Surprise Workshop

I found out Friday that I was teaching a writing workshop on Saturday. It is my husband, Steve, who is good at thinking on his feet. (He’s in Bolivia right now where he was scheduled to teach a three-day workshop on he-knew-not-what, presumably something related to his field of theological education. They kept saying they would get back to him on the exact topic.)

In contrast to Steve, I am the sort who over prepares. My manuscripts go through 6, 8 even 11 drafts. I can’t stop fiddling with a presentation until the moment I give it. I’m always certain it could be better, afraid I will make a fool of myself by having completely missed the boat.

I had discussed with Dondo, the children’s librarian at Tembisa West Library, the possibility of a writing workshop for people who would like to learn to write for children. We were motivated by a writing competition by one of the local publishers. The competition has a deadline of June 30. True, we had originally discussed last week and this week for a two-Saturday course, but then he found out it had to go through the library committee, and I took off for Cape Town and Blantyr. I thought we had postponed the whole idea. I called Friday to see if he had been able to arrange anything for June. It’s a good thing I called.

“Yes, we are expecting you tomorrow morning at 10,” he said. (“Tomorrow” being the 31^st of May.)

“Oh,” I said, thinking quickly. “How many?”

“We have five signed up.”

Five is not a bad number to work with. It isn’t hard to get each one involved. There is time for everyone to share his writing. They form their own relationships to encourage one another.

So I went—straight from the ice rink and my early morning practice with a stop at Mug and Bean for a hazelnut latte since it would have taken too long to go home in between. (It’s a tough life, I know.)

I think all told we were more like ten, although some who arrived early had to leave, and Dondo kept recruiting anyone who came through the doors of the library that he thought should be interested in writing for children. I merged a session from my Kenya workshops on “What makes a good children’s story?” and another on “Plotting your story”, and we didn’t quite get through all the material, but they were excited about what they got. They want to meet again in two weeks, and it sounded like they plan to recruit new members to our group. So we will probably do a lot of repeating, but have a core who knows where we are going and will come prepared with the exercise I gave them.

This is something I have wanted to do in South Africa for a long time, but it has never quite come together before. I want to ask, why now, Lord? Our visas expire in two months, and we are looking at moving back to the U.S. But we plan to take chunks of time back in South Africa, and I have to trust that the Lord has his own timing.

Writing for Kenya's Children

 

Violence is an acceptable way of solving problems.
Those people are bad.
Friends can’t be trusted.
Those I love can’t protect me.

One by one we listed negative lessons that Kenyan children learned in the violence that followed last December’s elections.

I drew a line down the board. “What are the positive lessons we want them to learn instead?” I asked.

“Good people still exist!” two students practically shouted. “And some of them are from the other tribe,” someone added. We went on to talk about hope, trust, the power of difference and ways of portraying such themes in stories.

I was deeply moved as I listened to fifteen women, talking so excitedly about the needs of Kenyan children that they practically ignored me, their teacher. They came from different ethnic groups, some 'at war' with one another, but they shared a passion for Christ, for children, for books and for their country.

The next morning we prayed together for the God who heals the broken hearted, who is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows to use us to share his comfort. As we broke for tea in the afternoon, one of the women received an SMS from her office to avoid Ngong Road—new violence had broken out.

I am not one to panic. I have lived in the midst of a revolution in Ethiopia and a civil war in Mozambique. I am well aware that the media plays up the most dramatic scenes, and Nairobi was probably not going to burst into flames that afternoon. Although the women all expressed the same sentiments in their words, more than one described her stomach twisting in fear. “Not again! Dear God, don’t let it be like before when bands of thugs went house to house asking what tribe you were from so they could decide whether or not to kill you.”

A good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, I tell my students. But this story doesn’t yet have an ending. Kenya’s political problems won’t be easily solved. And what difference will a political solution make for the poor and the hopeless who blame other ethnic groups for their problems? I wonder about the personal ending for these women. Some are teachers; some work with relief organizations. One has HIV and came to the workshop only days after leaving the hospital. Will the refugee children still in the camps be able to unlearn the lessons their experiences have taught them or is Kenya doomed to repeat the cycle of violence in the next generation?

We don’t know the ending to the story, but we can talk to the One who does.