I’m beginning to think SA stands for South Arizona
I am still trying to process just how much Arizona-peep-age was going on in my life today... actually, this entire weekend.
Picture this: Five people, all graduates of or students at Arizona State University, standing in the same room in Khayalitsha at the same time. Well that actually happened today:
But let's start at the beginning, shall we?
So Friday, I'm hanging out with Kyle (who, you may remember, is the pastor who had been at Paradise Valley UMC and just moved down here to pastor the Methodist church in Simon's Town, SA) at the Waterfront. As we're walking around trying to find a place to have lunch, I see the Semester at Sea ship that another reporter had mentioned was in town was actually docked at the Waterfront.
Then, just a few minutes after we site down for lunch within sight of the ship, a bunch of young adults, some wearing shirts from the University of Minnesota and one guy sporting a UA-looking fraternity shirt, sit down at the table next to us. They were, as I predicted, all from the Semester at Sea program... and not only was the guy with the blue-and-red shirt indeed from UA but a girl at the table was originally from Lake Powell, Ariz.
So even right there you had four Arizonans in the same space of about five square meters.
But wait... It gets even more Arizonish.
So last week, you may recall that I had lunch with Lindsay and Ryan and mentioned that I'd probably get to see the work that they do. Well, I accepted an invitation to visit the youth group that they run in Khayalitsha on Saturdays, and today was the day.
Meanwhile, independent of all that, I knew that a fellow Flinn Scholar, Nicole Rennell, was studying at the University of Cape Town and had never gotten around to e-mailing her or passing along my local phone number or really making any contact whatsoever. I know. I'm a horrible person. But hey, she was on summer vacation for part of that time anyway, and she knew I was here too and had forgotten whether or not she had e-mailed me.
Anyway, yesterday evening when I got my little booty back on the online with my laptop, I finally sent Nicole a Facebook message with my cell number in there somewhere and the hope that we could meet up at some future time for some future hanging out.
You can imagine my inital surprise, then, when I got an SMS from Nicole this morning that said, "hey this is nicole. i think i will see you this afternoon but wanted to give you my number as well." For a split second, I was worried that I had committed myself to being in two different places at once.
But then I figured that, as uncanny as it may be, perhaps Nicole knew Lindsay and Ryan and would be in Khayalitsha with them this afternoon. I mean that would usually be statistically improbable, but then again, this is Cape Town, where multiple people that I've met in Arizona are now living, studying, working, etc.
So Lindsay and Ryan picked me up this afternoon, we made our way out to Khayalitsha, where the people involved with the Sinethemba Community Project (of which the youth group is a part) were getting ready for their Annual General Meeting. And at some point, Lindsay mentions that "Nicole the Flinn" and her fiance Chris should be showing up at some point in the AGM because they're also tied in with some Sinethemba projects. So my suspicions were correct!
But then I get to hear about how Lindsay and Ryan met Nicole and Chris, which I don't even remember half the specifics of. But suffice to say that ASU grads Lindsay and Ryan hadn't met ASU students Nicole and Chris until both couples were in South Africa. They apparently got introduced by some mutual acquaintance who thought it would be good for one set of Americans he knew to meet some other Americans he knew. And as it turned out, not only did all four have a country in common, but they had also all gone to Arizona State.
And I had managed to see each of the four of them at least once or twice around Tempe.
So flash forward to today, when Lindsay and Ryan are leading a meeting of the Silulutho youth group and Nicole and Chris show up at the door. I step outside to catch up with them a little bit while the youth group is working on their debating skills.
And when it's time for me to talk to the group about journalism, the three of us head inside the shack that had been a family home but was converted into a community space now that the family has moved into their new house next door.
And all of a sudden there are five Sun Devils in the same room in Harare, Khayalitsha, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa... of all places.
That's still boggling my mind, as is all that went on in our little Tempe-away-from-Tempe bubble that we later transported to a sushi restaurant in the City Bowl, close to where I live.
So yeah. That was my Saturday in a maroon-and-gold nutshell.
I'll post more about the substance of the day, aside from the ASU-goes-to-SA aspects of it all, sometime soon...