with, http://buildthefutureusa.com/, provides a means for the poorer people they work with to provide for themselves versus giving a donation that makes them dependent on others. They teach practical technical skills, provide access to micro-loans for small businesses and provide for basic nutritional needs such as providing seedlings for each home to grow a garden so they can have vegetables to supplement their maize based meals.

The levels of poverty are incomprehensible for most people in the world and truly beg to be seen for the scale and level to be fathomed but I was impressed by how clean everything was inspite of this.

Mighty Works

God is doing mighty works and it is evident in miracles that we are experiencing with our clients.

My clients Mwanzi have had two directors fighting each other over the past eight months to the point that there were court cases against each other. Obviously this had affected the company but more sadly their families as they used to be very close friends.

We met with the intercessors for prayer as a group on Tuesday and by 8am on Wednesday the two of them had decided to put the past behind them, reconcile and move on!

I asked each of them what had happened to prompt the decision now and was told that each had been unable to sleep the night before and had been bothered by the conviction that the issue needed to be resolved. They both attributed the change to the principles they were bring taught as an organization at our Rep(formerly known as equip) event and the prayer as a team the day before.

David's clients also experienced a financial miracle at the right time! They needed enough income to provide salaries for the team for April (especially with them being out of the office for almost two weeks!) and a client who had owed them money for a long time paid up this week!!

Please continue to pray that each client group experience breakthrough and reconciliation so necessary for them in order to bring transformation to their societies and spheres of Influence.

We serve a truly awesome God!!

Got Air?

What in the world!?

April 16th, what a sad day for Virginia Tech. It is sad that such occurences of violence are only getting more common and that we already have apathy towards such events.

The amazing thing is that I am in Gauteng, Johannesburg and I have already seen the story reported on the international news here. It is constantly refreshing to travel abroad and get news from an international perspective that is not always available in the US though in this case it is bad news.

My heart goes out to those families and all the students, but I cannot help but wonder about the many atrocities committed around the world that we never get to hear about.

:(

Jo'burg Spring '07

Its the end of day two of the venture in Jo'burg. Its been cool meeting all the new people; co-consultants and clients. There has been such a push for cohesion between the local and US based consulting teams and its great to see things already coming together and consultant pairs appear to have been divinely inspired :)

My co-consultant is Stephan who actually has a day job as a consultant :) and our clients are Mwanzi Support Services(Mwanzi is the highest point on Mt. Kilimanjaro). They primarily provide contract catering and cleaning services and fulfill every procurement service requirement in-between. Its been great to see the changes begin to happen in their thinking processes around their business and its reason for being and to actually have the entire team ( there are 6 directors) begin to come onboard with a form a single vision they can all subscribe to.

I'm excited to see what the outcome of the venture will be for Mwanzi and can't wait to follow up with them to hear about all the cool stuff God does in their business as a result of their being re-purposed.

Fruity Side Note

I recently talked to a couple of people who didnt know what the Cashew fruit looked like.. Here are a couple pictures.

Fresh Fruit~




A bowl of seeds waiting to be roasted... nuts are typically extracted from burnt shell.

Mango Tree...

Mangoes ripening on a tree

Continuing ed... compassion refresher

Talk about continuing education. This trip to Nigeria was a refresher on compassion.

The heat was almost unbearable and I am convinced it fried some of my brain cells because I could hardly think straight!

There was the usual lack of electricity and while the generator was working, most of the appliances at home were out of order because of the power outages and surges.

Windows have to be left wide open during the day and closing them too late meant that one had to bear mosquito bites in addition to the stifling heat at night... ( power outages sneak up on you in the middle of the night and the mosquitoes swoop in once there is no fan to blow them away... you had at least 5 bites before the generator was turned on)

There was also no airconditioning in the car and even driving down the street was a chore because of the number of people and cars on the road and a 10 minute drive was easily 30 because of that.

The hardest part for me was the realization that this was not the worst it could have been. I only had to look at most people on the streets to realize how truly blessed I was and am.
Talking to some of my peers about life in Nigeria in general revealed that the mentality is still to look out for number one with almost no regard for making things better for the masses as long as personal comfort is guaranteed.

If only half the people lived what the billboards say...

Along the way ...

I just got to Nigeria on my way to Johannesburg and boy was it necessary for me to have stopped over.
I am always amazed by the differences between the different african countries and the amazing variety of people that co-exist even in a single one.

Some parts of Nigeria are still quite infrastructurally backward while other parts seem to be moving along at a fast clip.
Arriving in Lagos with its smog, dirt, hustle and bustle, I am struck once again by the sheer number of people that call this city home and the levels of poverty that still exist despite the amazing intellectual capital that it owns.

I get home to hear my siblings talk about places like Tinapa, the first official business resort in Africa, in Cross River's state ( http://www.tinapa.com/) and the improvements that have been made at an old childhood family haunt; Obudu Cattle ranch (http://www.crossriverstate.com/obudu.htm) and Yankari Game reserve ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankari_National_Park ) and wonder why that level of effort and improvement does not carry across the entire nation in parallel.

I am tempted to despair at the sheer amount of effort needed to turn this nation around, but i remember the extreme sensitivity to God and am encouraged that some day soon people around here will learn to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit even more to get the entire nation on the right path.

I am consiously and unconsiously scoping out things that would need to be in place for an equip venture to happen here and looking forward to meeting up with other Nigerian Equip Alumi to strategize on how to make it happen.

On your marks, get set, GO! ... And she's off again!

So as some of you may already know, I am off on another missions trip this time to Johannesburg, South Africa.

This is my 3rd missions venture since November'06 and I am having a blast.
I was priviledged to be part of the pioneering venture in SF and it is definitely very different doing things in your own backyard... talk about distractions! But I digress...

I am definitely looking forward to going to Johannesburg on this trip and I get to stop over in Nigeria on my way which makes it doubly exciting!
I will be sending updates as the trip commences and will try not to add too much to the ever increasing flow of information you are bombarded with daily.

Later,
'Teju