Support for one another

On Sunday, 23 January 2011, we hosted lunch at our flat for our Johannesburg 2nd Ward Relief Society presidency. They were accompanied in their taxi van transport by Bassel and Irene Arendse and friend Octavia. A seventh friend, Alison, drove her own car (first photo, men excluded).



These women are remarkable in their own right, each having found The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through life experiences.



Thembi, at left in second photo, is the 2nd counselor and joined the church two years ago in Cape Town as a university student after seeing the elders on the street. Tilungile, the Relief Society president in the center, is a lawyer and the 9th of 11 children. She joined the church at age 9 in 1987 with her siblings, the first family to join in Swaziland. Nothando, raised in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is the 1st counselor and joined the church in 2003 as a single mother of six.

Irene, first photo in gold trim dress in the center, joined the church in Newcastle, South Africa, two years after her husband was baptized in 1996. Alison, next to Irene in center in pink blouse, joined the church in 1970 after encouragement by a friend in her Zimbabwe homeland and has lived in Johannesburg for 17 years. Octavia on the far right in the blue blouse was introduced to the church by a friend in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and was baptized in 1998 as a young mother. All but Irene are single women; both Alison and Tilungile have neither married nor given birth to a child.

These women live far from their extended families so consider each other as family. Through the years and presently they rely upon one another for encouragement and support through difficult situations. They are warm, resilient sisters who have extended their friendship to me.

Hartebeesport markets

An hour's drive north of Johannesburg is the Hartebeesport dam with a lakeside community of the same name which originally began as a resort town located in rolling hills of the Magaliesberg mountain range.



On their preparation day 26 January 2011 we took MTC President and Sister Dean and Elaine Christensen on a getaway to Hartebeesport. They are gracious people who are comfortable to be around with a practical point of view on life; good friends and fun traveling companions (fourth photo).

Our first stop was a massive taxidermy showroom filled with full size animals, head mounts lining the walls and hides of various African animals displayed across the floor.

Next door we strolled through an African craft market with aggressive merchants selling their wares.






















After lunch our final stop was the Jasmyn Market, a landmark specialty food store with a thatch roof and adjacent windmill restaurant. The market serves the Afrikaner clientele of the surrounding area with all food labels and displays written in Afrikaans. It is one of the finest specialty grocery stores we have seen with wonderful fruits, vegetables, preserves, meats, cheeses, and bakery goods.

The final two photos illustrate some of the biltong (jerky) and sausages that are popular in South Africa.

Mopane worm

For hundreds of years a subsistence food for millions of Africans has been the high-protein mopane, or mopani, worm. Layed in the sun to dry until they stop wiggling, dried mopani worms are often eaten raw.

Each week a half hour devotional is held at the Area Office for employees and senior missionaries. Leaving the meeting this week we chatted with Dominic Tshabalala and he surprised us by offering a dried mopani worm held in a napkin. The first photo shows how close I got to the worms--just standing next to Dominic as he held the napkin.

Dominic (Zulu tribe) and Pule Nkoe (Tswana tribe), fourth photo, tried to encourage many of the men to taste the worms by each eating one. Pule's description was that it tastes like flavored dirt.

Accepting the challenge, Ron popped a mopani worm in his mouth and said it was like tasting a dried stick or grass. Remember Ron is from the Vietnam era and paraphrasing a saying of the time, "he put it in his mouth, but didn't chew." The worm is still with us on his office desk.

It was a fun cultural exchange with men we have come to highly respect.

Children in motion

Throughout the streets of Lubumbashi we observed children playing, working and walking to or from school. In the first photo a boy is flying a homemade kite; next children are in a street game of soccer.

A boy carrying a fishing basket and boys selling bananas on the street are representative of many children who help supplement their family's income.

At one meetinghouse surveyed we noticed four girls walking toward us on the street, one with a long pole being carried on her head. Outside the perimeter fence they graciously posed for photos (five thru seven below).

Children attend school in two shifts--7 a.m.-noon and 12:30-5 p.m.; most walk 30 minutes each way and all wear uniforms. We observed fathers and grandmothers holding hands with their children as they walked and groups of children walking together. Older children were seen with younger children walking, carrying them on their backs or shoulders, or riding together on the front of a bicycle.

The group of 10-12 school children on the street corner in photo ten held hands and crossed together in front of us through thick traffic at an unmarked, uncontrolled intersection.

Resilience in daily life

Lubumbashi, in southeast Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a flat city with lush green vegetation and stately old trees. Our visit was during the rainy summer season and we found the humid temperatures at this elevation over 4000' pleasant in the mid80s.

Throughout Africa collecting water is a daily endeavor. Some children and women spend up to six hours each day walking to a water source, filling plastic containers and carrying them home. The man in the first photo has transported water containers on his bicycle from which he is replenishing a larger tank for use later.

A day's laundry is drying on bushes in the sun (second photo).

The last four photographs illustrate how young children are handily carried on womens' backs with ease and grace for hands-free transport. Notice the bouncy hair extensions of the little girl in the last photo.

People in taxi vans

In Lubumbashi a taxi van is called a dubai for the country from which they were purchased and imported. Other than walking, dubais are the most common mode of transportation used in DRC.

The 17 seats in each taxi accommodate 15 passengers, the driver and the receiver. One passenger sits on the front seat between the driver and the receiver, six are seated on the next two rows and 8 sit on benches against the sides of the van where the seats have been removed to give an open space in the middle for packages.

The fares average US $.30 for each leg of a route. The driver is assisted by a paid "receiver" who calls out for passengers on the street, manages the door for their entry and exit, and collects the fares. Often the receiver stands in the open doorway of the moving vehicle to make himself heard and seen.

Hand signals of the receiver indicate the taxi's destination or route the driver is taking. Notice the wad of bills in the receiver's hand in the last photo.