It's Wednesday, right?

Well, I tried to upload a drivers-view video of our daily trek into Tapologo, but the internet hates me and it didn't work, so you'll have to settle for more words.

Sometimes it's still a little surreal that we are in Africa. I was driving down the road this morning - on the left - feeling perfectly normal, when I suddenly realized that I'm on a different continent. I'm getting rather used to things here, and it's going to be odd to leave on Friday and move on to a new part of the country.

We spent the morning today at Freedom Park, hearing from the home visit workers and checking out the AIDS clinic. Now we're at Tapologo, where those who are not blogging are doing actual work, planting a garden. Tonight we'll be meeting with representatives from the DRC (i.e., the white church) and the URCSA (the black and colored churches) to talk about potential strategies for partnering. The racial dynamics here are deeply ingrained and pretty difficult for me to fully understand; difficult to even hear, really. Casual comments keep disrupting my New York PC-ness, and it's easier to jump to the snap judgment than take the time to hear what's behind them.

A brief story from yesterday... We were visiting a home in the settlement where one of the three children, a 7-year old girl, was severely disabled: unable to speak, walk, or control the movements of her head or limbs. My guess is cerebral palsy, but there isn't sufficient medical care for these people to get a diagnosis - not that it would do them much good to have one anyway. The home care workers mentioned that the mother had been about to take her child to the church for prayers when we stopped by. I had been feeling fairly stupid and useless all day, but prayer seemed like the one thing that I could offer, and so I did. I went to lay hands on the child, and much to my surprise, the mother hoisted her into my arms, and I knelt on the floor next to her two sisters and prayed for the family. In the scheme of things, the whole incident is probably pretty insignificant, but it was a truly amazing thing to be entrusted with this child, even for just a moment. And it isn't much, but maybe a stranger's prayers brought a little glimmer of hope in the midst of some very difficult lives.