Rachel and I spent a few weeks in Swaziland a few years ago with the Lukhele family.  Samuel stole all of our hearts as soon as we met him.  I wrote about some of his quotes back when we were there.  He asked so many questions about the most ridiculous things because he was so curious about the world, and this was at his old age.  It was beautiful.  He knew how to care and he knew how to rest.  I just remember watching him sitting on his chair and enjoying life, I loved watching him so much I just couldn’t stop taking his picture.  At one point, as I was reaching my limits of physical exhaustion after five minutes of digging a hole he told me to stop because “there is no need to die today.”  Samuel’s physical body died this week.  May God be with your family and all those who will miss you from day to day.

After a slow to non-existing internet connection, to my flash not coming off my camera, to my laptop busting and having to take it apart to get my files off of it, I finally have all my pictures from my trip. I have uploaded about 200 of them to Flickr, along with the full sizes in case you ever wanted to print them or make them your background. I think the girls want to do a fundraiser with some of the pictures, so just because I’m giving them away for free don’t be stingy.

Here are all the pictures of animals that I got from Kruger. This was definitely the most stimulating environment I’ve ever been in to take pictures. Wild animals in the wild, not sedated tied to a rock that are fed pre-cut steaks. Their steaks are the other animals we see. Nothing can beat it. You can view them all here.

I’ll highlight a few of my favourite pictures or favourite moments and then put the rest into a sideshow so you can just scroll through them quickly.

For ascetics, this is one of my favourite pictures that I’ve taken. It’s such a wallpaper or something of the sort. It just shows to well I think how beautiful it was there. I had to jump out of the car in the middle of Kruger to take it. When I went back to try and take a few more I got yelled and beeped at by park rangers to get back in my car. So the shot is a one shot wonder. Click here to make it your background if you want (just right click on the photo and set as desktop background).

These picture aren’t the best, I know. But if you knew how desperately I wanted to see I lion and a leopard you would be just as proud. This leopard was sitting under a tree about 700m away from where I was, so I zoomed in as much as I could and snapped at air until I could find it and then digitally zoomed in on top of that. You could barely see it with your eyes. The only lions I saw were sleeping on the side of the road after dark, and the only Hyenas I saw were at night also, so pictures were difficult in that setting but they turned out all right, and we were so ridiculously close to them.

Elephants were buy far the most common sighting after the hundreds of thousands of Impala we saw. So we got ridiculously close to wild elephants who were known to tip vehicles if annoyed. So I got a few sweet shots of them. The last shot there was taken when we were about 3-5 feet away from them and they were down about 2 feet cleaning themselves staring right at us.

These birds don’t fly, and they were one of the first animals we saw going into the park. They are physco looking turkey’s called Ground Hornbills.

These things just walk around, and one got trapped in this walk way I was in, so that was kind of cool. This was the very first thing we saw entering the park, he was just peeking over the road as me drove by.

I snagged this shot when we were in this little hut that oversaw a massive pond where tons of animals came to drink. It was called Lake Panic. It was by far the coolest place to view nature because you felt like you weren’t disturbing them and just watching them do their thing by themselves. It was pretty amazing.

Giraffes are just cool looking animals and there was quite a bit of them also.

It’s always cool when you can get two different animals in the same shot. This was at one of the watering holes. Hippos are so massive, but pretty boring to watch. Unless of course I’m sure they are getting attacked by two male lions. The people we stayed with saw this video happen live.

These animals (monkeys and baboons) just hang out and look at the cars. No fear. We also had come monkeys living where we were. Kind of like we have cats here, they just have random monkeys running around, which is a way cooler animal.

This is a picture of the deranged rooster that didn’t know when morning was because randomly every morning he would crow right out side our door anytime between two and six AM. I’m pretty sure he had broncitus too because he sounded like he was dying.

These wildabeast were booking it following the road so we followed them for a few minutes trying to keep up going backwards with me hanging out the car trying to get some shots.

A lot of the birds slept on the tops of trees at night so you could get some cool shots of them at the right time of dusk.

Bald Eagles were some of my favourite animals to read about when I was a kid, so it was cool to see some.

Here is the rest of the shots that I uploaded. I took hundreds of photos and tried to sort it down to my favourites.

I’m starting to realize how far reaching globalization is reaching. When you are in the mountains of Swaziland and there is a cell phone tower in the middle of avocado trees, you start to think that something is up. Everything is being put on the same page. Culture and uniqueness is going out the window. The time when you stumbled into another land and saw a people who had developed completely different from you is over. Everyone can communicate with everyone else, and everyone is affecting everyone.

The scary part about this is everyone is expected to look the same and essentially be the same. Because we are a democratic society we can’t comprehend and we don’t agree with communist societies. In fact, because we are so connected and so close to communist societies, it’s almost worth forcing our democratic beliefs on them. Not because we want their land necessarily anymore, but because our way is better and we want them to have the best (or so we say). The scarier part about this is the West is leading the revolution. Everyone wants to be like us, especially those that really don’t know much about us.

How else would twenty-year old guys who have never left the rural areas of Swaziland know that they want to study computers and get a nice car? Why else would poor black families be planting grass in front of their shack instead of gardens? Why else would people work their asses off to make money just to waste it? Why else would people who know nothing about my country want to come to it because of watching movies from the 80’s?

The world is flat and we can now see right to the very end of it in both directions and everyone can see us. It is kind of depressing. It sucks to watch students expected to learn and be educated in their schools in South Africa at the same standards we have here in the West but without the environment or resources to compliment it. They give out internet research projects even though most if not all their students don’t have any access to internet. They study in English, not their native tongue. They are crammed in classes 5 times the size of ours. Their teachers are in it for the money, not the students. But everyone is happy because they are “being educated.”

No one is content wherever I go. If I’m here in Canada, everyone wants more. We all want more money, better things and happier lives. We are never content. It’s not really much different anywhere else in the world. People just aren’t content. They want all the same things. We are all in it for ourselves. Taking what we can get, when we can get it.

But hopefully the movement of those that standup and learn to be content with what we have will start to mobilize. I saw it in Africa. Grandma’s on their death bed, with no money, no family around to love them and care for them and yet they were grateful for every breath. People with nothing but the manure they were sitting on, thrilled to just be alive and taking care of their children or grand-children. It does exist. Disease, wealth, physical ability, nothing is getting in the way of people learning that it’s not about them. True life is found in contentment and serving others and not yourself. The joy on the face of the Grandma’s as they take care of the sick everyday proves that it’s happening. There is joy in life, and it’s found so close to suffering and death. It’s found in giving of yourself, not looking out for yourself. It’s found in being content and thankful for what you have not in hope and resentment of what you don’t. Hopefully we can be that here, but I have a feeling that our money and pride will continually get in the way.

Rachel and I are just starting to wind down from our trip here. We leave in two days. The last week here without Charity and Shane has been a lot more finding out what Hands at Work does as a whole. My IT skills have been used occasionally here in the office so I’ve been able to watch first hand how everything functions here.

Rachel on the other hand has dove right into her nursing. Everyday ends with a massive smile on her face. She is loving every minute of it. She jumped right into work at the ACTS clinic working with patients, taking blood and doing whatever else nurses do. She probably has a million things to say and tell about her work in the clinic but I’ll leave that to her, which I’m sure will all awake her from her blogging slumber.

There is a number of volunteers here now from all the different projects that are all over Africa, so it is a beautiful site. All of them felt called by God to help those in need around them and started doing it, then Hands at Work started backing them up by sending them whatever funds and resources they needed (or whatever Hands at Work had) to help them do their work. It is great to hear their stories and what has been happening where they are from.

When I return I will post all my pictures and probably a few more thoughts that I’ve had. But for now that is all from this trip.

The story in the bible about Jesus washing feet is about servant hood. However it is kinda of outdated. No one washes each other’s feet here or in Canada. When we tell the story we constantly try to make washing feet somehow relevant. I’ve had my feet washed 3 times in the past at youth conventions or nights when youth pastors were trying to prove a point.

Maybe its time for a new analogy. For our culture, and even the culture here in Africa, I’m realizing that washing dishes would do the trick. Everyone has dishes at some point and they all need to be cleaned. You get your fingernails dirty and sometimes you miss out on the conversation. I don’t know a person in the world that isn’t happy when someone else washes their dishes for them. I know at theStory only a few people every get down behind the sink and scrub away. Men usually leave it to the women.

When you show up in Africa, you really want to make an impact. You want your skills to be used and you want to help out in the best way possible. Then you get here and you realize that most of your skills don’t transfer and you feel pretty useless most of the time. On top of that the last place you want to be is cleaning dishes. Anyone can clean dishes right? You didn’t fly all the way from your country to come here and clean dishes. It’s a waste of your time and money to just clean dishes.

Yet here is where I think we are called. To come here and clean dishes. To do those little things that we don’t think are good enough for us.

Hands at Work is an interesting organization. They spend all their time and effort supporting local people serving their community. They don’t walk in and step on toes and take over programs and hire more white people for all their good ideas. Instead they see what God is already up to with the people that already live here and then they support them however they can. They wash their dishes, clean their feet, serve the locals so they are supported.

This is the beauty of our mission. It isn’t complicated. Those that don’t think they have anything to offer are wrong. Serving really is simple, but be prepared to feel useless and not be noticed for it. It is in this kind of service that your work will go the furthest in the kingdom.

I’m writing this a week later, so I will probably skip over a lot of things without thinking. The rest of the week in Swaziland was a slower pace but we got a lot accomplished. Shane and the grandchildren filled in a 3 foot deep hole that was dug for a new water hole. It only got to be three feet deep because they hit a rock. So they filled it in and then started a new hole. This hole ended up being about 10 feet deep, 10 feet by 10 feet also. They had to use a ladder to get out. I was quite impressed.

I spent a good chunk of the beginning of the week helping Lindiwe with her computer teaching her Excel, Word and what to do on the Internet. She is going to be the administrator of that area so we started getting her organized and prepared for all the work she was going to do.
Charity and Rachel got involved in the kitchen as much as possible. They also helped scrub dozens and dozens of eggs because Nomsa was able to get a client in the city to sell her eggs to, and she wanted them to look perfect.

One night we made them another meal, hamburgers and French fries. The girls cut up potatoes and baked and fried the French fries and Shane and I made hamburgers from scratch and cooked them over an open fire. They were absolutely amazing if I do say so myself. They all liked it better than the spaghetti. Rachel also made some great oatmeal/chocolate/peanut butter cookies. They were hardcore and great.

We visited a few more homes also. One mother had just buried her son a few days back and was distraught because she had no one around her house to do things to keep it up. So she would hire neighborhood kids to pick her avocados and then give them each a few of the avocados as payment.
On Wednesday we headed back to South Africa and drove through Kruger of course on the way home to see if we could see a lion or some other animal attacking another. It never happened, but it was still a lot of fun. We also bough some Fat Cake in Swaziland; think the best and most fattening donuts you’ve ever had.

Swaziland was a beautiful experience and we are all glad we got to go. We really couldn’t have asked for a better experience in rural Africa.

I’m hopefully going to be able to upload a bunch of pictures to my flickr over night tonight.