Date: March 11, 2008 8:13:42 AM HST

Thursday, March 6, 2008 – Port Shepstone

I’ve been lucky enough to have spent the better part of another day with Pauline Duncan in the rural areas surrounding Port Shepstone. We returned to some places that we had been and met some people we had met on the first trip, and we visited some new places and met some new people as well. As with the first trip, the day will, I’m sure, prove to have been a memorable one. (I wonder, by the way, how much time needs to pass before one can call a day or an experience memorable.)

Since writing my first entry on Pauline, I’ve discovered that the biographical information I gave on her is not quite accurate. She did, as I said, serve as the principal of a school and the mayor of Port Shepstone, but without getting specific, I should mention that 1) I got some of the dates wrong, and 2) there is far more to this remarkable woman than I had previously mentioned. A list of this woman’s good works makes Mother Theresa look like Billy The Kid by comparison.

I met up with her in front of the Port Shepstone Hospice (why was I not surprised to learn that Pauline was instrumental in establishing it?). A few minutes after we exchanged greetings, she met someone she knew and the following brief conversation occurred: “Are you keeping yourself well?” she was asked. “No, but I’m fine,” Pauline replied, “and it’s just inside,” she added. I haven’t known her long and can’t claim to know her well, but that little snippet of conversation seemed to me to be so characteristic of Pauline – ask a question and you’ll get a straight answer: she’s not fine (some respiratory problems – TB?), but she doesn’t want pity or sympathy. I am concerned about her health, but knew that it would be fruitless to pursue the matter further.

As we approached the outskirts of Port Shepstone, Pauline pointed out an area of penned up goats, and explained that goats are the preferred animals for ritual sacrifice because they scream loudly when slaughtered, loud enough to reach the ears of the gods that those doing the sacrifices want to call forth.

The first item on our agenda was to deliver a photo to Sfiso Dlawini, the Zulu man with a leg brace (the result of having had polio as a young child in the late 1960s) to whom we had given a ride home a month ago. Pauline had taken a photo of him then, and when she showed it to him on the LCD screen of her camera, he had been so thrilled to see himself that he had asked for a hard copy. He invited us into his very modest home, a single small room which served as his kitchen, living room and bedroom (the bathroom was a separate half room). Everything inside was neat and clean (he didn’t have enough possessions to clutter the place) but the smell of kerosene, which he used for cooking, permeated the place. He had no kitchen table and no refrigerator (because he had no electricity), and the only food I saw was about a dozen small potatoes lying on a newspaper on the floor.

I noticed a book lying next to Sfiso’s bed, which on closer examination I discovered was an American history textbook. Before I could tell him that I taught American History and that my students used a similar book, he, with great enthusiasm, began telling me how much he LOVED this book. He opened it and quickly found and began to read aloud a part of a paragraph that he said had great meaning for him: they were lines which described the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy. These words had great relevance to him as a disabled person, he said, because he was struggling to be treated fairly by the agency with which he, as a disabled person, had to deal. Do I need to mention that this was a chicken-skin moment for me?

Next came a visit with the beader ladies, but as with our visit a month ago, we moved slowly, often stopping or slowing down so that Pauline could either photograph cows (she loves cows and can’t resist stopping the car to photograph them) or talk with or call out greetings to people she passed on the roads. At one point, she stopped the car to talk (in Zulu) with three women at work picking up trash along a dirt road. Good morning. You’re doing such a fine job here – look how clean the road is! Which part of the road is your responsibility? Is your job full or part-time? (Part-time.) How much do you get paid? (Five dollars a month, I think one replied.) Before we moved on, Pauline (and I) asked and received permission to take photos of the women, who, like Sfiso, were amused and delighted at the results.

I have become more comfortable engaging in conversation in similar situations. At one point while Pauline went off to look at an outdoor church (no walls, just an arrangement in a sacred place of white stones to form “rooms”), two guys in their early twenties called out to me. I wandered over, said hello, and soon we were shootin’ the breeze. The talk was small, but the friendliness behind it made it a pleasant five minutes. The fact that I’m haole works in my favor: I’m a curiosity because they rarely see any white people in this area. And in the rural areas, adults rarely ask me for money.

Pauline has been working closely with the beader ladies to help them develop a sustaining business, suggesting ideas and patterns, setting up business workshops (and convincing the women to attend them), and buying at least one item almost every time she visits their work site (a pleasant group of buildings which form a community center). Most of all, she acts as an encouraging presence, expressing genuine delight at even incremental progress “That’s brilliant,” she’ll say, referring either to an idea or a piece of work, or as a substitute for the word “wonderful.” When the women reported that they had sold more than eight hundred rand (about $115) worth of beads at a craft fair, she responded, “That’s brilliant!”

I had business of my own to conduct with the women. When Pauline introduced me to them a month ago, I had come up with the idea for a pin which Punahou students could wear to support their athletic teams on game days: a beaded, one-inch square patch with buff-colored “Puns” against a blue background. The women sold the pins to me for twenty rand each (a little less than three dollars); I hope to sell them to students for eight dollars each, with profits going back to the beaders. I placed an initial order for fifty pins, which the women delivered to me today. I’m hoping that fifty will be far too few, and further hope that students will purchase enough pins each year so that it’s not just a one-time fundraising effort, but rather part of a continuous business effort.

We next returned to Inyandezulu Primary School, the recipient of Yunus’ and Gora’s generous gift of a month earlier. Pauline had asked the principal for a “Needs” list to take to the Port Shepstone Rotary Club, which had pledged to help the school. I didn’t see the list, but know that the school’s needs go far beyond what even the most generous organization could provide. The terminal cuteness of the young children playing in a dusty area too small to be called a playground made this fact even more poignant.

The Rotary Club had also agreed to donate eight used computers to nearby Olwandele High School, and Pauline, who had been instrumental in the project, stopped by to tell the principal that the school would probably be getting its first computers. He seemed happy to hear the news, but didn’t seem overjoyed – for what I think were two reasons: 1) Pauline said that there was an excellent chance that they’d receive the computers, but it wasn’t yet a done deal, and I suspect that the principal had heard good news before which somehow had never panned out, and 2) the principal seemed happier that someone had just arrived to fix the toilets, signaling the solution to a more immediate problem.

While waiting outside the principal’s office, I got into a conversation with five or six ninth and tenth grade boys who had been hanging out nearby. Curious about American high school students, they wanted to know if my students also had to wear uniforms. (I think uniforms are wonderful for South African students, by the way, as they are THE great leveler.) For some reason they laughed when I told them that in the U.S., ninth graders are called freshmen and tenth graders are called sophomores. As they left to go to class, a ninth grader called out, “I am a freshmen.” A tenth grader followed with, “I am a sophomore.” They all laughed again.

We didn’t have much time until a luncheon engagement, but Pauline wanted me to meet someone she worked with and admired: the Reverend Dr. K.E.M. Mgojo, a powerful moral presence in the area with an impressive list of positions and achievements, including a position on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up to attempt to heal the wounds of apartheid. An old man who radiates dignity and authority, I wish that we could have had enough time together to have discussed forgiveness, but we had to hurry and he, too, seemed busy. However I felt honored that Pauline chose to introduce me to him.

“He uses me,” Pauline said as we drove back to Port Shepstone. “He uses me to say things he can’t.

That is my role as a white. It’s not enough for a whites to say they’re sorry – we need to do something.”

We arrived back at the Port Shepstone Country Club just as the Rotarians were about to begin their weekly lunch meeting. It felt strange to end this trip in which every face we saw was black with a luncheon at which every face was white. Unlikely as it may seem, however, Pauline is a Rotarian herself.

She’s hardly buddy-buddy with any of them, but I know that she sees her Rotary Club membership as another useful tool in her struggle, and she wanted to not only cultivate the members, she wanted to thank them for the eight computers. Another useful lesson in the politics of doing good.

Something I noticed on this day with Pauline that I hadn’t noticed a month ago: she sighed more often, and seemed more overwhelmed at how much needs to be done. And yet it was such an uplifting experience for me to be with her. Maybe it has to do with a quotation that she includes with every email message, a quotation which would seem presumptuous and hypocritical coming from most people (including me): “May God deny you an easy peace and grant you instead passion; a revolutionary passion that spills over into the world in acts of compassion, love, justice and integrity.”