3rd Day in Mthatha

It occurred to me that the name of this place may need a little clarification. Mthatha was Umtata (a more British, phonetic spelling) for many years and the more indigenous spelling was reclaimed after apartheid. I believe that’s the long and short of it, anyway. So, if you’re wondering how to pronounce it, the answer is: oom-ta-ta with the stress on the second syllable.

Last night, I got to go to Jenny’s house for dinner. Jenny McConnehie is the woman who runs the clinic and who founded the African Medical Mission with her late husband, Chris. She is absolutely wonderful. She cooked us a fabulous dinner and let me use her hot shower! A young man from Durban named Adam also joined us. He is going to medical school here in Mthatha and is absolutely hilarious. He also hooked us up with some bananas that someone he knew was trying to get rid of. So, this morning, Sarah and I went to pick up said bananas to take to iTipini. We were expecting maybe 3-5 crates and arrived to find about 20-30! We filled up the back of the pick-up and got our upper body strength work-out for the day. We gave away a ton of bananas at iTipini today and still had many more left. Tomorrow we will give them out with our weekly care packages for HIV patients and give whatever is left to the preschoolers. Tomorrow is also the day that we do tutoring for high school students in the afternoon, so I will get to embark on that adventure soon! 

Every day at the clinic, after we are done working and the ladies are cleaning, Sarah and I go out to play with the kids. It’s mostly the preschoolers and every day, someone wants to feel my hair. Today, my watch was the center of attention. Everyone wanted to play with it and try it on and practice putting it back on my wrist and then taking it off and putting it back on and so on. It was really entertaining. The other thing that we do daily at iTipini is that  we start with morning songs and prayers on the veranda. I don’t understand most of the songs because they are in Xhosa, but the children have about 3 different prayers they say in English. Which prayer they say just depends on the day and who is leading but they start and end every one with a call and response. The teacher starts by saying, “Close your eyes,” to which all of the kids say, “I am closing my eyes.” Then the prayer – my favorite one is this:

                I am somebody

                I may be poor

                I may be small

                But I am somebody

                I must be protected

    I must be respected

                Not neglected

                I am GOD’S child

Then the teacher says, “Open your eyes,” to which all of the children reply in unison, “I am opening my eyes…”  WOW. I am going to try and get a recording of it, because I feel like I can’t convey how powerful that closing is. “I am opening my eyes…” they all say together. The way they say the prayer as well is incredibly fascinating as it’s full of all kinds of inflections that we normally wouldn’t put on different words or phrases.

Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of iTipini for you yet, but I will. I feel like I need to get a little bit more settled into and familiar with the community before I break out a camera and start taking pictures of people. I want to build some relationship and trust there first. BUT – soon. I will post pictures of iTipini soon.