Sam Broer's reflections after we got home

Sam Broer
My Experience in South Africa
My pilgrimage to South Africa was, in short, incredible. It’s extremely hard, probably impossible, to convey my experience to you. I can’t really explain the way people like Grant, Keith, Duran, Pat, and Vivian have impacted me, when those names mean very little to you who haven’t met them. But I will do my best to share with you a very short portion of my life that has reshaped my perspective permanently.
When I was writing my application for this trip to South Africa, I really didn’t know just what I was getting into. I wrote, “To me, people, especially the relationships between them, are the most interesting and influential things in our lives. When we meet a person, although we may not know it, we make a huge impact on their life, and they on ours. My hope is that I can impact the people I meet in Africa for the better, but also that I may be impacted by them, that I can learn and grow.” Little did I know just how much the people I met in False Bay would impact me.
Right from the beginning we were welcomed warmly by everyone we met, even though we had kept them waiting an extra twenty four hours for us. Immediately we were plunged into a flurry of activity, and it was a bit awkward and overwhelming, but was made easy and fun by the excitement and energy of the kids and youth leaders. The very first night we stayed with a host family, which was kind of a scary prospect—staying the first night on a different continent with an unknown family. I can only really speak for myself, but even though there were a couple awkward moments, my family was amazing. I was sad that we spent so little time with them; we managed to have a lot of fun and good food in the less than 24-hour period we spent with them. But this is only one example—almost everyone we even came in contact with was genuinely interested in us, and treated us like family.
Another incredible example of the loving people we met was when we visited the orphanages. Here were kids who had no parents, many of who had probably dies of AIDS; many kids had AIDS themselves, and who knows what else they had been through living in extreme poverty. Yet, somehow, they had a huge capacity for love; I don’t think any of us expected the kids to attach themselves to us the way they did. At both orphanages they scrambled all over us, demanded to have their pictures taken, and playing with these kids it was easy to forget their situation. At the second orphanage, there was one girl who was especially outgoing and energetic; she sang songs for us and clambered all over everyone. It was really powerful when one of the women who helps run the orphanage told us that she had been returned to the orphanage because the foster family she stayed with for two years was not taking care of her. It was amazing to me that she could show much love for us: complete strangers who spent a few hours with her then left her life probably forever. That was especially notable to me as well. At both orphanages the kids became so attached in such a short period of time, only to never see us again.
However, we weren’t greeted with hugs and smiles by everyone everywhere we went. For example, when we first visited Masiphumelele, the black settlement, we were taken on a tour of an area that had been burned in a massive shack fire several days earlier that destroyed over 200 homes. As we walked through I felt extremely invasive. As she took us through, Pat told us about the action the government took when shack fires such as this one happened, which is fairly frequently. She said the government provided only five sheets of scrap metal for each home in order to rebuild. So we saw people rebuilding shacks out of the old burned out pieces of their homes that had been destroyed in the fire. Though we got some dark looks, not everybody was grim: pat stopped and talked to several people, and, although I couldn’t understand what they were saying, the tones were light and happy. And many people would smile and return a wave if given one. But it was enormously sad to see such good people living in such poor conditions.
We also toured the Masiphumelele high school—attending classes with some of the girls we had met earlier on our trip. It was incredible to see how put together these girls were: to be able to keep a spotless uniform, and keep up with schoolwork while living in a shack with a dirt floor, or perhaps a piece of plastic on the ground is something that people should never have to do, yet it was something these girls did.
This is church, so I suppose I should give some spiritual perspective on our pilgrimage. For me, faith has always been based on people. It was incredible to be able to expand and redefine my faith through the many people I was able to meet in South Africa. Just being with them has changed my perspective on the people and situation right here at home. To be able to be shaped by experiencing a new culture is an incredible experience, and I think it would be a shame to not provide the people who hosted us so graciously an opportunity to come and experience our culture. I believe that this is the next step in the relationship we have begun with the diocese of False Bay, to share our lives with them and they shared theirs with us.