1 Month To Go

The 18^th of April marks my last day in Port Elizabeth and my last day of service. In one month from today I will end what has been a whirlwind of events, a vortex of emotions, a dialectic of crisis and victory, an amazing time of growth, self understanding, wonderful new friendships and above all a time of service.

As this day was approaching I looked back on photos of myself from this time last year and reflected on what I was doing then and what I’m doing now. The funny thing is at both times I was travelling, I guess that side of me will never change. This time last year I had just come home from visiting Vanuatu, the first place I ever went for service in January 2008. I had made some of the most wonderful friendships of my life there and so I went back to visit the friends I had made and to be back in the place that my soul calls home.

Looking back on other photos there were times I could hardly recognise myself, not only because my hair colour has changed or because the clothes I was wearing are still in Sydney but because I remembered the way the world looked to me back then, I remembered what was the most important to me then, I remembered what kind of person I was. None of these things were bad but the growth that I have experienced recently is so great that I feel like that girl that said goodbye to her family in Sydney all those months ago is not going to be coming home.

Normally when I notice that I have developed as a person it’s based on a year by year scale but this time I can look back on myself a few months ago and see that I’ve changed. I looked at photos from Johannesburg when I first arrived here and I was having the same feelings about myself as I did with the photos from when I was still in Sydney. Amazing what service can do. It reminds me of this quote from Shoghi Effendi...

"The more we search for ourselves, the less likely we are to find ourselves; and the more we search for God, and to serve our fellow-men, the more profoundly will we become acquainted with ourselves, and the more inwardly assured. This is one of the great spiritual laws of life."

                (Compilations, Lights of Guidance, p. 114)

I didn’t come to South Africa to find myself, when I left Sydney I thought the person I was was pretty great. I didn’t think I needed much self tuning or any major personality repairs but the more I was tested during this service, the more hardships I faced, the more things went wrong or people treated me badly, the more I realised that there were things about myself that I wasn’t happy with and it wasn’t even a process of change requiring tonnes of effort that made me develop from these weak points that I saw but a natural reaction of me realigning myself to counter the things that were going wrong around me. I can’t pinpoint a specific time or place that this change began or be able to note when the greatest change occurred, it just happened and one day I looked at myself and saw that I was different.

It really is true that you see the best and the worst of yourself when you are serving. I’ve seen things within myself that I am just shocked at, how easily I lost control of myself and fell into black pits of despair and I’ve also been so amazingly proud of myself for how I’ve managed to survive through everything and continue to go on with almost no support from anyone. I’ve seen myself reach my heaviest weight while in South Africa, tipping the scales for the first time in my life over 50kgs when this time last year I was in the best shape of my life. I won’t detail everything that I’ve noticed because it is personal reflection but I will say that for those who I will see again in Sydney you’re going to notice that this Martha is not the same as the one you said goodbye to. I am the upgraded version of myself, fully installed with new life handling powers and an ability to kinda cook (mum will be happy about that one).

So now maybe just an outline of what will happen after this month is over. From South Africa I am flying to Madrid, Spain to visit my uncle and his family who I haven’t seen in a couple years. I’ll be spending a month in Spain and potentially going to Haifa, Israel in that time also for a few days to visit my big sister Melody and spend time in the Shrines. The arrival home will be towards the end of May and I have already started my application to do my Masters in Building and Sustainable Design for second semester of this year at the University of Sydney. That gives me 2 solid months to work and pay off all the debt that I have accumulated over this year, which means I also need to find a job and I’m open for suggestions on what I should do.

Honestly, I know it’s cliché, but I cannot believe that it has almost been a year already and at the same time I can’t believe that it’s only been almost a year, it really feels like forever.

Truth be told I can’t wait to get to Spain and see something new, although I’m sure it’s going to be difficult to leave. As much as I’ve stated my dislike for South Africa I actually think I’ll miss it.

Hey White Gal

As previously mentioned I live in the township. For the most part this has been fairly normal, there hasn't been anything in terms of how I live that is different to living anywhere else but there have been some very noticeable elements about township living that have stuck out for me. As well as living in Motherwell I also spend at least 3 days a week in Kuyga township and what I am about to explain applies in both places.

Looking at me and most certainly while living in Australia I am not a white girl but in South Africa what colour you are branded as isn’t so much about the actual colour of your skin but more what class you fall into or group you belong to. Being ‘coloured’ is more of a culture than the fact that you are mixed race. For example your father could be an Anglo-Saxon Australian and your mother a Xhosa South African but that doesn’t automatically deem you as coloured, people in this circumstance usually refer to themselves as mixed  race. It’s hard to explain because every case is different but pretty much what I’m trying to say is that just because my skin isn’t white doesn’t mean I’m not classed as white, especially in the township.

So I’ve been living in Motherwell for over a month now and as I had originally stated there aren’t that many non-black people here, or any at all for that matter. So yes I do get a lot of attention, people stare when I walk down the street or look at me funny and this naturally I expected. I expected people to be curious as to what I’m doing here which is normal as it is completely uncommon for ‘white’ people to be in the township let alone live there. What has been happening in both Kuyga and Motherwell, however, has been completely foreign to what I expected, it has been strange to say the least.

It actually started in Kuyga, the attention I had been getting in Motherwell was very similar to what I’ve been getting in Kuyga since the first time I stepped foot in that area, boys calling out to me and kids getting excited when they see me “Hey, come see the white girl”. In Motherwell I have boys often calling out “white gal, white gal! Come here!”, “Hello white gal, what’s your name?” which I got a lot of in Kuyga also but then recently something changed about the attention I was getting. It became personalised.

So one day I was in Kuyga going to a devotional gathering that was being held by some of the Ruhi book 1 participants and as I was walking to their house some kids walked past me “hello”, “hi”, “hello Martha”. First reaction is this must be one of our Jy kids but I’m looking at this child’s face and I have never seen any of these boys before. Then it happens again, after devotional I’m walking back to the taxi stop and “Hello Martha” who are these people? Now it keeps happening, I’ll be walking in Kuyga either on my own or with Bayan and people are calling my name, most of the time I have never seen these people before. I have been visiting this area for 6-7 months now so it is more than likely that people have been talking and asking ‘who is this girl who always comes here?’ and then they here from this person that I do something at the school and my name is Martha and so it spreads. Township life is very closed especially in Kuyga which is so isolated from other suburbs. People know everyone that lives around them, they know each other’s business, they observe everything that is happening  and they talk, talk, talk. I just hope that in their whisperings about me they are passing on the right message.

What has been happening in Motherwell has been slightly different. I guess because I don’t see myself as any different to anyone else I don’t notice how much I stand out. It all started when I was in Korsten which is an area about 20min from Motherwell and I was getting a taxi to Lorraine which is another 10min from there. A girl got into the same taxi as me and said “Do you live in Motherwell?” I said yes, “I know you”. I was like ohh ok cool, I thought that was an exciting story so I made it my Facebook status. Then it kept happening, again and again and again.

I would get into taxi in Motherwell, someone would ask me “Where’s your friend?” meaning Bayan. I would be in taxi going back to Motherwell, people call out the name of my stop for me, they know where I get off. I got into taxi leaving Motherwell, “so you living in Motherwell? I always see you everyday”. I can’t walk to the local shops without having someone follow me home or take a taxi ride without someone asking me who I am living with or why, I have men young and old calling out to me or asking me my name. I can’t be discreet, I don’t blend, everything I do is being noticed by someone because to them I’m different. I became a little concerned about this especially because a lot of people were asking me if I was living with my boyfriend. I guess this is the most rational explanation for them as to why I live in the township, so I have to keep verifying to people that I am living with a wonderful family as I am doing service for the Baha’i Faith and I hope people spread that around.

I love the look of shock on people’s faces when I speak Xhosa, it makes me want to learn more, I love when people ask me where I live and then they get excited because they live near me and they say they’ll see me around. What I think is the most wonderful thing about me living and spending so much time in the townships is that it’s hopefully bridging a gap. There is a stigma about the township from ‘white people’ and there is a stigma within the townships about ‘white people’. I hope the impact that I am having is positive, that is shows that there are people in this world who don’t notice the colour of your skin first and the person you are second, there are people who defy stereotypes and who don’t see everyone else in terms of their stereotype either.

Again recently in Korsten Bayan and I were walking to get the taxi to Kuyga and a guy said “There are the Baha’i ladies”, we had never seen this guy before. I had a girl get off the Motherwell taxi at the same stop as me in town and she asked me to say hi to Bayan for her. There are honestly so many examples that I could list of random people knowing who I am in both Kuyga and Motherwell. The last little remark I’ll share with you was when a guy we were walking past said “Hello Jessica” to me. I think he was just trying to guess what my name was.

Sometimes I find it annoying especially when I’m in a taxi going to Motherwell and people ask me where I live and I say in Motherwell and then they tell me I’m lying, like really? What else would I go to Motherwell for? Sightseeing? But I guess it is quite different. Strange thing is as shocked as everyone else is I don’t find it strange or shocking at all that I live in the township because like I said before I don’t see myself as different to anyone else. I actually like being in the townships.

I had a remarkable moment in the taxi the other day as I was driving out of Kuyga, as we drove through and I looked out the window, taking in this place that has become one of the areas I am most comfortable in, I started to think that I would actually really miss Kuyga when I’m gone and then I put this question to myself.. What would I stay in South Africa for? I smiled as the taxi pulled out of Kuyga township, it’s my favourite place in P.E.

Love for God

A concept that arises quite frequently in the Baha'i Faith is the love for God. We, mankind, have been called upon to obey the laws of God for the love of Him, to serve humanity for the sake of God's good pleasure, to pray out of our longing to be in the presence of God. As we have matured in our spiritual capacity and our understanding is greater we are no longer expected to do these things out of fear of punishment or out of a desire for reward but purely for the sake of love. This love is born of a conscious knowledge of the religion of God rather than mere acceptance for the sake of acceptance or acceptance out of fear or tradition or habit. We are called on by God to investigate His Revelation through the Divine Teachers or Manifestations that He sends and once we have accepted these Teachers to obey and follow their commandments for our love for Them and for our love for God.

This love for God has been a term that I grew up with and when something is part of your vocabulary from the time your vocabulary was created you can sometimes, and this is what happened in my case, fail to understand or grasp what the meaning and implications of that term actually are. The love for God. Through my reading of the Holy Writings, through my acts of service and through my attempts to deepen my knowledge of our spiritual journey and the implications of this life on our souls I began to notice that I was having a hard time putting into practice this concept of love for God. Suddenly, as if reading it for the first time, my mind was deviling into what this love actually is and was I able to feel it? Did I do things out of love for God? What does love for God look like? How exactly do I show it?

I started to wonder why it was only now that I was struggling to grasp this concept, why now was I so unsure about how to love God? Then it dawned on me.. the more I learned about God the more I realised I knew nothing about Him.

It is easier to feel like you know God when you say that God is like the sun or that God is this great being because you are giving physical attributes to God which our finite minds can comprehend. A God that looks like the sun, I can relate to. I can picture in my mind a God that is a great being or a man or one of the other images that we have created for God so that we can fathom who and what He is but the more I learned about God the more I realised I knew nothing about Him and so it became harder for me to find a way to connect with this force or spirit or essence that our human words have no power to describe and even the 3 letters we attribute as His name are nothing compared to what God is. We limit God because we are limited and I felt lost in trying to find a channel to God.

How do you love God when you don't know what God is? Although it was never that difficult for me to feel His love I was stuck on how to reciprocate that love back to God.

It was hard for me to fear God, when you feel unable to channel that love for God then it hinders you in feeling that fear of God. The fear of disappointing Him and of not being able to receive His love. These are concepts that I can't fully understand because I don't know how to show them or feel them for an essence that I can in no way comprehend or conceive.

As my time in South Africa has progressed I began to notice that I did have a channel to send and receive that love from and it was as a result of being so distant and far from that channel that I was able to realise its existence and that channel was through my mother and my little brother. These are the channels that I feel like I can reach God through because of the love that exists between these 2 people and myself.

I feel the the love of God through my mother as she has given so much for me, as she does everything in my best interests even when it doesn't seem that way. She gave me life and she will always be a source of unconditional love for me. This is how I can feel love of God and for God; through my relationship with my mother. Through this I can feel the fear of God as I fear disappointing my mother. She knows my capacity and my potentials better than anyone, she watched them develop throughout my whole life and for her to ever have to see those capacities and potentials go to waste because of my actions would shatter me.

The greatest expression of love that I have ever known is the love I have for my little brother and with this love comes a responsibility to him that I will be the best that I can be for his sake. I never want to let my brother down and I strive to be a better person because I love him so much and I want him to see me as a positive force in his life.

This is how I feel the love for God and the fear of God. This is how I can make sense of these immense concepts and create a pathway to God. They are my channels. Now I find it easy to pray out of love, to serve out of love, to obey the laws out of love. It is as if my mother and brother are mirrors which reflect my love for God to Him. Whatever love I feel for God I send to them and they reflect it to Him.

I know that I have my own personal relationship with God and I communicate directly with Him all the time, this is different from the expression of love that I feel for God which is where I find the difficulty. Now whenever I am in moments of deep thought or reflection, whenever I take time to meditate on my life and my actions I think of my mum and my baby brother and think of what I would become if I lost their love or if I disappointed them and then I know what I have to do with my life and how I have to improve because I know that I would become like utter nothingness, that my existence would be meaningless and my soul would shrivel up if I lost their love and that's how I know what I have to do for God because I know that losing God's love would feel so much worse and I wouldn't be able to survive.

This is how I know God. This is how I can love Him.

Road Trip Days 5 & 6

Day 5 - Friday the 11th of February - Heading Back - Total Kms: 550


When I assumed I would be in pain on waking up this morning I was wrong. The pain didn’t wait till morning to hit, I was in pain the whole night. I could barely make the trip off of my bunk and down to the floor as I was so stiff and in so much pain. It hurt to walk, it hurt to turn, it hurt to do anything that required movement from my body and so unjustly and in horrible contrast Bayan was in very little pain whatsoever. So I suffered alone, aching as I went up and down the stairs in the backpackers to take bags to the car, struggling to bend down to the ground to pick the bags up in the first place. At least this morning I decided that nothing would get me out of bed before 9am so there wasn’t another horrible early morning wake up.

We left the backpackers and Cape Town somewhere around 11am and started our trip back to P.E which we would stretch over a day and a half.

There isn’t much to be told of this day, we were on the road pretty much non-stop from Cape Town to Plettenburg Bay. There were tonnes of road works stops which actually were a blessing for my cramped and aching body as we would sit at a stop for maybe 10minutes at a time so I would always get out of the car and stretch. After a solid 5 hours of driving we reached Plettenburg Bay where we decided whilst driving would be where we spent the night. We phoned a couple of backpackers we found in a road trip guide and picked the best sounding one. We got to the place and as we approached the front door we realised the shock horror of the accommodation we had chosen. There standing in front of us was a staircase which we would have to ascend and descend every time we came and went. The pain we were in, my oh my, the pathetically slow pace at which we climbed those stairs. Yes, finally, the pain caught up with Bayan and I couldn’t have been happier. I was even more delighted when our climbing companions called to say that their muscles were also stiff and they couldn’t move. It was wonderful news to me to know that I was not suffering alone. The girl working there was at first confused and then amused by our stair climbing ways. We took each step slowly, holding onto the railing and pulling ourselves up to ease the stress on our legs. Finally, after a noisy and slow climb we reached the top and signed the paper work. Then we had to go back down to get our bags. This was plain hilarious. We were crying from laughter at ourselves for howling in pain as we were going down. We could hear the people upstairs laughing too and then Bayan pushed me so I went down a couple of stairs really fast and that was so painful. We were both humiliated by our sorry state and also extremely entertained by it as well.

Leaving Cape Town..

Bayan and Me and the view of Cape Town behind us

The view from my rear view mirror

cool blue house

The sun was slowly making its way down so Bayan and I decided to go to the beach. A Brazilian girl was also staying in the same dorm as us so we took her with us to the beach. She laughed as Bayan and I attempted running on the sand to help our muscles and the pain we would cry out in with every step. We frolicked on the beach for some time and I drank some dirty pond water to prove to Bayan that it would not result in death before heading back to find food. We got a Steers veggie burger for Bayan and a wood fire pizza for me and sat next to a Marimbaz band on the main street. We enjoyed our food and the free music and watched some kids dance to the music.

Bayan and me on the beach in Plett

Beautiful sunset

Day 6 - Saturday the 12th of February - The Last Leg - Total Kms: 250



We woke up this morning and lazily prepared ourselves for the day. We were tired and still sore and a little grumpy and I think we were both glad that this was the last day.

We started the day at the beach claiming to each other that we would swim but getting there and deciding that it was too cold. We went in about half way. Then we hung out with the lifeguards one of whom was very attractive, can’t remember his name though. We talked a bit and they asked about Australia and our trip. Then we packed ourselves into the car and headed off for our last stop before P.E. We were going to Tsiki tsiki forest. It’s actually called Tsikama forest but I kept forgetting the name and called it tsiki tsiki instead, I think it sounds better.

The guy at the entry gate let us in for free, nice guy, and we drove down to this beautiful coastline. It was so nice, so so beautiful. There were these suspension bridges hung across the water that we could walk over and so Bayan and I did that and of course we put our hands in the air and run across one of the bridges while screaming because that’s how we do. Then we saw the sign that said no jumping on the bridge, in all fairness we had done all our jumping before seeing that sign.

We needed to be back in Port Elizabeth by 4pm and so we didn’t get to spend too much time here. After seeing pretty things and me and Bayan not talking for a good 15minutes because we were angry at each other about something silly, we left.

The next bit was the last stretch of drive before P.E and we drove straight from our road trip to Sonja’s house for Unit Convention which is a Baha’i gathering. We arrived exactly on time and we had a very nice convention.

Next stop was King’s Beach which is in P.E and then finally at around 10pm we drove home, ending our road trip.

Ups and downs are expected with an endeavour like this, 2 people in each other’s company non-stop for 6 days straight can cause a little strain on the sanity levels and being the only driver I was completely exhausted and had no time to rest. There were times while driving that Bayan would fall asleep and I would stare at her with such envy almost wanting to wake her up because I didn’t think it was fair that she should sleep while I couldn’t. Lack of sleep and lack of food make me very grumpy and so there were times that I’m sure I wasn’t the best company but all that aside we had a great road trip.

In the future Bayan and I have decided that we actually want to take a back pack with us should we travel in this fashion again because at every backpackers we went to we were the only ones without backpacks, instead filling the storage space with several different types of carry bags and hand bags and plastic bags.

Also although we couldn’t choose our own soundtrack for this trip our road trip song became Liquid Deep’s “You don’t have to be alone” which played on the radio at least 5 times a day.

And so ended this adventure as chaotically and unorganised as the way it began.

Storms River

Suspension bridge

ready with her hands in the air to run down while screaming

Just the 2 of us

Bridge

A frog

Me :)