zebron.

so, i have a new job here in south africa. on monday, tuesday and thursdays i go to various schools around the muizenberg area and assist a lady named sherna who teaches life skills for living hope. our school load is quite diverse. mondays we go to christian davids, the school across from capricorn, an afrikaans speaking school where kids have holes in their pants, some have no shoes, and trouble-makers like my little friend carl who smokes ganga in the bathroom. he's 10.
tuesday we are in nice, white, rich noordhoek private teaching classes of no more than eight (our grade 4 has 5 students), each with their own pencial sharperner and colored pencil set. kids with names like ANGUS, JEAN ERIC, STORM, and OLIVER STAPLETON-COTTON.
thursday we are in 4 classes at muizenberg primary. this is a variety school of white, black, colored, and seems to be a breeding ground for some real rebels. one kid, dylan, has caught my attention.
it is at muizenberg primary where a boy named zebron is in one of our grade 4 classes. and it is here where you will see just how cool god is in putting me with a co-worker whose heart beats like my own.

monday after we left christian davids and the mob-scene on the playground that occurs everytime i leave (because all the kids are from capricorn and i do spend lots of my free time in that community...ok, almost all my free time but that's beside the point), we were driving to st. james. we passed zebron on the road, and sherna automatically pulled over.

what followed was the kind of drama i live for--problem solving and intervention for those in need, and racing up and down main road--but i'll get to that later.

zebron had packed a tote bag full of pots and kitchen utensils for his experiment that day at school. somewhere between home, the train, and school, zebron lost the tote bag. when we stopped to see why he was walking in the opposite direction of his school, with tears in his eyes he told us that if he didn't find the bag, his mom was going to beat him.

sherna put him on the home-bound train and called his mom to explain the situation. we proceeded to go to our next school. well, st. james was out for a holiday so we returned quickly to the train station to see if zebron was still there so we could take him home and talk with his mom. he wasn't there. the conductor told us he took the wrong train and was heading to the southern tip of the peninsula rather than up into the flats he lives in.

this is where the frantic driving begins. sherna was so worried about this kid. we made a plan and i jumped out of the moving car at the next station, got the train stopped, only to find zebron wasn't there. no one had seen the boy.

we are severly worried at this point. sherna drives back to kalk bay, thinking maybe he was somewhere at that station. she found him curled into a ball sitting on the floor of the station, sobbing into his hands.

we proceeded to take him home, and all this time i am thinking about how much i love sherna and god for putting us in the same space and time here in africa so i could still live a little while doing this school work!

jho! we get to zebron's home and found that the bag was there. no beating necessary. we thanked god for the found pots and pans and realized we have much more to offer than life skills...we have a responsiblity to zebron brought to the surface by a missing tote bag.