Oct 28, 2010 | An Expat, Stories
Last night I remember dreaming that I was surrounded by people I was meeting for the first time. It seems like I was in a large group of international students, and for some reason I’d decided to speak with an English accent the entire time, and I had them all convinced I was from Umbridge. (Is Umbridge even a place? It seems like it is in Alice and Wonderland.) Eventually I decided to drop the accent and I began to speak with my normal voice. People were very surprised to discover that I was from the South. Why I wanted to convince anyone otherwise, I am not really sure.
{Do your dreams ever make sense? Mine don’t.}
It’s a funny thing, this expatriate experience, when it comes to deciding who you are and where you’re from. For my four years in Scotland I did my best to learn to choose words that would avoid my speech being a distraction to what I’m trying to say. Did that make any sense? I mean to say that I purposely trained myself to say trousers instead of pants. Lift instead of elevator. Biscuit instead of cookie. To change my sentence structures. And it was in an attempt to hopefully have people listen to what I wanted to say, instead of the words I was choosing.
A year later, I’m here in South Africa, and it feels a little like starting all over again. Now biscuits are cookies. Trousers are pants. But my cell phone is still a mobile and I sometimes still have to ask where the toilet is, instead of the bathroom or restroom. And that sure is painful…I hate saying ‘toilet’ almost as much as I dislike the word ‘packet.’
And sometimes, when I go back to the Carolinas, I’m suddenly uncertain of who I am anymore. What do I mean to say? Can I still nip to the loo in North Carolina? What if I say scone in such a way that it rhymes with ‘on’ instead of ‘own’? And what am I doing eating scones if there are biscuits around? Southern biscuits, not cookies, mind you. It sure does get confusing when you and your South African/British husband and your Scottish-African-American son have to decide whether you’re going to speak to each other in British English, South African English, or American English, based on where your feet are at the moment. Will the Bear understand I want to change his diaper instead of his nappy?
The other day I baked (from scratch!) buttery, southern biscuits (which are kind of like scones, friends outside the US) and then asked the Bear if he wanted a biscuit. He immediately started signing for a “cookie†and saying please because to him, biscuit and cookie are the same thing. That was strange. Whose kid are you??
As you know, since I’ve kind of been talking about it a lot, I’m looking forward to my toes touching Carolina soil again. But can I just make one simple request of you, friends that I’ll see while I’m there?
Please don’t pay too much attention (or make too much fun) of the words coming out of my mouth. I’ll do my best to revert back to my drawl and my Southern-American speech patterns, but if sentences like,
Do y’all fancy a spot of tea?
or
Dern, Bill’s Hot Dog’s are lekker!
come out of my mouth, do your best not to laugh too loud.
I’m really from Umbridge, after all.
xCC
Oct 27, 2010 | An Expat, Stories
There’s a funny thing I’ve noticed happening more and more lately, that I thought I might ramble about for a moment right here. And it’s best explained with the assistance of a beautiful James Taylor song that illustrates it perfectly with these lyrics:
In my mind, I’m goin’ to Carolina
Can’t you see the sunshine
Can’t you just feel the moonshine
Ain’t it just like a friend of mine
It hit me from behind
Yes, I’m gone to Carolina in my mind
It seems like there are these parts of ourselves that come out of nowhere and remind us of where we’re from, no matter how long we’ve been away.
These are the snapshots that find me home:
With the windows down, we drive through a noisy, crowded section of a town called Mthatha on the way to East London. Women are carrying bulky things on their heads, babies are bundled onto backs with blankets. People are selling necklaces and salad servers, wooden giraffes and painted canvas on the sidewalk in front of a big gas station. A tractor digging up a section of sidewalk lifts its crane and a woman quickly skirts out of the way. An advertisement for safe abortions hangs on a telephone pole. Life seems so different, and like Samwise Gamgee, commenting to Frodo Baggins, I ponder for a moment whether this might perhaps be the furthest away from home I’ve ever been.
Suddenly traffic is moving and the wind is in my hair and between my fingers out the window, and we pass a chicken place called Zebros. As the spicy, crispy smells make their way in through Potato’s window, I am suddenly whisked to the carport of my grandmother’s house. My Dad is cooking on the grill, his amazing spicy chicken wings. I feel my lips tingling a little from the spice but I want to keep eating anyway.
And half a world away is suddenly taking me right back home.
We’re at home in Gordon’s Bay and the Bear has taken the opportunity to make some mischief. I hear the words “I swoney, Bear†come out of my mouth. {I’m not sure how that’s spelled but it rhymes with honey.} And suddenly I’m back in the kitchen with my Mama. She’s standing at the stove and I’m fetching something from the pantry that is chockablock full of canned goods, Jell-O mix, salsa jars, brown rice, Hershey’s cocoa powder, and enough stuff that I often wonder how long we could survive just on the stuff in my Mom’s pantry. I can hear her say “I swoney, Caroline†and I sound just like her.
We’re on the floor in our living room, South Africa’s south-easter blowing outside, I’m tickling the Bear. He tilts his head back and a drawn out and heavy laugh escapes from his throat. Suddenly I’m eight years old and my brother has just finished reading me a story. I wasn’t supposed to have dessert because I didn’t finish my vegetables but he sneaks me cookies and milk anyway. I remember him making me laugh, me throwing my head back, and another long, drawn out laugh escapes from a throat, this time it’s mine. But it’s twenty years later and with a sigh I hope the Bear is a good big brother, too, someday.
The hair straighteners my sis-in-love let me borrow are busy warming up and I glide them through a layer of hair as the Bear dances and points at himself in the mirror in front of me. The smell of my hair heating up brings me back to my sister’s bedroom, where she’s applying my makeup and fixing my hair. I must only be six or seven years old…we have a dance recital tonight and she’s helping me get ready. I sit patiently as her curling iron works its magic, I struggle to keep my eyes shut as she attempts to apply eyeshadow. The Bear has finished dancing in front of the mirror, and is now carefully pretending to squirt the heat resistance hair spray at my scalp. He gently touches my head with it, puts it down, picks up the hairbrush and attempts a few brush strokes. Like the hair brush moving back and forth, twenty years are gone, and back again.
The surprising thing is, I’ve now counted my days outside Carolina to have stretched long beyond the 365 mark. This may not be the furthest away from home I’ve ever been, but it is definitely the longest. And yet, more frequently it seems, my mind takes me back again. A smell, a sound, a sight, a taste, the sound of the wind rushing through our chimney that hearkens me back to power outages and hurricanes and my childhood.
It’s a beautiful thing, these five senses. I sometimes take the time to be thankful for them. Without you even asking them to, they carry home with you. They remember things you don’t know you remembered. And they bring them back at moments when you’re so glad to have them there.
And though it’s still a while before the soles of my shoes will touch the crisp, autumn Carolina soil, still I’m joyful that, every once in a while, I’m goin’ to Carolina, in my mind.
xCC
Oct 24, 2010 | Stories
Dear Canon Cameramakers,
We haven’t met, but I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself. My name is Caroline Collie.
This is my Hero Hubby, Mark.
We have one wonderful son we call the Bear…
And another little one on the way.
Almost three years ago we decided to invest in your Canon 40D. The Bear was on his way into the world, and we lived 1,000s of miles away from family, so we thought having a good camera to capture his first moments would be a good idea.
We got more than we bargained for.
Over the past two and a half years, we have had the joy of capturing moments, one by one. We often scroll through photos from the early days with our son, or special trips with family. They are priceless walks down memory lane.
We captured the long and exciting days anticipating the birth of our son.
We captured the early moments when our tiny Bear had just entered the world. We were very thankful to have these precious memories well recorded, to share them with grandparents and siblings, family and friends around the globe.
We captured the first moments when each of our parents met their first grandchild for the first time.
We captured memories as we enjoyed special adventures together.
And we captured pieces of our life in the land where we met and fell in love, Scotland.
We captured moments from our ministry there, which we’re incredibly thankful to hold on to.
We moved from Scotland to South Africa, and our joy for photography grew.
The wild scenery of our beautiful Africa has continually beckoned us to take one more shot, look for one more angle.
And we’ve found new purpose in the pictures we’re taking, as we sometimes have the privilege of giving a voice to the voiceless.
We truly believe that every person has a story, and our camera has helped us tell stories, even when we didn’t have the words.
In our work here, we hold on to the belief that people matter. We wash feet and we put new shoes on those feet, because we want people in poverty to know that they’re important, and that they matter.
And when we point our lens at faces that have seen hard times and known hunger or distress, we believe that we are building bridges. We believe that when people see, they can’t help but care. And when they care, they can’t help but try to make a difference.
Today we’re writing you, and asking you to care and to make a small difference. A few weeks ago, we stopped to give a ride to someone walking in the rain. They repaid the favour by silently unzipping the lid that held the investment we made three years ago. When they got out of our car, they walked away with a part of our voice, because they walked away with our camera.
If you look back through the posts on this website, you might discover that we’re missionaries hoping to make a small difference in South Africa. You might find that our most recent concern has been pulling together the funds to be able to go home for Christmas this year. And you might gather from what we’ve shared that we don’t have the finances to invest in a new camera right now.
But we’d like to ask for your help. In return we can only promise to talk about our thankfulness to anyone who’ll listen. We’ll unashamedly advertise for you because of your kindness. We’ll make sure everyone who visits this site knows what we’re very pleased to tell you: every picture in this post was taken with our Canon 40D.
And though that camera might be long gone by now, we are so thankful for the memories you’ve helped us capture and the stories you helped us tell. If it’s at all possible, we’d be incredibly thankful if you’d help us capture more.
Sincerely,
Mark and Caroline Collie
______________________
Dear friends, I am sending this blog post to Canon in hopes that they’ll read our story and want to help. I wondered if you might be willing to help, too. Would you send the link to this post to pr@cusa.canon.com? (And CC cedcollie {at} gmail {dot} com so that I’ll know you sent an email on our behalf?) Perhaps if you’ve been inspired by the photography on this site, you could share a story with the folks at Canon, or you could simply encourage them to respond to our little request. Will you pass this on to friends and ask them to do the same? We would really appreciate it. We have more stories and inspiration to send your way soon! xCC
Oct 16, 2010 | South Africa, Stories
A couple days ago HH, the Bear and I were on the road to visit an orphanage near Paarl to explore a potential partnership. In my mind I’d imagined being greeted by a quaint little building, lots of bunk beds, and smiling faces that might look a lot disheveled, a little hungry.
I didn’t get the greeting I bargained for.
Through one of our friends at Paarl Family Church, we were being introduced to a woman named Mirriam. I’d heard the words “The Mirriam Project†mentioned, which made me picture fancy lettering on brochures, marketing, and a team of dedicated people taking care of orphans in need.
I was way off.
We drove into a township just outside Paarl, passing gates and fences, grassless front yards and cinderblock homes, tiny puppies and kittens roaming dirt roads. These scenes have become familiar to me… shacks and fruit stands, surprising ingenuity and abject poverty sitting side by side. A vintage Coca-Cola sign closes a gap to make the wall of a small shack complete.
We turned onto a side street and pulled Potato to a grumbly diesel stop halfway off the road on a patch of gravel. Through the gate of a tiny lot, perhaps not much bigger than some of your living rooms, stood a six foot container, decorated and being used as a home, and next to it a reasonably sized shack constructed of split pole walls and corrugated tin roofing.
Inside the kitchen stood a small stove, a large, deep freezer chest, a creatively constructed centre island workstation that also provided storage, a dividing wall with cupboards, separating the living area from the kitchen. I’ve lived in homes with bigger bathrooms than the living area of the home, but it was tidy and well kept. A small table skirt neatly laid over the armchair where the Bear and I took a seat.
And then we were introduced to Mirriam.*
Inside the walls of this tiny shack, two back rooms with bunk beds, another room with a double bed, Mirriam is a mother for twenty-five children. Ranging in age from 1 or 2 to twenty, she is a living testimony to James 1:27:
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit widows and orphans in distress and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
She has taken in children with nowhere else to go. Children on their death beds. Children who have been counted worthless by the world and abandoned.
A tiny little one, even younger than the Bear toddled in with a helping hand. She had a heart-tugging smile. Her name was Virginia.**
She was left in a trash bag, and some people called me to come. I went and opened the bag and she was purple from the heat. No one thought she would live. When I brought her home everyone said “You bring death to this house.†But I prayed and fasted and worshipped God. I am a worshipper and when I worship, people are healed. At the hospital they said there was no hope, but they took her and cared for her and then I got a call to come. I was afraid she had died, but I said to the Lord, “Lord, if you do love me, You won’t bring this to me. Please, if You are the God You say You are, it will be well.†When I arrived at the hospital, she was well, and the nurses told me I could bring her home.
I watched as another little boy named Joseph stood by Mirriam’s chair. Also younger than the Bear, his head was at just the right height to rest on her lap. As she continued to share her life and the stories of the children with us, Joseph’s eyes softly closed and I expected him to soon fall asleep standing up. He’d been found in an empty house. His mother had left him alone there. I’m not sure if they knew for how long.
Mirriam also shared the story of another boy who had just come to live with them. Isaac had been left on Miriam’s doorstep. His mother came to ask for help, and while they were still talking, she left him there and ran away. They ran out of the house to try to find her, but no one knew who she was or where the baby had come from.
Mirriam’s sister lives in the container on the lot with some of the children, others are in the bunk beds in the two rooms off to one side. Mirriam sleeps in another room in a double bed with the smallest of the children.
You might expect a zoo from a tiny shack with 25 children, but the place was filled with incredible peace. Before we closed our time together with prayer, Mirriam and her sister, and some of the older children joined in singing for us. It was beautiful and humbling and I was ashamed at the things that I struggle with in this life.
The Grape Community, a non-profit organisation birthed by a table grape exporting company called The Grape Company, has been supporting Mirriam and the children. We work on what I had previously considered a tight grocery budget. But on a grocery budget even smaller than mine she manages to make sure the children have food and even meat to eat that lasts throughout the month. I imagine the miracle of the fishes and the loaves happening inside that chest freezer every month. With financial support and partnership from The Grape Community here, a generous gift there, they manage to make ends meet and keep tummies supplied, and hopefully pay the electricity.
The Grape Community has pulled together the finances to buy a plot of land where they hope to build several homes for the children. The ratio demanded by the government is four or five children to one house mother. They haven’t found the land and they don’t yet have the funds to begin building.
Invisible strings from HH’s and my heart have been pulled and tied to Mirriam’s ministry. Beyond blessing the children with shoes. Beyond giving when we are able. We don’t yet know how, but we want to be more involved.
I’m looking forward to extending the invitation for you to be involved, too.
“I give them love, I give them education, I give them God,†says Mirriam.
Pure and undefiled religion before God. Lord, help your whole Church to shine like this for You.
xCC
*Pictured above: Pastor Michael (a pastor from Mirriam’s area we thought we should introduce to her), Annemarie, our friend from the Grape Community, Mirriam, Virginia (with a yawn!), Me & the Bear. (I am not sure what the little one in the front’s name is!)
** I’ve changed names and a few details to protect the children in this story.
Oct 15, 2010 | South Africa, Stories
We arrived in Bloemfontein yesterday evening, after about 11 hours in the car, with a poor grumbly bear hopped up on candy (a new strategy for making the long road trips a little easier) wading our way through what the South Africans call “stop-go’s.†Translation: Road Works, Road Works, and more Road Works. Sit-still-and-watch-the-people-on-this-end-who-are-not-communicating-with-the-people-on-the-other-end-properly-so-the-last-car-came-through-five-minutes-ago-and-they-still-aren’t-moving-the-cones-Road-Works. Eish.
We’re here delivering shoes to a ministry partner working in an impoverished area outside of the city, and we’ve already had a meeting with another inspiring lady and one of her colleagues just this morning. They are doing some wonderful work in another poor township outside the city and it feels like a privilege to talk about partnering with them in the year to come. They are feeding and clothing poor and vulnerable children, and I’m running out of adjectives to describe their hearts and their work — inspiring just doesn’t seem to cut it!
We’re still taking a photo here and there with our little digital camera, for which we are very thankful, but it’s just not the same as the big bright shots that came from our Canon! Hero Hubs’ Mom is an excellent gardener and I would love to show you some shots of her garden in full bloom right now. (Remember it’s spring in the southern hemi!) I may still have a photo for you here and there but I’m afraid they won’t be nearly as inpsiring as usual! Here’s one from the files…this was in Mom-in-love’s garden almost a year ago! Wasn’t the Bear a little cherub?
Anywho, this is just an update that 1) all is well and we’re safely in Bloem, 2) the Bear is enjoying the change of scenery, 3) I’m now having to lean forward a little to see my toes and 4) I’m looking forward to another visit to Kloppers. That’s the magical department store I think I’ve told you about where you can find fine china and hunting gear, crafty stuff and bicycles. You can buy a washing machine, a camping tent, and two-way radios, or have a piece of glass cut just the right size to fit a picture frame you bought on the side of the road for a song. 🙂 While I don’t really spend much at Kloppers, I sure do enjoy wandering those carpeted Afrikaans aisles.
I hope you’re encouraged today! I have an … you may have guessed it … inspiring story to share with you (I hope tomorrow) from our visit to an ‘orphanage’ (if that’s the right name for it) that we visited Wednesday. Hopefully I can work on painting a decent picture with words for you this week!
Many thanks to those of you who’ve been praying for us during all these travels. We’ve been in need of grace, and Grace has found us!
xCC
P.S. I was privileged to be featured in a “Mommies with Swagger†interview over at the Dameron Girlz today. Check it out here!
Oct 7, 2010 | South Africa, Stories
Well, lads and lassies, I would have some really great pictures to share with you today. We had a special shoe distribution for some beautiful children in Masiphumelele. They were 4 to 6 years old, with tiny smiling faces and beaming pearly whites. One beaming little boy arrived in bedroom shoes like the Bear’s, worn through and worn out, and I was so happy at the thought that he would be getting new shoes today!
But there were a few ugh…hiccoughs.
As we began sizing the children’s feet in preparation for the footwashing, we realised we’d incorrectly estimated what sizes we would need. Hero Hubs and I discussed what our best option would be … blessing half the kids and bringing shoes for the rest next week just didn’t seem like a good idea. Three pre-primary schools had come together for the distribution. Eventually we decided to make the two and a half hour round trip adventure from just outside Cape Town back to Gordon’s Bay to get more shoes, and we’d bring the shoes back and the distribution would happen in the afternoon instead of the morning.
We were on our way, making phone calls to rearrange and reschedule other bits and pieces of the next few days because of this mishap, and the weather which had been foreboding and windy all morning seemed like it was taking a turn for the worse as a drizzly sprinkle began.
We travelled the Beach Road back to Gordon’s Bay and Hero Hubs noticed a fragile and skinny looking lady, in a pink winter hat and scarf, who was hoping to catch a ride. {The Bear was not in the car with us, in case you’re getting worried.} It was an usual decision as we have probably only given lifts to people about three times in the year that we’ve been here. As the fragile lady climbed in, I looked back to begin to chat with her, and to say the least she had a rather strange appearance. Her makeup was unusually heavy, eyebrows thickly drawn on and eyes outlined in black.
She chatted with me, polite but a little distant, and as I looked back at the shoe sizing list in front of me, I began to ask for her help to decide whether the names on the list were boy’s names or girl’s names. (We have boy shoes and girl shoes for these young ages, so we try to make sure to have a good spread to cover each gender.)
Finally we came to the off-ramp where she wanted to be dropped off, and she asked us to go over the overpass and drop her on the other side. Her conversation in the car had seemed strange and stilted, her departure was just weird, and HH and I kind of looked at each other like Ugh…what? And then I fortuitously happened to grab the camera bag out of the back. I began to say, “Well at least she didn’t steal our camera….” but as I picked up the bag, I realised it was MUCH lighter than it should have been.
SHE STOLE OUR CAMERA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She’d somehow managed to unzip the camera bag without us hearing, and with HH keeping an eye on her. She slipped out both cameras* and she zipped the bag closed again without us knowing. Hero Hubs slammed on the brakes, reversed down the hill on the grassy shoulder, and threw it into drive. We were in hot pursuit, on our way up the down ramp to catch the thief. Cars wondered what the heck we were doing and pulled out of the way as I tried to gesture frantically, Sorry, but it’s an emergency!!!! Good thing we were still in our friends’ Land Rover from the Jeffrey’s Bay trip.
*Let me pause for a moment to better explain exactly what had just been stolen. 1) Our Canon 40D. The camera we decided to invest in before the Bear was born. A, so that we could take good photos in Scotland for the grandparents thousands of miles away in the US and SA. And B, so that we could take photos for our ministry partners to share about our work in Scotland, and now SA. 2) Our handheld video camera. A similar investment decision, we bought this little video camera to make movies for friends and family far away. My Dad and my brother helped us buy it as a Christmas present in 2007. Please don’t make me add up the totals of how much we just lost — I am just not ready to look at those numbers yet.
So back to the emergency.
We fly up the down ramp and jump out of the Landy to start asking questions. Did you see a lady come by here wearing a pink beanie and a scarf?
We began asking questions, my heart sinking minute by minute, and we started to drive through the area looking for her.
The community jumped into action. A couple of guys spoke with a group on the street, and a guy with dreadlocks and a mountain bike took off with purpose. Two other guys who were helping us look hopped in to lead us to the train station where she might have run. They ran up the stairs like their life depended on it, across the bridge over the tracks, down the other side, and started asking questions.
No one had seen her. They got back into the car and pursuit continued. At this point we’d called the police twice but hadn’t seen them yet. As the guys directed us on where to circle again, we came back to the group of friends, and they were gesturing for us to come quickly.
The guy on the mountain bike produced our little handheld video camera. My heart leapt and sank at the same time.
They’d seen the lady. They’d caught the lady. They took the camera away from the lady.
But there was one problem. We had never explained that there were two cameras. So she coughed up the smaller, less expensive of the two, and they let her go.
And then there was a realisation. That was actually a man dressed as a woman. So all this time we’d been asking “Have you seen this lady…” we should’ve been saying what the locals say: “Het jy ‘n lang skraal moffie gesien?” Which loosely translates: “Have you seen a tall thin homosexual guy around here?” {This is not meant to be offensive toward anyone with alternative sexual preferences. I am just explaining what the locals would say, and telling the story how it happened.}
When mountain bike hero realised there were two cameras, his face showed how disappointed he was, and he was off in pursuit again. Equally, the neighbourhood gang handed us our camera with joy, but then was so disappointed to know there was another camera out there.
We were off on the trail again. Meanwhile, we passed a gentleman in a green truck whom we’d asked earlier if he’d seen the…moffie. He took HH’s business card to let him know if he found anything out, and he went off in a different direction to help us look. He knew where the druggies usually went to sell stuff.
Eventually the gentleman in the green truck phoned us to say he’d found out the last name of the guy who’d stolen the cameras, and also where s/he worked. We passed the guy in the green truck later, and he said he had to get back to the office, but he planned to look some more when he got off work.
By this time, it seemed hopeless, and we knew we had to go and fetch the shoes to take back to Masiphumelele before it was time for the children to go home. It was tough to move on.
The amazing thing was that we recovered a camera, the unfortunate thing that we didn’t recover the camera. But here’s hoping the lang skraal moffie will have a change of heart, or pass it on to someone who will look at the smiling faces of the children we took pictures of this morning, see the Samaritan’s Feet posters in the background, and choose to do the right thing!
We were really, really blessed to see this community, one that might look rough around the edges from the outside, come together and rally to try to help us in such a trying moment. They really cared about what happened, and really wanted the wrong to be righted. They don’t want the wrongdoing of a few to give a reputation to everyone else.
In the end, SABC3 didn’t show up, and we didn’t even have our camera to take photos of the beautiful kids that received a pair of shoes today. But great things happened. Jesus’ Name was lifted up. As the afternoon came to a close, the children gathered to sing praises to the Lord and to thank Him and us for their new shoes. And that one little boy who arrived in holey bedroom shoes left in a sturdy pair of shoes that will protect his feet for a long time.
And if it was all for just one of those kids to know that God loves them and cares about them, then it was all worth it.
Today was a good day, and God can work everything together for good if we love Him and trust Him.
I’ve got a feeling, lang skraal moffie or not, this story ain’t over yet.
xCC
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