This article caught my attention: Religion forces science teacher to quit. I immediately identified with the one-word commentary of the person who shared the link on Facebook: yikes! According to News24 the teacher said that she put teaching natural selection on the syllabus for the year, but that the teachers in the school’s science department were mainly Christian and that “staff issued a reprimand” over teaching evolution. Referring to the head of biology in the school, the teacher was quoted as saying:

What he actively does in class is he poo poos the idea [of evolution], he makes kids laugh at the idea of the age of the Earth as proposed by scientists currently. He poo poos the fossil record, he gives what he believes is counter evidence to carbon dating.

What I find very disturbing about this approach followed by some of my fellow Christians, is that nobody wins. Instead of creating an opportunity to teach children and teenagers to think about the natural sciences, religion and modern biblical scholarship, it just deepens the polarisation in a debate where nobody seems to listen to each other and therefore nobody learns anything. I was not surprised to read psychohistorian Auke Slotegraaf’s remark (I didn’t try to improve the English since I’m simply quoting from the News24 article):

Sometimes the world is very complicated it is difficult to communicate science to the public and the result is that some people have a negative view of science and then science communicators then bend over backward to try and accommodate people while they on the other hand, they know it is E=mc², it’s not E=mc² plus baby Jesus.

I fail to see what Einstein’s equation has to do with the creation(ism) vs evolution debate. Maybe I’m missing something here. Moreover, to say that it’s not E=mc² plus baby Jesus, sounds like a very emotional reaction to me that totally misses the point. Why haven’t we made significant progress in this debate? Why do we always run into a dead-end, even before the debate can start?

I think there are at least seven reasons for this:

1. We underestimate the power of worldviews, paradigms and presuppositions
2. There are huge misunderstandings in the debate
3. People get very emotional very quickly when they encounter opposing views and it is an open secret that emotional reactions are not conducive to rational thinking
4. People forget that all of us were issued with two ears and one mouth, so they forget to listen carefully before they talk/write
5. People love creating caricatures of those on the other side of the debate, instead of trying to understand them better
6. Many people on both sides of the debate totally misunderstand the Bible

The seventh reason is that I don’t think we will make progress by debating the issue. We will only make progress if we dialogue about it. In a debate there must be a winner. In a dialogue, the objective is not to win, but rather to clarify issues, to try and understand where the other party is coming from, to learn something from somebody else even if you differ fundamentally from that person.

What should we as Christians learn? Not only do we need to learn more about the theory of evolution, we also need to learn a few things about the Bible. There’s a very long list of things to learn, but for starters let me just mention the following:

1. Evolution concerns itself with the basic question: Where do species come from? It doesn’t try to answer the question whether there is a God or not
2. There is nothing in the Bible that proves natural selection right or wrong. The Bible wasn’t written to answer these questions
3. Genesis 1 and 2 are not modern scientific texts and should not be read as such
4. Genesis 1 and 2 are ancient texts, using language that made a lot of sense to people living in the ancient world
5. In the ancient world, people had a radically different understanding of the world and the universe to the one we have today
6. Some elements of the ancient worldview:
   • The earth was thought to be a flat surface standing on pillars in the sea – today we know that the earth is a sphere
   • The sky was thought to be a dome, stretched like a canopy from east to west, beyond which were “the heavens”, the dwelling place of God or the gods (depending on your religion) and other spiritual beings – today we know that the atmosphere is a thin layer around the earth. Are there really Christians who believe that God stays somewhere out there in space? According to my understanding God exists outside of time and space and is present everywhere!
   • The sun, moon and stars were thought to be attached to the sky like lamps – Does any Christian believe that?
7. According to Genesis 1 God created light on day 1  and the sun, moon and stars on day 4
8. The order in which God creates things in Genesis 1 differs from the order in Genesis 2
9. So maybe it doesn’t make sense to read Genesis 1 and 2 as modern scientific texts about the origin of the universe, the age of the earth and the origin of species
10. Maybe we need to take note of other ancient literature, such as the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, written in Akkadian cuneiform on 7 tablets in honour of the Babylonian god Marduk, recovered during the middle of the 19th century
11. Maybe we need to pay attention to the mass of scientific research done since the beginning of the 19th century by a host of brilliant scholars on loads of ancient texts, to try and piece together the puzzle of how the different stories in the book of Genesis came together into the single written volume we have today
12. Maybe the crisis of the Babylonian exile can shed some very important light on this and other puzzles. The Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem around 586 bc and the subsequent exile into heathen territory caused such an existential crisis for the Israelites who lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, that it probably helped set a process in motion whereby they started to write down their oral stories that were handed down to them over centuries from father to son. Psalm 137, the inspiration behind Bony M’s popular song, By the rivers of Babylon, captures some of the raw emotion they experienced during this period.

Maybe we need to carefully re-read Genesis 1 and 2, taking into account the insights gained from the historical critical research on the Old Testament that continues to grow today. Maybe a whole new world will start to open up for us if we take these beautiful texts seriously as ancient literature written by people who believed in one creator God, surrounded by many other nations who were worshiping amongst other things, the sun, moon and stars as gods.

Rain in 1992. Lara in 1996. Madness in 1999. Rain and madness in 2003. Madness and pressure today. South Africa’s list of World Cup tragedies just got longer. One has got to feel for them, they have been among the best teams in non-ICC tournaments.

This is how the commentators on cricinfo.com aptly describe yet another disappointing exit from the cricket world cup for South Africa.

Hopefully I will be able to write more about this later, but for now let me just say that this is a way of thinking that helps us move away from our sick and displaced idol worship mentality regarding sport, not only in South Africa, but around the world.

Sport is there to be enjoyed, not to kill your team or to feel ashamed when they lose. Yes, it’s never nice to lose, and one should always strive to perform at your best, but hey, there is life after losing.

So although I’m disappointed,  I’m still a happy man and I’m still a proud Protea supporter. The people I really feel for today are the players, and especially people like Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis, two brilliant, top international players who are often praised only when they play a major role in wins.

Now I just hope New Zeeland takes the cup! They deserved to win this game.

On Monday and Tuesday I will be attending the inaugural South African Water and Energy Forum. This is part of my work at Nova, the organisation for whom I am currently doing contract work.

I am looking forward to this event which promises to be something special, as it will focus on developing tangible solutions to the “triple challenge”  of water security, energy security and food security.  A quick view of the sponsors indicates that a number of important role-players have already put their money where their mouths are. Nedbank, Eskom, Exxaro, Business Report and the US Embassy are providing the financial backing for the event which is organised by Touchstone Resources and Gleason Publications.

Looking at the list of South African and international speakers, one gets the impression that there won’t be a lack of expertise and that a wide variety of disciplines will be represented. According to the SAWEF website, the Forum will examine and address the following themes:

• Water as a scarce and dwindling resource in an increasingly dry climate;
• The water/energy/food security nexus with a view to developing tangible goal-oriented outcomes in the form of PPP’s or collaborative solutions
• The shifting water paradigm’s impact on corporate South Africa and expanding the risk profile of water issues and its impact on business
• Utilising the vast AMD resource in the Western Basin
• Assessing the thorium option for nuclear power generation
• Highlighting technological advances in water treatment and power generation
• Elements of urban planning & architectural design relating to water infrastructure

By the way, PPPs are Private-Public Partnerships and AMD is Acid Mine Drainage, which is currently a hot topic as mega quantities of water that have filled old mine shafts, have become extremely toxic because of acid, salts, heavy metals and radioactive material that’s moving closer and closer to the ground surface in Gauteng and other places.

My direct interest in the forum is really the opportunity for networking and informal discussions with potential funders/investors of the Nova project that I am involved with.

Last week I visited Nova’s biogas project in KwazaMukuhle, a township close to the small town of Hendrina, Mpumalanga. What excites me about this project is the fact that the biogas digesters are designed and developed by a small group of township residents who build these with material that is typically available in townships. But it’s about much more than simply a product that could generate renewable energy for low-income households. It’s also about more than a potential sanitation solution and the protection of water resources.

These men have gone through an intensive training process that empowered them to understand the concept of methane gas that can be generated from cow dung and even sewage, to innovatively experiment with a wide range of materials and designs, to solve problems and to build structures.

Riaan Ingram, the Nova facilitator who worked with the men over a period of about two years, says that he avoids giving advice and instead keeps throwing questions back to the group, forcing them to come up with their own solutions. This means that the group owns the concept, and that the project has a very strong element of sustainability built into the core, right from the start.

Here are a few photos I took in KwazaMukuhle and on a small farm outside Hendrina:

The Research and Development team at a shack in Kwaza where they installed a biogas digester.

Cow dung is fed into the square in the background. Methane gas is generated in the dome and the effluent, which can be used as fertiliser, runs into the square in the forefront.

During the next phase a pipe will be connected to the dome that will run into the house where the gas will be used for things like cooking and lighting.

Bricks are made by mixing cow dung, soil and salt and by pouring that into self-made brick moulds.

When the hole for the dome is dug, the team assembles the mould for the wall. They then pour the same mixture used to make bricks, between the mould and the sides of the hole.

They remove the mould after the mixture has set and then build the dome on top of the underground cylindrical wall.

Painting the dome with a mixture of salt, cement and water seals the cracks. This is an old “boereraat” (farmer’s tip) for sealing cracks in cement dams.

Candle wax is melted on a coal stove. A mixture of melted wax and paraffin is burnt into the insides of the digester to make it gas proof.

Crunchy numbers

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,600 times in 2010. That’s about 9 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 34 posts. There were 15 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was March 4th with 150 views. The most popular post that day was Today I was hijacked and I love South Africa!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mycontemplations.wordpress.com, mattstone.blogs.com, khanya.wordpress.com, and mhambi.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for stephen hawking life after death, stephen hawking, stephen hawking afterlife, stephen hawking on life after death, and does stephen hawking believe in life after death.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Today I was hijacked and I love South Africa! March 2010
14 comments

2

Life after death – watch 50/50 on 9 Feb February 2009
12 comments

3

About Andries Louw October 2008
17 comments

4

South Africa’s leadership crisis November 2008
4 comments

5

Shout out against crime!! March 2010

We finally started our experimental church about three months ago. Cecile and I have been talking about this for years. We discussed it with many people, visited a few house churches and attended some talks about the subject. More recently we discussed the idea with my cousin Wessel and his wife, Kathrin. We knew the time had come to just start.

This is really what this blog is about, to figure out what the next church should (or could) look like. Last year in March I wrote about the long nextchurch journey here. Most of what I wrote on this blog since I started it just over two years ago, was preparation for this church experiment.

The first time we got together (it was the 2nd of September this year), we were five adults (Cecile and I with my cousin and his wife and a friend) with five small children, all under the age of 6! We simply had a meal together and started talking. We talked mainly about what we were looking for in a church. We did talk about previous negative church experiences but decided that we didn’t want to dwell on those. We were not getting together to criticise other churches. Rather we wanted to experiment being the church in a fresh way.

One of the things that came out of our discussion was that we were looking for a space to just be ourselves, to be accepted unconditionally and to accept others unconditionally. We needed a safe place to ask difficult questions, doubting questions, a place where we could explore avenues that might lead us to other answers than the simple, straight-forward answers we grew up with.

Another critical issue for us was to deal with the legacy of apartheid and to be serious about reconciliation and related issues such as racism, diversity and poverty.

When we started, our gatherings were very informal and unstructured. They are still very informal but have become a little bit more structured over the past few weeks. We always start with a meal. After some time of “normal” unstructured conversation during the course of the meal, we start talking about the question of the previous week or we identify a new question. We generally allow ourselves a lot of time to talk through the issue before we get to the next stage, which is usually to take the question to the Bible. We might not even get to the Bible on the same night that a new question or topic is being discussed.

I am planning to write more about our recent discussions that centered around the question: Why do black people live in small houses and white people in nice, big houses? Since we started with five adults and five small children, our group has grown to about ten adults with seven small children. One of our group members is a domestic worker and she asked the question that dominated our most recent conversations.

 

Tomorrow morning, Sunday 21 November, I will be riding the Momentum 94.7 Cycle Challenge. My history with this amazing race goes back some ten years. The atmosphere is really something special with thousands of cyclists and spectators filling and lining the streets of Joburg. The best thing about the race is that there is full road closure and that for one day in the year you can ride your bicycle on the M1 and the N14 without any vehicles in sight. That feels powerful!

I did the race in 2000, 2001 and 2002. In 2003 I got married and somehow found it much more difficult to continue exercising and racing. In 2008 I finally got myself to ride again but did so with very little practice. Same story last year but this year I really didn’t exercise at all so I’m expecting a lot of pain…

This year I will be riding to raise funds for Global Relief, the organisation I am involved with. Global Relief is an organisation of volunteers that assist the survivors of communities that have been struck by disasters. Most of our work was done on large earthquake scenes in countries such as Turkey, Algeria, India and Iran. We had teams working in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami. We also supported the victims of the xenophobic violence in Johannesburg in 2008.

At the moment we are looking at ways in which to support local communities in South Africa when they are struck by disasters such as fires and floods. We work with volunteers and our focus areas are medical, psychosocial (psychological first aid and training of local leaders) and engineering (structural and water engineers).

You can read more about Global Relief at www.globalrelief.org.za. Why don’t you click here to sponsor me for riding the 94.7 by making a secure online donation towards Global Relief? Thank you for your support!

Sunday morning 3 October 2010, 3:00 am. A young man returns home from a shebeen (a tavern) in Alexandra to Organic Market, a few blocks further, with a young lady by his side. His pregnant girlfriend is outraged at the site of her lover arriving with another woman. In her anger she pours paraffin on the bed and strikes a match.

In a matter of seconds the room is on fire. By the time the thatched roof is alight, the fate of 60 homes is sealed. These “houses” were formerly stalls of a fresh produce market, all linked by a common thatched roof that stretched in a semi-circle. This setup, where a thatched roof is shared by a number of shacks, is quite rare but in most squatter camps the dwellings are very close to each other, making it easy for fires to spread rapidly.

Ever since I can remember I have heard about the “squatter problem” in South Africa. Black people were streaming into the towns and cities from the homelands, their “traditional” pieces of land where they were supposed to stay. These intruders, as they were perceived by whites, occupied land illegally and erected temporary structures but ended up staying for good.

Today, 16 years after our new democracy was born in 1994, our “squatter problem” is still with us and it is growing. Our squatters are still marginalised because they don’t own land. When I visited Organic Market two days after the fire, I asked whether this tragedy could be an opportunity to improve structures in order to be more fire-proof. I was told that bricks would not be allowed here because the people were occupying the land illegally. Two days later, a few were building with bricks.

Most of the people could not afford bricks so the majority of the structures were rebuilt with whatever the people could lay their hands on: planks, plywood, corrugated iron, even office dividers. In many cases they used burnt corner poles as the framework for their new homes.

Who said office dividers are only meant for offices?

One church responded by donating enough corrugated iron sheets to complete most of the affected shacks.

Some questions to consider: How can churches organise emergency response teams, in conjunction with public emergency services, to react quickly to disasters in their own areas to support marginalised communities in their times of crisis?

What can and should churches do to address the issue of land underlying the “squatter problem”? What should churches and Christians do to address labour issues, e.g. paying domestic workers, gardeners and other workers as much as possible instead of as little as possible, improving the working conditions of unskilled and semi-skilled workers etc.?

How can middle-class people relate to poor people as friends and not simply as donors?

This post is my contribution to a synchroblog, Seeing Through the Eyes of the Marginalized. Here is a list of other bloggers who wrote about the same subject on the same day with links to their posts.

George at the Love Revolution – The Hierarchy of Dirt

Arthur Stewart – The Bank

Sonnie Swenston – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized

Wendy McCaig – An Empty Chair at the Debate

Ellen Haroutunian – Reading the Bible from the Margins

Christine Sine – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized

Alan Knox – Naming the Marginalized

Margaret Boehlman – Just Out of Sight

Liz Dyer – Step Away from the Keyhole

John O’Keefe – Viewing the World in Different Ways

Steve Hayes – Ministry to Refugees–Synchroblog on Marginalised People

Andries Louw – The South African Squatter Problem

Drew Tatusko – Invisible Margins of a White Male Body

K.W. Leslie – Who’s the Man? We Christians Are

Jacob Boelman – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized

Peter Walker – Through the Eyes of the Marginalized

Cobus van Wyngaard – Addressing the Normalized Position

Tom Smith – Seeing Through the Eyes of the Marginalized

Christen Hansel – Foreigners and Feasts

Annie Bullock – Empty Empathy

Sonja Andrews – On Being Free

I’m in Haiti, typing away on a dusty keyboard in an internet cafe in Pernier, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. The Caribbean music coming from different angles and the cool late-afternoon tropical breeze help soothe the smells of city waste, the sticky feeling of perspiration dripping down my body and the images of poverty lingering in my mind.

I’m part of a 3-person delegation of the Africa for Haiti campaign, an initiative of Graça Machel to demonstrate Africa’s solidarity with the people of Haiti in the aftermath of the 12 January earthquake. I represent Global Relief, a South African volunteer organisation which is a partner of Africa for Haiti. Small scale reconstruction activities are underway around every corner but the majority of the work still has to be done. Seven months after the disaster, hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tents. Life is hard for those who have moved into the plywood-and-plastic temporary shelters. There is the heat, the rain and the knowledge that it’s now the middle of the hurricane season.

Haitians say the devestation of the earthquake was caused by a history of bad policy. One example is the centralisation and concentration of everything in Port-au-Prince. Everything is in “the republic of Port-au-Prince”, as locals refer to it: roads, shops, markets, hospitals, factories, state offices… and of course, jobs. We’re talking hyper-urbanisation combined with a very weak state, resulting in a lack of social services and poorly constructed buildings – which killed many who would otherwise have lived in the rural areas.

Ironically, it is there, in the rural areas that we saw pockets of hope for a future Haiti. This past week we visited rural communities in the departments (provinces) of Artibonite and Northwest. We were hosted by indigenous, Haitian led civil society organisations Emmaus Haiti and Tet Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Heads together peasants of Haiti).

High up in the mountainous village of Treuil, only accessible by mule or by foot, Emmaus Haiti showed us a school that was built by the community themselves as well as a half-built clinic that could not be completed due to a lack of funds. We met in the majestic blue Catholic church building, listening to community members explaining how their government has forgotten about them, and about their plans to develop their village.

Tet Kole received us in Jean-Rabel, a remarkable place where peasants are producing beans, tomatoes, onions, kasava, maize and other vegetables which are stored in a special barn. A simple cement canal serves as an effective irrigation system in this dry area and they have errected a number of buildings for training and mobilisation of their members.

Food security was a major issue in Haiti before the earthquake but it became even worse after disaster struck as people fled the cities, resulting in a rural family of 6 typically growing overnight to about 25. This caused some other rammifications e.g. that the seeds earmarked for planting had to be eaten to keep people alive. But more about the seed issue in a next post…

I am learning so much about alternative development, about local communities taking their futures into their own hands, communities who are not asking for aid but for solidarity. It is an amazing new world that is opening up to me, a process that began more or less in March when I started researching the situation in Haiti and came accross a few interesting documents and websites, e.g. www.papda.org and www.grassrootsonline.org which ultimately led me to make contact with some of the leaders who are now hosting us. More about PAPDA and some other civil society groups later.

Saturday is our last full day in Haiti. We’re flying back to South Africa on Sunday but I believe this is just the beginning of a journey. You can follow our progress on twitter here: http://twitter.com/africa4haiti. Click here to follow our trip on GivenGain and to support Africa for Haiti.

Here is my travel companion, Bernard Likalimba (AfricanMonitor) and Ricot Jean Pierre (PAPDA) in Port-au-Prince last week: http://twitpic.com/2f87of

I would love to hear your thoughts on alternative development, i.e. development that is not driven and managed by outsiders but rather by grassroots leaders who take responsibility for their own communities.

This article by Nick Wadhams in Time.com, Bad Charity? (All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt!) puts arguably the most important question in the non-profit environment on the table: Is foreign aid bad for Africa? Hat-tip to Wendi Wade Hammond, US coordinator of Project Glory who sent me the link via Facebook. Project Glory supports Shiselweni Home-Based Care, a grassroots movement of volunteers in Swaziland who care for people suffering from HIV/AIDS.

This is of course not a new question but unfortunately many people who want to help Africa – and other places where there is large-scale poverty – often cause more harm than good.

The article relates the story of Jason Sadler, a 27-year old entrepreneur from Florida, who decided to collect a million T-shirts and send them to poor people in Africa. Critics say this will weaken the textile industry in those countries, thus putting people out of jobs instead of helping them.

It is understandable when people who have been working with poor communities for decades get very frustrated if others still don’t get the message. And it’s not just Americans who get it wrong. I remember very well the mistakes I made as a young student (I’m South African), organising shortterm mission trips to rural communities in South and Southern Africa.

The main problem however is not making the mistakes, but not learning from them. I would love to ask Sadler’s critics if they had it all figured out when they started helping the poor. The truth is that it’s complicated and that you can never say “I’ve arrived”.

The core question is: How do we minimise the damage caused by inexperienced / uninformed / incompetent helpers? Realistically you can’t prevent it from happening but those of us who are close to the recipients of aid have a responsibility to change the tide.

How do we do this? I don’t think it’s helpful to shout at people like Sadler, calling him an idiot. Maybe what we need in Africa are forums where people who want to help can come and listen to local communities, spend time with them and observe what other more experienced workers are doing, before they are allowed to jump in and dish out charity.

We also need to ask how this issue can be addressed on a much larger scale. To quote the article in Time:

“The long-term solution is not aid. It may seem cruel that aid should stop, but really it should,” says Rasna Warah, a Kenyan newspaper columnist and editor of the anthology Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits, a call to arms against aid. “Africa is the greatest dumping ground on the planet. Everything is dumped here. The sad part is that African governments don’t say no — in fact, they say, ‘Please send us more.’ They’re abdicating responsibility for their own citizens.”

In Global Relief, the South African volunteer-organisation I work with, we assist communities to process the trauma of having lost loved-ones, houses and other infrastructure after disasters. We then train local leaders to carry on with the process. They speak the people’s languages and understand the culture. This is one way in which we attempt to empower victims to take responsibility for their own future.

What is your experience with aid gone wrong? Which ideas do you have for addressing this issue?

This afternoon I watched the new South African version of the 1985 hit song, Shout that was released today on http://www.shoutsa.com. The song, originally performed by Tears for Fears, was a protest song against injustices in the world towards the end of the cold war. David O’Sullivan devoted a lot of airtime to it on his show on Talk radio 702 today.

South African artists Danny K and Kabelo Mabalane were so shocked by the murder of that legendary reggae star, Lucky Dube in 2007 that they mobilised a whole crowd of artists and celebrities to do something against crime.

They gave the song a new South African flavour and created the SHOUT foundation to raise funds for various charities and causes that help in the prevention of crime and to help victims of crime. Sms shout to 33335 to download it and donate R20.

Here’s what I like about this initiative:

• It isn’t just another song for just another campaign
• It’s about more than just awareness
• It actually raises money for charity
• This money will be given to organisations that are positioned to prevent crime and to help crime victims
• They have partnered with Crimeline (sms tip-offs to 32211) and the SA Police
• There is a powerful story behind this campaign of two artists who were moved by the death of a friend and then mobilised a significant section of South Africa’s music industry
• I feel passionate about this after my own hijacking ordeal 2 weeks ago.
• Apparently everybody involved in the production did it free of charge

So go ahead and visit http://www.shoutsa.com, sms shout to 33335 and help make this the most downloaded song in South Africa. Tweet about it, talk about it on Facebook, email about it, blog about it…

SHOUT OUT AGAINST CRIME!!