The Continuing Adventures of Kobus Viljoon

Hey! Hey! You guys! The roof is coming in! Come quick!

I hear the voice of 9 year old Michael Plodinec yelling across the house. It’s early April in Polokwane South Africa and a huge storm is blowing across Limpopo- perhaps one of the most intense I’ve seen.  I run into the family room. Water pours down from the ceiling onto the family piano and all over the floor. Quickly the piano is moved and containers are placed to catch the dripping water. The three of us (Timothy, Daniel, and I) stand looking at the ceiling. Almost concurrently we come to a realization- when the rain is past; we won’t be able to see where the water is flowing into the roof. In an instant the three of us strip off our shirts and run outside into the storm. I run to the other side of the house and climb up on the garage to get on the roof. I’ve been outside about 10 seconds, and any previous dryness on my person has now long been saturated. I run across the roof carefully- making sure I have sure footing on each step. A flash of light and cracking sound burst almost concurrently. I instantly look for cover- there isn’t any up on a roof, so I continue on. I arrive to the place on the roof where the rain is leaking in.

“I don’t see anything!” I yell above the cracking thunder and deafening sound of the pouring rain.

“It’s should be right there!” Timothy yells back.

I can’t find anything. I climb over to the lapa and slide down. I step inside the door- shivering. TIA (This Is Africa) I think.

As I write this I’ve been on this continent for 83 days-in 83 days you can figure out if you love or hate somewhere.

I love it. 

Is it the people? The land? The activity? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s just the feeling one gets when walking down the road with the African sunset in the distance- and thinking (as a Yankee), “I live in AFRICA.” (It may just be the lower price of meat actually…).

As previously mentioned, people are the same everywhere- they lie, cheat, steal, murder, etc, etc. More importantly, most of them stand condemned before a righteous, just, and holy God. However, as stated by some of the missionaries, there IS a difference between talking to a person in the states who considers themselves a “good” person, and talking to a Shangaan who may or may not have ever even heard the name of Christ Jesus. That is the purpose of missions. To make His name known among the nations- and not only to make His name known, but His Word as well through the discipleship of church leaders.

It’s been almost a month since my last update. Although I’ve been almost constantly busy the last few weeks, I’ve found an hour, so here goes:

 I must begin by telling of a sin of mine.

The weekend after my second Mozambique trip went quickly- very quickly. Saturday was “Golf Day”- the annual fundraiser for Samaria Mission. I caddied for Gabriel Pretorias (officially my mentor while I’m here). He complained about the game (the game of golf in general). I laughed mostly. I found two lizards on the course and stuck them on top of my hat- one eventually fell off, but the other stayed on the whole day. At the end of day I gave them away to John Pretorias- a young Afrikaans boy. He promised to take good care of “dinosaur” as he named it.

  

   Ok, now to my sin. Sunday went by quickly- I ended up at the Beaklys house that night. A Peace Corps worker who stays with the Beaklys on weekends was making plans that night to pick up her friend from the airport in Johannesburg the next day. She planned to do so utilizing taxis and busses and overnight backpackers. Evan Smith (a good friend of mine who lives with the Beaklys) and I came up with an idea. “Why don’t we just drive you down to Jo’burg, we’ll overnight with a family the Beaklys know, and come back on Tuesday?” Then we got another idea. What if we created Afrikaaner personas and introduced ourselves to our “friend’s friend” as such? We started to scheme.

  

     In the morning the plans were made final. We would leave at 1 PM and pick up our new friend from the airport at 5. I used the morning to get comfortable with driving on the “wrong side” of the road. At 1 we were off. We spent the ride down listening to Owl City (after Hot Air Balloon being the song we could most agree on as a group) and talking through our testimonies of faith in Christ Jesus. We arrived at about 4:30 and went to Subway in the airport- the only one we knew of in South Africa. While the choices were limited, we were nevertheless grateful and settled for what we got (we even took pictures of our sandwiches). We went back downstairs and looked for our new friend. In about 15 minutes time she walked out of the terminal. We watched as two friends were reunited. A hand was extended to me. “Hello, I am Kobus, welcome to South Africa” I said. Evan offered his hand: “Johan”, he introduced himself as. We took her bags and we all walked toward the door. Somehow we managed to keep our Johan/Kobus personas intact for about a half hour using lousy white South African accents, pretend Afrikaans gibberish, and by acting like we knew what we were talking about.  After Kobus was asked: “Are Johannesburg and Pretoria one city or two?” he burst out in awkward laughter- along with the other two individuals who were in on the practical joke. Thus went a long explanation of our deceitful crime- all the way to Pretoria. We overnighted in Pretoria with the Viljoons- a delightful Afrikaans pastors’ family. We watched “Last of the Mohicans” that night at their house. It had been a long time since I had seen the film. After the depressing end, the credits started to roll and I made a profound comment:  “Bummer”. Thus became the new “inside joke”.
 

   

   The rest of the week was quite nice. Wednesday and Thursday I worked at the mission farm with both Joseph and William. Friday myself and several friends traveled east to Hanaertsburg and Debingeni falls. It was absolutely gorgeous. The water was cool and clear, and the scenery was spectacular (www.youtube.com/davidthebravid for a video).

   The same day, William Vaughn called me at 8:30. “Listen David, the family and I are going out of town for a week; would you want to watch the place?” I instantly agreed. I had one full week as a “bachelor”. My own house, car, and dog. While it got a tad old at times, it was so nice to have some alone and quiet study/reading/meditating time. The car I was entrusted with was a Nissan from the early 90s… and the brakes stopped working midweek. I am now quite good at downshifting and using a parking brake to stop myself.
On Sunday, Johan Pretorias greeted me at church. He asked if I remembered the lizard that I had given to his son. I affirmed. He then proceeded to tell me how he had looked into it's species- turned out it was an endangered species that kept a 22,000 rand fine for "removing from its environment". Thank goodness he had released it.  

     The past two weeks have been spent doing various maintenances at the Mission Farm- checking camping equipment and this week working on trucks.

I’ve learned much. I have yet much to learn.