Spring Week

Quite a bit happened this week. Well, really this weekend. So this past week is called Spring Week with Spring Day on Saturday. It's some stupid excuse for everyone to waste money and get drunk. In some townships they throw water on everyone. Luckily not ours.

Anyways, on Saturday we drove up to this street to check on some people. We saw this guy being chased and having things thrown at him. Not a rare occurence in the township. So we went and taught our lesson. When we came out we looked across the street. Now everyone has a fence or wall around their yard so we couldn't see what was on the ground but we saw these guys kicking something and smashing something with crates. As we walked up, a guy was sitting on the ground taking all this abuse. My companion decided we were going to help him and I knew it was the right thing to do, so I followed. As we came closer one guy picked up a brick and rushed at the guy but someone else stopped him. The mob stopped when they saw unfundizi's (that's us) coming up, but this guy was already badly hurt. My companion took out his first aid kit and bandaged him up. All while they were still yelling at each other to the point where the father of the house came out with a machette. That's when things got intense. Now anyone reading this do not fear for my life. You see, Africans respect pastors and stuff so our white shirts and ties protected us. Plus when we walked up these guys who were beating him were really nice and just wanted us to help get him away. That was the whole problem. You see this guy owed the old man of the house some money. Instead of paying he always wants to come and fight the old man. This time some younger guys from next door came to help the old man. The one who got beat up would just not give up and their anger got away from them. Anyways, so the bobba is sitting there with his machette threating this guy's life, swearing and whatnot. It took too long to get this guy off the property and we finally got him back to where he stays. But it wasn't over. We assumed where he stays would be like his family or something. We walk in with him and everyone is sitting around the kitchen table. They just stare. we ask if the guy lives there. The Grandma starts yelling in zulu, so we back out. A man follows us and starts yelling at this guy in zulu. He tells us he'll take it from here..... whew. Later we hear more yelling. We go back to this house where we took him and everyone is just yelling at him. Finally after some yelling and some slapping of belts he goes out and sits on the curb. A guy from the house comes out with a huge bucket of water and dumps it on the hurt guy. Supposedly that is a symbol of rejection. We end up finding out that this guy is from Mozembique and has no family in Tsakane. He's also been doing some drugs which made things worse. Oh and to top it all off we called the police at the beginning of all this. They are worthless. Man, it was a crazy experience. But that man would have surely died if we didnt help him.

Just another disclaimer: Mom, never were we in any danger. In fact our being there is what kept more fighting and stuff from happening. So we were paying attention to what was going on... don't worry. But yeah, that's my crazy story for the week. Hope you enjoyed.

love, elder robinson

p.s. This week I found out that Tsakane and the greater area of Tsakane has somewhere around 2.5 million people. Who'da thunk?