God in My Life This Year, 2022. TUMC New Year’s Service.
When Pastor Peter called to ask if I would participate today, New Years’ Day,
I had just received a long email with photos from Anesu, a grand-daughter of my dear friend in Zimbabwe - Jane Gwati (now deceased).
Anesu, and her two older sisters also call me “Grannie”.
God in My Life at that moment in time was the blessings I felt for the course my life has taken - from apartheid to ubuntu• (a sharing culture)…
Many of you know that I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era (1948-1958). A life of white privilege: first-rate education at all-white Roedean school. Black “house servants” (we knew nothing of their families) cooked our meals, cleaned our rooms, did the laundry while each living in a small room behind the kitchen courtyard) Sam, “the garden-boy” mowed the lawns, cleaned our back-yard swimming pool etc.
During the August school holidays we went on safaris to game parks near and far. And Dad’s job, heading American Express Travel Agency, gave him holiday leave every three years to return to the UK. Instead, in 1951 we flew to Boston, USA, spending time with Granny Dawes (Mum’s mum).: In 1954 we travelled by ship across the South Atlantic to coastal ports in Brazil and Argentina. In 1957 we travelled by ship (our car on board) up the East coast to Beira, then overland by car to Victoria Falls.
In my second last year of high-school at Roedean, an event happened that changed my life-view. Trevor Huddleston, then Anglican Archbishop in S.Africa, wanted white school kids to know what was going on in black townships. Each year he arranged a long-weekend (one for girls, one for boys) to visit the townships. I happened to be chosen as representative for Roedean. On our return, each student was required to make a presentation to students, and to the Parent-teachers’ Association. I was on fire: “This apartheid system is WRONG… It’s got to CHANGE!!! “ Afterwards the headmistress came and said to me “Try to be a little pool of quietness.” A parent said “You’re going to America to college” (I must have told of Mum’s plans for me). “Come back in four years and help to change the apartheid system.” And my response:
“Four YEARS? FOUR years! It can’t wait four years… It must change NOW!!!
1958: Mum put me on a boat in Durban headed for Boston, where Gran collected me, and I began four years at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
… Some 30+ years later, in my fifties, and two decades after immigrating to Canada, I went “back-to-school” at U. of T. to do my Ph.D. After coursework, I returned to Southern Africa, to northeast. Zimbabwe. There I conducted research for a Ph.D. thesis in agroforestry - the way trees are used in the local farming system. Living with Shona families, I became friends with Jane Gwati. Her daughter Violet and family, who live in Harare, remain friends to this day.. …
One major blessing of “God in my Life”- has been this way I overcame the evils of apartheid in my South African childhood, by experiencing “Ubuntu”, the sharing culture in 1990’s Zimbabwe, with Jane Gwati, her family, and others..
Wikipedia:
• Ubuntu … a term translated as "I am because we are" (and “…because you are") or "humanity towards others" (Zulu) In Xhosa, the latter term is used, often in a more philosophical sense: "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".