South Africa: Chapter 3

Skirt: Anthro Laurenti

Cardi and Tee: J.Crew

Watch: AE

Flats: Steve Madden Heaven

Life at a mission passes with the same regular tasks as anywhere else.  Hang the laundry, plant bulbs in the flower beds, mend the clothes, attend classes, touch up the paint.  The rhythms of the day are not much different than what I experience at home.

I am a list girl.  I have lists for everything. I'm scatter-brained enough that I have to have them to keep the corners of my mind contained.  

Wish lists. 

Grocery lists. 

Hand-made project lists. 

Dream lists.

What-to-wear lists.

Lists of places to go and things to buy...but today, I have only one item on my list--  

Spend time with the children at the mission school.

We teach them to play Duck-duck Goose and Freeze Tag.  The little girls have never learned clapping games.  We admire the half-colored pictures in their classroom where broken crayons criss-cross the scratches on a well-worn table.  We peer over their shoulders as they work their math numbers with meticulous care and clap when they astound us with how they turn a soccer ball with their feet.

There is so much to learn and see.  I am constantly holding myself from rushing forward...it would be too easy to rush to the next thing without fully enjoying the thing in front of me.  There is no advantage to be gained from being in a hurry here...this place is bejeweled by a mature slowness--a rhythm that will not be disturbed by impatient outsiders.  Even the animals refuse to be hurried.

At the end of the day, I gaze over the valley, smelling the land, remembering the sound of children's prayers voiced together in a lyrical British clip. A giraffe charts a knobby-kneed path through tall grass. Husbie stands at my side. It has been a day of a thousand ah-ha moments...

I am changing.

Changing deep.