Anna doubting her doubts while drastically changing lives

Anna (and Patrick) painting the walls at what will soon be the library at Sithembele Matiso School

This past Friday, Allie, Patrick and I spent the day in Nyanga at Sithembele Matiso finally getting paint on the walls of our soon to be library. We arrived home around 5 or 6 o'clock to a facebook message from an intern at NBC Connecticut asking for an interview about the project. Still covered in paint and exhausted with only an hour window to shower before heading out to Mama Africa to celebrate Carl's birthday, we asked if we could possibly call her the next day. “Nope, we're airing the segment tonight,” she said and asked us to skype in right then. After fighting the internet to connect with her, she peppered us with questions about what we're doing, how we're doing it, and why. We took turns answering her questions, thanking our communities for their support and explaining what this library will mean for these students. We were able to speak with her for about 15 minutes before in true Loch Road style, the wifi cut out. We then went off to Mama Africa for a great night of African food, live music and dancing. We got back from dinner just in time to a get a phone call from my mom, and hear most of the newscast while it aired. 

Saturday morning consisted of a trip to the aquarium at the waterfront and lunch at a market where I tried sushi for only the second or third time ever, trying very hard to ignore the irony of having just been to the aquarium while eating it. Each and everyday since I have been here, I have been exposed to something new. Whether it be food, an experience, or an idea. After the aquarium, we went to a Braai at the home of a woman Vernon knows through his church. We stuffed ourselves with samosas, sausage chicken, salads, I don't think I have ever seen that much food all in one place. It's always nice to be in a home surrounded by family even if it's not our own. As we were leaving, after signing a round of Lean On Me, the host said to us, “you know that saying, our door is always open, well, we don't even have a door, so there!” I have said this many times over, but the hospitality of the people and communities here never ceases to amaze me. 

On Sunday, we went over to Marita's flat to share with her the NBC news cast and talk about our activist project. It was then while taking some time to really sit down and think about how this all started that it began to sink in, this project cannot be a coincidence, the events that lead us to discover the room at Sithembele Matiso are too perfect, too calculated, almost as though someone designed it, the details literally falling exactly into place so that we would end up where we did when we did. I wrote a blog a while back about a crazy day that we spent with a Taxi Driver in Manenburg, had we not been running late that day we would not have found that particular cab driver, that adventure never would have happened, and we never would have felt the need to go over to Marita's flat that afternoon when Joseph just happened to be visiting. To make the story even more complex, Patrick who usually keeps us semi on time to things had sun poisoning from our recent beach trip and wasn't feeling up to coming, thus our tardiness that morning. It was that day in Marita's flat that Joseph asked if at least of few of us out of the group would come visit the school. Had I not been there at Marita's that day and met Joseph in person, I probably would not have felt as compelled to visit the school with the others, and would not be sitting here right now trying to figure out how to get two tons of books from Connecticut to Cape Town. I consider myself a skeptic, even a religious cynic at times, but could this all have really just aligned into a big happy coincidence? Luck? A product of Serendipity? Maybe, but I have slowly begun to question myself and my beliefs, to even doubt my doubts. Though, what I know now more than ever, is that every single decision, literally every step that we take has the potential to drastically change our lives. 

Books for Nyanga