Before ordination, I worked for a couple of years as a young adult missionary of the Episcopal Church in a shantytown community outside Mthatha, South Africa. The community was called Itipini, a word that literally means “at the dump,” which is an appropriate name for a community that grew up on the site of a […]
Returning to Itipini Read More »
On this World AIDS Day, I think of my all the people I know and knew with HIV/AIDS when I worked in Itipini, a shantytown community in South Africa. In particular, I remember my friend, Pakama, whom I spoke about at a World AIDS Day service last year. My friend Pakama lives in a place
Back in May, I wrote two posts about the razing of Itipini, the shantytown community in South Africa that I used to work in (and which I wrote a book about.) I haven’t been good about keeping this blog updated with news from Itipini, in part because the destruction of Itipini filled me with such
Karen in Mthatha has two new posts about what life is like now that Itipini has been demolished. She writes about how increased government attention to Itipini in recent months has had a tragic downside: It seems that finally having the attention of the municipality, though, has come with a price. However, being on the
Karen in South Africa has an update on how life carries on in Itipini, despite its demolition last week. A normal number of people came to the clinic, we had prayers on the veranda, people came for food, and there were people hanging out on the bench outside the clinic all day, chattering and laughing.
Update from Itipini Read More »
…every problem begins to look like a nail. This is the second of two posts looking at why the Itipini community—the shantytown community where I worked for two years—was bulldozed last week. Read the first post if you haven’t already. There’s one aspect of life in Itipini I left out of the earlier post and
When the only tool you have is a hammer… (Part II) Read More »
…every problem begins to look like a nail. That saying has been rolling around my head these past few days as I process the news that Itipini—the shantytown community on a garbage dump in South Africa where I worked for two years—has been bulldozed. Why did this happen? In this post and the next, I’m
When the only tool you have is a hammer… (Part I) Read More »
Last Thursday, the shantytown community in South Africa in which I used to work—the place I wrote a book about—was demolished. You can read an account from one of my successors, Karen. There are many factors at work here, many complicated, and I’m still trying to untangle all of them. For now, though, consider this
