Month: February 2023

Two cities begin with the letter C – Cape Town and Chattanooga.  In February, it’s summer in Cape Town and winter in Chattanooga.  But look at the weather forecasts for February 23.  Here’s the forecast for Cape Town:

And here’s the forecast for Chattanooga – remember it’s winter there:

Your eyes are not deceiving you – it is warmer in Chattanooga in the winter than it is in Cape Town in the summer.  Climate incidents like this make us wonder what normal means anymore.

The Washington Post published an article about where warming temperatures will result in more or fewer deaths. (Where more people will die — and live — because of hotter temperatures – Washington Post) The northern part of the Northern Hemisphere will have fewer deaths,  while the Southern Hemisphere gets hit hard, especially in Africa and Australia. In Third World nations without air conditioning, the effects are particularly severe. Already some overheated cities perform outside work at night when it’s a little cooler and try to sleep in the stifling heat by day.

We once visited the ancient Roman city of Bulla Regia. It was so hot in the summer that the Romans built houses 16 feet underground, with a large central atrium for light. Will overheated cities have to result to tunneling to get away from the increasing heat?

A 2016 report states that only 6% of South African households have air conditioning, compared to the 90% in the U.S. (Global AC penetration rate by country 2016 | Statista) A study from Harvard University states that billions more people will require air conditioning to continue to live in nations with hot climates. (In a hotter world, air conditioning isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifesaver (harvard.edu)) And where is the increased electricity supply going to come from in a nation with 10-hour-a-day load shedding right now? Most of South Africa’s electricity comes from (you guessed it) coal.

Animals also suffer from increased heat. South Africa has colonies of the African Penguin living on its shores. Climate change means that penguin parents have to swim much farther from shore to reach their food and make it back before their chick starves on the beach. That doesn’t always happen. Further, when the chicks enter the water for the first time, they swim to areas with few fish. (fact_sheet_african_penguin_climate_change.pdf (cms.int))

Even if you’re not a penguin climate change can get you. In Africa, an increasing frequency and severity of droughts results in fewer plants, herbivores, and carnivores. When a forest becomes a grassland, there goes a big carbon sink. Severe environmental changes threaten African wildlife habitats – CSMonitor.com

James Gustave Speth, an advisor to President Bill Clinton, once said that he thought that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. Now he understands that the top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy. Science alone cannot solve this problem. A spiritual response is required to face the destructiveness of climate change.

Climate change is an existential threat right now and more ‘right now’ in the poorer parts of the world.  When we say we care for creation, we have to mean all of creation, not just our little corner of the world.  Where will the spiritual response come from to stop the catastrophic effects of these human-caused heat waves? It has to come from us, all of us.

The national unemployment rate in the USA is at 3.4%. Depending on who you ask and what population you’re talking about, South Africa’s unemployment rate varies between 33% and 60% — most agree the unemployment rate is higher than the employment rate.  More South Africans are not working than working, giving South Africa the highest unemployment rate in the world. That’s quite an achievement when you consider the nearby workers’ paradises of Angola, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

When Covid-19 hit, the government ordered a lockdown — only trips for food and medicine; not even dog walking was allowed. To offset the income loss, legal residents are eligible for Social Grants, payments of 350 Rands (almost $21) per month. This amount is less than a living wage for an individual. So, what do the unemployed South Africans do? They join the informal economy to survive.

The most enterprising South Africans become self-employed. We go to local markets to support these craftspeople. There’s pottery, beaded birds, beaded jewelry, self-standing food protection nets, screen-printed T-shirts, straw mats, wire baskets, and more.

The next tier of entrepreneurs are resellers. Often these take on the atmosphere of a flea market where vendors sell tourist kitsch. The goods look to be mass-produced in factories — Africa-themed clothing, wood bowls, straw baskets – and haggling is expected. We’ve seen the same vendors selling the same items in the same places for several years.

Then there’s another tier of sellers who stake out an area in front of a shop or a street corner. We’ve bought London-cloth aprons from a craftswoman in front of shop we visit and we’ve bought hand-made wire-and-bead cards from a craftsman on the corner near and a couple of busy restaurants.

Some vendors walk the streets carrying something they hope to profit from. One fellow tried to sell us packs of toothpicks (?). We ran across an artist selling

linoleum-block prints in “vibrant” magenta and orange colours (hey, that’s how they spell it here!). Perfect for tourists or the décor-challenged.

Not to be outdone, there are sellers in the streets at traffic lights. By necessity, these are goods that must be carried. These life-riskers walk between cars and sell grapes, avocados, paper towels, rolls of plastic bags — whatever they can get their hands on. We rarely see anyone anywhere buy any of those things.

But what if you don’t have a craft or can’t afford to buy and resell stock? Why, you help people park. These “parking wardens” often have an official-looking reflective vest, and they guide drivers into and out of the spaces they claim to manage. There’s a social compact that although the spaces are public and the wardens are just people who happen to hover over them, a small payment is made when you pull away.

These are resilient folks, but resiliency only goes so far. And they are only a small segment of the unemployed. At the height of the Great Depression, U.S. unemployment was 25%. Here, it’s one-third higher, with no end in sight. An economist would be staggered by the loss of productivity with more than half the nation’s workforce idle.

The local Methodists are trying to start a pilot program in a rural area for the locals to raise chickens for eggs to eat and sell. The Anglicans in False Bay are putting together an employment database to link employers and job-seekers. These efforts are small first steps in a long journey for South Africa.

One of our projects here is South Africa is a fundraiser to provide matric students in low-income school districts with rechargeable reading lights to use during load shedding. 

Let me unpack that sentence a bit for you.  A matric student is a high school senior .  In South Africa, seniors sign up to take the matric exam – pass it, and you get to graduate.  Don’t pass it, and you end up with no high school diploma.   In 2022, more than 920,000 students signed up to take the matric exam – and about 81% passed.  One cleric here told us that you can’t even bag groceries at the Pick ‘n’ Pay without a matric.  So, it’s a really big thing (no pressure!).

We wrote earlier about load shedding (aka rolling blackouts).  These are generally 2 to 2 ½  hours at a time, 2 to 3 times a day.  They disrupt daily life and businesses (a restaurant we planned to eat at doesn’t have a generator, so no dinner there when load shedding hits at 6 – 8 PM!).  For people in the townships, who only may have a single overhead light in their shack, load-shedding is more than just disruptive — things come to a full stop.  The impact is particularly harsh for school children and their studies.  Imagine how difficult it is to read or study in the evenings when the lights are out.  This is especially true for matric students whose future rests on their success on the exam. And it’s unsafe to go out at night with no lights.

This project is a partnership between HOPE Africa (a social development program of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa) and the Green Anglicans (a movement started by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa focusing caring for the earth).  The lights must meet certain criteria:

1. They need to be affordable.
2. They need to be rechargeable with solar cells (remember, one of the partners is the Green Anglicans!).
3. They need to work for 3 to 4 hours at a time.

Then there are the “nice to haves” – they can light up a larger area so more than one person can be working/studying; they can be recharged with a wall-charger in addition to sunlight; and they’re sturdy enough that they can be manhandled by a teenager in the townships.

HOPE Africa had been approached by a company with a small, single LED, solar-only recharging lamp. We got a sample to evaluate. With a little research, we also identified a larger solar light that could also be recharged with a USB and wall electricity light that was much brighter.   Randy — the electrical engineer! – measured how long each took to charge and how long each lasted.  The larger dual-charging light was clearly better – AND less expensive.  What’s not to love?

The next step is to negotiate a deal with the distributors to get the best price on the lights.  Then, you need to factor in the costs of bank fees (about 12%!) and distribution costs (South Africa is about 471,000 square miles – bigger than Texas, smaller than Alaska – a lot of territory for distribution). While they’re at it, HOPE Africa and Green Anglicans are going to include information on health and wellness topics with the lamp. The total cost for the program is about R200 per light (around $15 in the US).

And then there’s the fund-raising.  The goal is to provide about 3600 lights (note that this is just a fraction of low-income matric students!).  Just like in the U.S., individuals and corporations can deduct charitable contributions – and the South African tax year ends on February 28.  So, we only have a few weeks to raise R1,080,000 (about $63,000 US dollars). No pressure!

That we are working on a project like this speaks volumes about the issues facing South Africans.  Hunger, employment, health, delivery of even basic services (like reliable electricity) – all are problems that can seem overwhelming at times.  But we could say the same about the U.S. – there are always unmet needs.  But for some matric students, we are helping to make a world of difference, and that’s worth shining a light on.

P.S.  If you feel called to pay for a light or two or ten (!),  you can use the Global Giving portal for a donation from the US that is tax deductible: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/lights-on-for-learners-education-beats-poverty/

We attend a local church service where we hear of their upcoming Potjiekos Competition Fundraiser. A potjiekos (paht – GEE – kos) is a 3-legged iron pot under which you build a fire and in which you cook a stew. The stew can be anything, but vegetables with a bit of meat is the usual fare. This is too good to pass up, and we decided to attend.

The big day comes and it’s cool and windy – perfect for a bowl of hot stew. The power is off (again), so wood-based cooking is the way to go. For 50 Rands (just under $3) we each buy tickets for the 12 contest entrants, 6 of which don’t show up. Not deterred, we commence with the tasting.

The recipes were all over the place. The fish stew was full of bones and the seafood stew was full of crayfish and mussel shells. The traditional vegetable and mutton dish was oh so bland, and the mutton was only chunks of fat. The Tripe & Trotters (tripe being the edible lining of a sheep’s stomach, and a trotter is a pig’s foot) was described to us as an “acquired taste,” an acquisition we didn’t make.

Then there was the pasta in cream sauce with pancetta-like bacon; it was so good, but so creamy you could actually hear some of your smaller arteries snap shut. Best of show was the chicken curry, sublimely seasoned with melt-in-your-mouth tender chicken pieces. With potjiekos, you never know what you’re going to get.

Potjiekos competitions are like what we do when coming to South Africa. We bring Whitman’s Sampler chocolates to our friends (easily packable and half-price after Christmas!). The South Africans have never seen a Whitman’s and they’re unsure what it is before opening. That’s when we say a Whitman’s sampler is like America, there are both darks and lights, and you’re not going to like some of them. And, like potjiekos, Whitman’s chocolates aren’t labeled. There’s no hint of what’s inside, like identifying solid milk chocolate with an “M,” or orange cream with an “OC,” or nougat with a Skull and Crossbones.

It was good to go the Potjiekos Competition Fundraiser. We hung out with a church congregation that would be called “colored” here. We watched the kids play and compete in a hula hoop (!) contest. We were blessed when the load shedding cut off the stereo system whose volume was set to “Everyone hears this Everywhere.” And we got to experience what they think good potjiekos food tastes like. The interesting things happen at the edges of your experience, not in the middle of a bubble of sameness and predictability. Who knows, maybe someday Tripe & Trotters will be worth a try – in the far, far, future!