These pages are

a supplement to

www.i3L.org

These pages are an

archive of reports and photos from 2007 KZN visits

During Jan and Ruthann's 2007 time in KwaZulu-Natal, they visited with a number of the KZN churches participating in i3L.  A more complete list of these visits is provided at http://www.i3l.org/KZNevents2007.htm.  These supplemental pages reproduce certain of the report letters and photos which were sent back to the 'matched' Mass churches concerning some of these visits.  Link to the reports on visits with particular churches, from the navigation toolbar, to the right, or from the description and date in the list below.

... and related general communications.

Also reproduced below are this year's visit's "Letters from Umhlanga," the second of which is a description of a late-visit 'pick-up visit' to the South Coast of KZN.

Worship at Imfume

(Sunday, 22nd April 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Impaphala

(Sunday, 6th May 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Umtwalume

(Sunday, 13th May 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Delivery to Umzumbe

(Thursday, 17th May 2007)

link to TEXT with pictures

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Visit to Groutville

(Wednesday, 30th May 2007)

link to TEXT wth pictures

Worship at Mathonsi

(Sunday, 3rd June 2007)

link to PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Woodlands

(Sunday, 24th June 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Esikhawini

(Sunday, 1st July 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

(Thursday, 5th July 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at KwaMashu

(Sunday, 15th July 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Lamontville

(Sunday, 22nd July 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Table Mountain

(Sunday, 29th July 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

Worship at Clermont

(Sunday, 5th August 2007)

link to TEXT and PHOTO GALLERY

... and related general communications.

MAY 29, 2007

Greetings, all! "Due to time constraints" ... This short note, and the offering of the attached photo, are in lieu of another longish 'letter from Umhlanga,' at least for now. Some of you will be breathing easier with that news, we know.

Yes, we're back in South Africa, busy-busy-busy with the church-to-church connection effort, the schedule of visits concerning which, more or less up to date, is at www.i3L.org/KZNevents2007.htm, if you're interested; if you're up on the geography here, you'll see that we've been bouncing around the province, south and then north and then south again, and inland, like proverbial ping pong balls, testing the mileage limits on the car rental. We've been here five weeks, and will be here just into August, this year; there's much to do! But a visiting minister from Massachusetts provided the excuse to take a one-day run north to the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi provincial park to see animals and birds, and this photo

is of two bull elephants who were having a shoving match right on the road by the park's main lodge, blocking traffic and putting on quite a show. The guy to the left in the photo ended up winnning, which gave him sole access to a dust bath source on the side of the road, which he proceeded to use for a while longer; traffic sits and waits, and watches, and readjusts depending upon where he looks like he's going to move next. Africa teaches patience in many ways.

Hope all is well with you as the northern half of the world enters summer; here, it's cooled off considerably over the weeks we've been here, chilly at night but quite wonderful (we think -- the locals are bundled up) during the days.

Salani kahle -- stay well.

Best, from Jan and Ruthann.

AUGUST 16, 2007

We're back in the US, just, after completing a somewhat shorter, three and a half month, stint in South Africa for this year's effort in regard to the church-to-church connection program, and some other things. We thought to wrap this up, for the while, by sending a second note, which in response to one or two of you suggesting in reference to the 'in lieu of a longer letter' missive earlier, that hey, you didn't totally mind the longer version of the 'Letters from Umhlanga,' will be of the customary length. So, anyway, while it's actually a 'Letter from Clinton,' here goes with a report on one of our last days 'on the job' in KZN for this year: 

This photo

is of the view along the road into the Umzumbe Valley, in the southern part of KwaZulu-Natal.

As we prepare to wrap up our stay in KZN for the year, we offer to assist any of the churches developing relationship connections with Massachusetts churches, in delivering items from them to their ‘matched’ church in the US. We do the same for the Massachusetts churches when traveling in the other direction. On the KZN side, it has become somewhat traditional for us, as part of the scramble to ingather the items from the KZN churches before we start packing for the trip back to the US, to make ‘pick-up runs’ from our base in Umhlanga, just north of Durban, at various times to points around the metro area, and with longer pre-planned multi-church trips usually in three directions – west to Pietermaritzburg, north towards Zululand, and along the South Coast.

On the morning of the first Thursday in August, so two weeks ago or so as we write this, we were on this road as part of the ‘South Coast pick-up run,’ nearing the first destination of the day at the old Mission church at Umzumbe. We’d like to share a few reflections on the day’s visits, to Umzumbe, to Gamalakhe, to Umzinto (for Umtwalume), and to Adams. These places, and the churches gathered there, provide glimpses of some of the variety of this place.

UMZUMBE. We’ve written before about traveling to Umzumbe [see http://www.i3l.org/newsletters2006.htm -- check out "#3. Letter from Umhlanga 2006 no. 3: Our trip to Umzumbe, and why ... July 6, 2006"]. We won’t belabor the description again. The trip south from Durban on the N2 interstate-quality highway takes an hour and a half or so and is quick and comfortable until you take the exit and turn inland. It’s a dirt road for 20 km or so from there, from just before where the photo was taken. It is winter, so things are a bit brown. The hazy look in the photo comes mainly from burning off the dead grass in the fields, which is done each winter.
As you can see from the photo, this is a very rural area, though a number of the people living here travel the hour and more each day into the small city of Port Shepstone for work. Things are changing in the valley as well. There has been electricity, and phone service, since before we first saw it, and there is now a water system in place, evidenced by the people gathered around the standpipes by the side of the road, filling their cans to take back to their houses. We’ve been to places in KZN that are more deeply rural than this, but Umzumbe can serve as a reminder that the very modern urban areas of the province, where we spend most of our time, are perhaps a thin veneer on this basically rural place.

Crossing the river a couple of times, we approach the hillock where the Mission church is situated, and along the road we spot a couple of white-bloused and -capped Isililo members. One of these is Juliet Mthembu, the treasurer of the Umzumbe Circuit and a member of the central, Mission church. Thursday is the usual Isililo meeting day, when the ladies gather for prayer and home visitation with the sick, bereaved, and shut-in members of the congregation, which explains the uniform -- but she’s also been alerted that we were to come that day for the pick-up of items to be taken to their relationship church at Athol, Massachusetts, and has come to greet us.

Is she keeping well? And her family? She says it has been a difficult time recently, as there have been deaths in her extended family. More sadly still, these have included younger ones, as AIDS continues its grim assault on the fabric of the community. But there is hope and faith.

We give her a ride up the hill to the church, where Claudia Cele, who is the Sunday school teacher with whom we’d scheduled the visit, and Mrs. Dlamini, who is the late minister’s widow and a leader in the Isililo organization, are waiting for us.
Inside the church, there are signs of the relationship with the Athol church. When we’d visited them earlier this year, we’d given Claudia a map of Massachusetts with Athol’s location noted, and dropped off pictures sent over by Judy Wirth; these are posted on a wall to the back of the church. Also on the wall up front, there’s the clock with an image of the Athol church building, that they received from Athol last year. And on a table in a front corner of the church, sits the picture scrapbook from Athol, with its many pictures and mementos from church life there.

From Claudia, we receive what we’d mainly come for, an envelope with pen pal letters from the Sunday school to their friends at Athol. We have the chance to talk about this and that with each of them, and it is in the course of this discussion that we’re told that they’ve observed us over the years we’ve been coming there, and they think “you’ve been changed” by our time in South Africa. And yes, that is very much so.

(See a photo gallery from this visit, at www.i3L-kzn.org/2007_Umzumbe.)

GAMALAKHE. Leaving Umzumbe, we head dustily back towards the coast, and eschewing the highway, take the old coastal road southward towards Port Shepstone, skirting several of the beach communities that lie in a string all up and down the coast from Durban south to the border with the Eastern Cape Province. After finding lunch in the town, we take the fifteen minute ride back inland towards kwaGamalakhe, a township area which sits out here surrounded by sugar cane fields. It was created, relatively recently as these places go, mainly to provide separate housing for the workforce for the towns around Port Shepstone. As you enter this township, it seems very much like other such places in South Africa, but with that extra sense of artificiality, being quite separated from the town it serves and a pocket of urban life out among the fields.

It is also a divided place, in many senses. We know from prior visits that the main road through this place, which runs along a ridge, has served as a demarcation between the more up-scale ‘township’, populated by teachers and government workers who support the ANC, on the one side, and the less developed, poorer and uneducated rural area, where a ‘traditional leader’ will hold sway and tend to support the IFP, to the other side. This was a war zone during the intra-community political strife in the lead-up to the ’94 elections and beyond.

We arrive at the central church of the Gamalakhe circuit of the UCCSA, the building for which sits along the main road, just on the ‘township’ side. There are several large schools along here as well, and as we’re a bit early for our meeting, we observe many, many variously uniformed kids walking home from school. It is a very young country.
In time, May-Rose Shabalala arrives in her car. She’s a 1st grade school teacher, as well as a Sunday school teacher at the church. She lives on the ‘township’ side of the road, but teaches in a school over in the ‘rural’ side, which is where she’s come from to meet us. She clearly has a most important job, which she takes very seriously, as the primary bridge for many of her rural students into the possibilities of an academic and more modern world that lies before them.

She is very much a teacher, and her Sunday school class has prepared a wonderful collection of letters and gifts for their friends at the relationship church at Millbury, Massachusetts.

We’re thanked for doing the delivery honors, but chided a bit because we hadn’t been to worship at Gamalakhe this year – we’d been there last year, and promised we’d try to arrange it next year, but no, we couldn’t have made Gamalakhe one of our thirteen Sunday visits to participate in worship, not this year. We’re forgiven, just.

UMZINTO. Our next appointment is back up towards Durban, so we return to the highway by Port Shepstone, and proceed northwards. While we’re looking to pick up items from the Umtwalume church, for their new relationship with the Union church in East Walpole, Massachusetts, we’ll not be going out into the sugar cane fields again to the old mission at Umtwalume. Rather, we’re going further north towards Durban, still in sugar cane fields but in the more semi-urban area of Umzinto, a sugar company town an hour south of Durban where a number of the leaders of the more rural Umtwalume church now live. One of these is Mary Gumede, the elected Secretary for the circuit.
Mary is a retired schoolteacher who lives with her husband in a nice house in a formerly Indian housing area. In no small part because of the influence of the missionary background of their churches, many of the members of the Zulu churches of the UCCSA are from the black middle class, often educated and working as teachers or educational administrators, or nurses. With the removal of the housing restrictions of the Group Areas Act, they can and often do move into better housing areas than were available to them before – most places in South Africa, these could be formerly Coloured housing areas, and often, in KZN especially, these would include the areas which had been reserved for the Indian (including what would now be considered Pakistani) populations. In the coastal areas of KZN, in particular, the Indian population which has been here since the latter half of the 19th century, is very large. Historically, the Indians are upwards of one-third of the inhabitants of greater Durban, making up the largest Indian population outside the subcontinent. The Hindu portion of this population group arrived initially through the recruitment of entire villages in India as contract workers for the sugar cane industry in South Africa. By the time the houses were being built in the ‘Ashoka Hills’ housing area where Mary now lives, there would be Indian managers in these businesses, and together with the descendants of the later-arriving Muslim Indians of the merchant class they would have made up the residents of this area. But in the reshuffle of housing under the ‘new dispensation,’ the Indians often move out into formerly white suburbs, and while some blacks have moved there with them, and some choose to remain in the township areas (which were never economically segregated, so there are quite well-off people in parts of those areas, as well), there’s a decided tendency towards the integration of the housing in many of the formerly Indian and Coloured housing areas, perhaps especially the smaller ones outside the city, such as this one in Umzinto. So much for the housing history lesson.

Well, we remembered how to get to the development, and then had a general recollection as to where Mary’s house was, and especially recalled the simply impossible paved driveway up to the house. We didn’t want to risk our rental vehicle on that hill, if we didn’t have to. Which was just as well, since we couldn’t quite decide, from the bottom of the hill, which of the driveways was hers. A combination of phone calls to Mary (who was at the moment still down at the Umtwalume church, beginning her way home by minibus taxi), and our exploring the somewhat likelier-looking of the driveways and encountering her husband who confirmed we’d found it, got us into the right place.

We sit and wait for her with Mr. Gumede in their nice drawing room with its overstuffed furniture. He recalls seeing the map we’d prepared about the location of the East Walpole church with which Umtwalume is exploring a relationship. We comment on a photo up on their wall, of what appears to be their wedding (though they look a bit older than would have been expected); Mr. Gumede explains that their original wedding photos were lost in a fire, and they went back to a photographer to have them redone. In the photos, Mary's in what we'd expect of a wedding dress, and he's in one of those disco-era light blue tuxedos that most of us from that time remember, perhaps with a cringe. Another bit of universality.

Mary arrives, clambering up the steep driveway, followed in short order by two of her grandchildren in their uniforms, returning home from school.

We get to meet them, and learn that they’re two of the major contributors to the collection of really neat cards, and letters, and completed information forms, that we’re receiving from Mary to take back to East Walpole. We talk with Mary a bit further about details of other items they’re putting together that will have to be sent directly to East Walpole, and the mechanics of that.

After a nice visit, the Gumedes

 walk us back down the driveway to our car, and we find our way back out to the highway, and head north again.

ADAMS. The last stop of the day is at Adams Mission, in an area once a glebe – dedicated church land -- for this first American Board mission station, named for Newton Adams, a medical doctor and minister who was one of that first group of missionaries who came out to the ‘Zooloos’ in the 1830’s. The area is now pretty indistinguishable from the semi-urban township housing all around it, spreading coastward until it encounters the different world of the towers of beachside holiday flats across the highway at Amanzimtoti; down through the more industrial areas of Isipingo and the urbanized places towards the city of Durban proper; and inland until you reach the sugar cane fields again, the still rural areas up towards Umbumbulu. It’s a scruffy sort of area, now, looking rather like Gamalakhe but less well ordered since it’s been here a lot longer.

We’re here to meet Octavia Thuntulwana, the Sunday school teacher for this church which is in relationship with the Bethany church in Foxboro, Massachusetts. By arrangement, we meet Octavia at the bottom of the drive up to her house which is maybe a half kilometer from the church. This drive isn’t all that steep, what we can see of it, but it’s very uneven and rocky, and the rental car issue comes up again. So Octavia, and her daughter and granddaughter, or two granddaughters we’re not sure, meet us there, along with the younger granddaughter’s new puppy.

We have a nice talk with Octavia about the ongoing pen-pal relationship of the Adams Sunday school and Foxboro’s, and Octavia tells us ‘the children are so interested’ in the communications from the US. We talk timing, and mechanics, about the continued exchanges between the groups. Octavia gives us an album with photos from the Sunday school class, and a few letters; other pen-pal letters have been sent directly by mail, earlier.

And then we leave this last of our stops on the day’s travels, heading back to the very westernized Umhlanga area to the north of the city. By the time we’re done, it’s taken a full day though it’s been only about 250 miles. But it’s been farther than that, really, as we’ve gone from the fringes of deep rural KZN, at Umzumbe; to an isolated black township near a provincial town, straddling the urban and rural nature of the Zulu communities, at Gamalakhe; to a mid-scale agribusiness housing area in transition, where the folks interact both with their rural church and with the industrial base that links them to the outside world, at Umzinto; and to what is now a teeming black housing area, which while part of the extended footprint of the major city of Durban, seems both part of and cut off from that newer world, at Adams. It’s a continuing journey, for us and more so, much more so day to day, for the people here.

As we were re-approaching the center of Durban on the N2 (interstate), we passed a mid-sized yellow truck with the legend ‘We pick up … we deliver’ emblazoned on it – “Hey, they’re in the same line of work!’’

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"IBANDLA LAMI LINGE LAKHO /

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