Travelogue - Our Vacation in South Africa
We returned to SA for a family visit and some R&R.
This is an unusual Holy Week and Maundy Thursday for us. Our trip home to visit the family in South Africa is winding up. Four of our family, Tim, I, our son, and our younger daughter flew out at the beginning of April to visit my aged mom and dad. My sister and her husband drove down from Johannesburg, and we have all been staying in a home at the Selborne Golf Club in Pennington, KwaZulu-Natal. The Rand/Dollar exchange rate has made for a more comfortable vacation – it reached its highest point this vacation, at R19.77 to $1!1
Selborne was the first golf course estate in South Africa. It was built in the 80s and has a distinctive British colonial flavor. There is a pool clubhouse on the beach. It gave us a marvelous place to swim, sunbathe, enjoy walks on the beach, and have a braai (BBQ) at the pool. We have been eating our fill of biltong, rusks, and excellent South African fruit. You don’t know what a pineapple should taste like until you have had some here.
The grounds are beautiful, and there is much wildlife—monkeys, mongooses, frogs, birds, duikers, bushbuck, nyala, and hyraxes. There are snakes, too, but thank goodness we haven’t seen any this trip. The last time we visited, there was a meter-long green mamba in my parents’ house!
Pennington is about 90 minutes south of the King Shaka Airport, North of Durban. The major roads have improved since 2022, but the secondary roads are in rough condition with collapsed verges, narrow bridges, potholes, and pedestrians walking in the road, even at night.
The highway embankments are pocked with cows grazing under the eye of their herders. Sometimes built up to the highway, informal settlements (tin shanties) are intermingled with traditional rondavels and more modern houses. Tim rented a minibus so the extended family could travel together, which made our outings more entertaining and simple.
Selborne has electric fences around the whole course and a vast security apparatus. It’s pretty refreshing to feel safe in South Africa – perhaps we could have just “emigrated” to a golf estate instead, as many of our peers have done. Twenty-five years after emigrating and knowing the devastation of a move on family, perhaps it would have been wiser. I wonder what our lives would look like had we stayed.
I doubt we would have become Lutheran. The Lutheran church in SA is insular, with very little evangelism or presence compared with other denominations. It seems reserved still for its German adherents, with just a smattering of converts. There would certainly not be an Ad Crucem. There’s no market here for Lutheran goods, and exporting from SA would be cost-prohibitive. We do not regret moving. America has been kind and good to us. But we regret leaving the parents and family and failing to fulfill our vocations as children as we would have liked.
When we visited the folks, 2 years ago, South Africa was still suffering from the ravages of COVID-19, which the country took to ridiculous lengths with military-enforced lockdowns and restrictions on the type of clothing that could be purchased. The poverty and desperation we witnessed resulting from the lockdowns were sobering, and the consequences devastated the country, but it seems to be recovering now.
There are still shacks on the rolling hills, but some have grown. Most are wired for electricity, and many have satellite dishes! There seem to be fewer beggars on the streets. Areas closer to the airport (Durban North) have prospered, supported by heavy road construction and improvement. Overall, the roads and shops are all much busier, but the Natal South Coast seems to be suffering from the airport’s relocation, and the region’s economy seems very marginal.
One of the projects I had while here was to help my mom look for a burial plot before she passes. It is their wish to be buried and not cremated, and I wanted to give them the peace of mind to know that their wishes will be fulfilled. An elderly acquaintance passed recently, and her children had her remains cremated, despite her stated wish to be buried.
We learned that there is a shortage of burial plots in South Africa. You cannot purchase a municipal plot if you do not plan on using it within a few months. Most urban-dwelling whites are now cremated because of the burial plot shortage. Many blacks are taken back home to be buried in the rural areas without any of the concerns the town dwellers have to contend with: buried deep enough so as not to impact ground water, or deep enough so that if your spouse is buried with you. The municipal cemeteries don’t have much security, and cases of desecration have been recorded, often for muti for the Sangomas (witch doctors). The funeral director we spoke with said that the closest private cemetery with available plots is about 60 km away, so we didn’t manage to find a solution that my mom was comfortable with this visit. We hope to return next year; perhaps things will improve by then.
Tim has written before about his great-great-great-grandfather, Emil Berg, the pastor who emigrated with the Norwegian settlers to Marburg on the KwaZulu Natal south coast in 1882.
The family took a trip to the church to visit the museum. We sang the old songs that kept us occupied when we traveled as children. During this trip, many songs had the wrong/forgotten words, and many were in a mixture of English and very rusty Afrikaans. We had a wonderful day revisiting the lives of those early Norwegian settlers. The museum seemed a little barer than last time. Only one chalice was left in the exhibit cabinet, and the baptismal font the immigrants had brought from Norway was still in a storage cupboard.
If emigrating in 2000 was tough for us, I imagine that emigrating in 1882 must have been a complete shock. How strange all this must have seemed to people from a totally different country, culture, and climate. A huge subtropical undergrowth takes over anywhere a gardener leaves unattended. The church bell that the settlers installed in front of the church, which we had seen two years ago, is now hidden in the trees and bushes and will soon disappear from view.
UD ER KJÆRLIGHET. ALMÆGTIGE! DIT BETHEL NU VI SØGE, DER DU KOMME BLANDT DINE BØRN. VELSIGN ENHVER DER SØGE DIG SOM FROMME, DER ELSKER DIT ORD OG FREMMER GODT PAA DENNE JORD! DA SKAL VI FOR DIT HIMMELBORD ERFARE NÅDENS DOMTNE. G.T. P.T. 1980 HILSEN FRA NORGE. ---------- God is love. Almighty! Your Bethel now we seek, where you come among your children. Bless everyone who seeks you as pious, who loves your word and promotes good on this earth! Then we shall at your heavenly table experience the judgment of grace. G.T. P.T. 1980 Greetings from Norway.
Genesis Hope Church is now on the premises of that first Norwegian Lutheran church. It is an evangelical plant by a group from Texas. The church has a large auditorium. They seldom use the small building that Emil Berg and his congregants built. There are, on average, about 700 attendees from all races at the Genesis church each week. The church ministers to the people in the area, they have a clinic that tends to AIDS victims, they are active in the community with food banks, and they offer affordable accommodation for retired pastors from around South Africa.
Christianity is the tie that binds the races in this land together. There is a shared Christian love that crosses all barriers. The predominant groups here are Zulu, English, Afrikaans, and Indian. People would have us believe there is animosity among the groups, and as much as that is the case in this country and around the world, there is also love and hope found only in Christ. When we speak of Christian Nationalism, this is the Nation we are discussing. The preserve of Christianity is not tied to any particular race; Christ is given for all races and all people. He makes us into one people and nation with Jesus Christ as our King and Lord. His love covers us and brings us into common fellowship and brotherhood.
When we arrived in South Africa, I posted on social media about the black restroom attendant at the airport who had worked out her vocation in a way that truly glorified her Lord, which Luther would commend. She keeps the restroom spotless and is very eager to please, but more than anything, she shares the love of Christ with all who cross her path.
She has little booklets of the Gospel of John, which she offers to all who come to her little domain. This woman has nothing. She subsists on a pittance and probably lives in a tiny shack in Johannesburg. Yet she is there daily sharing Christ's good news with strangers. I pray that the love of Christ touch all who encounter her.
In a couple of days, we will return home to the States. My time with my parents and sister is precious. I do not know how many more of these chances we will get with them all. The folks are in their mid-eighties, dad’s memory is gone, and mom is struggling physically.
The separation from family makes the South African diaspora so painful. As with many from SA, our family is far-flung: Denver, Boston, Washington, London, Johannesburg, Durban, and Sydney. My sister and brother-in-law will soon emigrate to the US, which is terrific for me, but devastating for our parents. When they leave, all my parents’ children and grandchildren will live abroad. All we can do is commit to coming and visiting them as often as possible for the few remaining years they have.
Thank the Lord that this life is not all there is. One day, we will all be reunited, together forever. We will worship at the foot of the Lamb with the brotherhood of all believers from every creed and race. We will be joyful to be with Christ and our family stretching back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. There is so much to look forward to.
Thank you to our customers who have ordered things and patiently waited for their delivery while we have been overseas. Our assistant Laura has done a great job getting the ready-to-ship items out, but we have so many personalized items that we will be creating and shipping on our return home. We wish you all a very blessed Holy Week as we rejoice in the good news of Christ given for us!
We exited South Africa in 2000 at an effective rate of R7:41/$1
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.