The Eluxolweni Children's Shelter

We just returned from a Eluxolweni (place of peace) Children's shelter outside the Grahamstown township. It was quite an experience with many similarities as well as differences with doing youth work in the States. The children, like all children, were rowdy and excitable. But they love to sing and do so often. It's as if someone flips a switch and suddenly they are all singing and dancing (most songs have some level of movement associated with them.) It is a joyous sound that wells up from so many tragic stories. These are children who have fled abusive homes. Homes where they had to learn to be adults long before any child should. But at this shelter they can be children and many have reconnected to that part of them.

Nkayniso, Numba, Johanna, Maria, Gates and myself traveled to spend a short hour of time presenting a program and playing and singing with the kids. I didn't understand a word of the program as most of it was presented in either Zulu or Xhosa. But it seems like the kids understood it. Gates, who had recently spent about a month at a summer camp, managed to come up with a simple call and response song that was "from American." He put on quite a show and had all the kids laughing and singing. It was a side of Gates I was totally unfamiliar with. I closed the hour with a short prayer. And we said our goodbyes. Although there was very little direct interaction and communication was difficult, many of the children expressed love and perhaps a little curiosity about our awkward American-ness as we left. We will return next Friday with more songs "from America" and maybe a goofy game or two. Perhaps in honor of Casey Duncan I will teach them all to speak pirate.

-Dean