(Dis)organization

Before I get to the blog/event stuff, I’m going to get a little personal here. (Please feel free to skip over this and on to the next paragraph.) When in doubt, I distract myself. I get online, wasting my air time, I start texting people at home, I try (and fail) to read a book, I Wikipedia stuff I don’t know about but am interested in, I take a shower or eat. But in today’s instance, I write a blog. Sometimes I doubt myself. I doubt who I am as a person, and why anyone would want to form and maintain a relationship with me. These thoughts quickly breeze over and I segue into the future. Will I be forever alone? The phrase “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” is to me, frankly, bullshit. How many people in the world (not even the world, as I realistically don’t have access to the world at large – really only where I live, so, in this case, Tulsa and Norman) will I be attracted to on a spiritual, emotional, romantic, and physical level and will they in turn be attracted back on these levels? And when these handful or less of people come along, will we be able to maintain something… Forever? Maybe I think about the future too much. I need to live in the present. But I’ve gotten to the chronological and emotional age where settling down sounds nice, so long as that someone and I will be able to continue to have fun and travel together with our potential family. By no means am I actively looking for someone thinking “holy shit, my time (for finding someone) is almost over.” I realize that at twenty-one I am in the prime of my life, but it’d be nice to have some kind of reassurance. Right now, my reassurance is with The Fray.

Anyway, now that that’s out of my system (sorry for that public display of humanness, but I do feel better – sometimes it takes talking to someone else my own age who feels the same and has the same worries, and sometimes it helps to just type it out for a blog when nobody around the world is online and hope people skip over it) I can move on to event stuff. I’ve decided to skip over the rest of spring break, realizing my laziness in that a week trip took me over a month to blog about and another weekend trip didn’t even make it into my personal journal. In fact, it’s been almost a month since I’ve written anything in my journal. I finished the one my friend Jami gave me before I left, wrote some pages in a new South Africa-bought one, and quit – pathetic. Life moves on and so will this blog.

So, earlier this week my friend Mark from OU who’s in SA independently now texted me asking if Brooke and I and the other international students would want to volunteer at a boys’ shelter this weekend. The shelter had organized with about eight other shelters in the area to put together a sports day for all the kids. Having nothing else to do Saturday morning and loving children, we said yes. We were picked up about a half hour later than expected (what they say about African time is true) and headed to the home on the southwest side of the city. We arrived to a field full of kids, boys and girls alike, just kinda sitting around in their own groups while we waited for instruction. We all stood around until we were told to move into the gym for orientation. Several people spoke about the day while some of the kids from the shelter in Pretoria that Mark knew played with Brooke and I in the back of the auditorium. Or rather, played with our phones. After the speaking and during the phone-playing, a traditional African song and dance was performed by two of the shelters’ kids. I love it when I get to see traditional African stuff performed. It reminds me that I really am in South Africa, on the African continent, and not in a completely Westernized part of the world.

This is Mesach. He pretty much sat on my lap and played with my phone during the whole orientation.

After orientation and the performance, we moved back outside and, again, waited around for about a half hour while the coordinators of each shelter collaborated on what exactly to do. A schedule had been typed up, but we were already an hour behind and nothing had really been organized. Brooke and I talked about life here and at home, about African (dis)organization, and compared cultures. After awhile, cones for track and field races were set up and Brooke and I decided it was time to move off of the field. We took a seat on the bleachers and watched a couple of races while simultaneously observing an adorable little Indian boy cuddle with a dog. It was probably only in the mid-80’s outside, but we were also in the African sun (which shines so differently and much more intensely here) and I felt myself starting to burn. I moved to the shade.

After a quick sit and cool-down, the lady “in charge” of the whole event came over to me and asked if I could supervise traditional games and chess which was being played back in the auditorium. Chess? Kids are interested in chess? No way. I don’t want to do chess. Chess is boring. Kids need to run around. Also, chess = a traditional game? Not really. Whatever. I had nothing else to do, agreed and followed her inside. There was one chess set and about twenty-five older boys who wanted to play. There was supposed to be a competition going but with only one set and so many competitors, I could already tell this was going nowhere fast. So this lady asked the other adults in the room what was going on and after a good five minutes of conversation we finally decided on something. Kind of. She counted kids interested (twenty-four) and coordinators (adults – four) and assigned six kids to each coordinator. “Register these children for chess,” she said. I was confused. Register them? This is a one person job, tops. “Oh, and we have these,” she said, picking up a grocery bag with about a dozen tennis balls in them. “Can you do anything with these?” “Wall Ball,” I thought. But I didn’t know how to play Wall Ball. I always just observed on the playground in elementary school. My friends and I were the ones who stood around and talked during recess. (I’ve always been a little different, I suppose.) “I don’t know if I can do anything with these, I’m sorry.” I said to her. She told me to get creative and that she would go get a marker so that I could label the tennis balls as king, knight, pawn, etc. What? 12ish tennis balls + no giant tennis-ball-chess-board + sixteen pieces in a real game = chess tournament? DOES NOT COMPUTE. She left and I pulled out the schedule I had been given earlier to start writing names down for registration, but had no pen. The kids around me (and ones with the other adults) began to disperse back to observing the chess game at hand. I also left but in search for Brooke, my fellow American who possibly knew how to play Wall Ball, wanting to be able to do something with the tennis balls turned chess pieces I had been shown.

I found Brooke near the shade tree I had sat by before I was called to do nothing and asked her if she knew how to play Wall Ball. “No, I used to in elementary but don’t remember how anymore,” she said. I felt a little defeated but was glad to be back outside. Brooke and I talked and played with some of the kids (Mesach, and some others. It should be noted that Meshach is from DRC and also has brothers named Shadrach and Abednego.) while waiting on something do to, of which that something never materialized. As I lugged some of the kids around on my back and tossed them into the air, I had flashbacks to childhood at my grandparents’ house in Oklahoma City and my cousins and I being launched into the deep end of the pool by my dad and uncles. I can’t wait to be able to do that with my own kids some day. After some play, a dance, and some more lounging, it was time to head back, as most of us international students had other stuff to do that day. We said goodbye to the kids and seven of us piled into two cars of Mark’s friends, and headed back to Tuks.

Abednego and me

While we literally did nothing to help out the whole time we were there (with the exception of Anna and Liu, who cut vegetables for lunch in the kitchen while we were outside), I’m so glad I went. I loved being with the kids and experiencing the ridiculousness of the (dis)organization at hand. The one thing I’ll miss about this place when I return home in a little over a month is the entertainment value of the society. That may sound nationalistic, but I truly to love the differences. And deep down, the disorganization.