See what happened on Char & Skiff’s last 10 days in Africa…living in rural Zimbabwe and Ghana, eating local food, and hanging with folks at several Mocha Club projects – the Zimbabwe orphans in Bulawayo, the Grace Orphans and the Grace AIDS project in Sunyani, Ghana…
The Mocha Club Experience: Starting November 1, 2009, Seattle Pacific University recent graduates Daniel “Skiff” Skiffington and Charlie “Char” Beck visit all of Mocha Club’s current projects in 7 countries and take Mocha Club supporters and friends on a three-month virtual adventure to experience real life in Africa. Stay tuned for regular updates!
Yes, Char & Skiff have safely returned to the U.S.! But we still have several videos to share with you! Here’s the latest webisode from an international tourist destination, Cape Town, South Africa, and features three projects Mocha Club supports there – preschools in Khayelitsha, Learn To Earn, and Living Hope. Take a look at the real Cape Town, the one you won’t see in tourism magazines…
The Mocha Club Experience: Starting November 1, 2009, Seattle Pacific University recent graduates Daniel “Skiff” Skiffington and Charlie “Char” Beck visit all of Mocha Club’s current projects in 7 countries and take Mocha Club supporters and friends on a three-month virtual adventure to experience real life in Africa. Stay tuned for regular updates!
Since 2008, Mocha Club members and friends have had incredible experiences serving in Africa and being impacted by the African people. Don’t believe us? Read the trip members’ own words.
Danielle Iman was on our Mocha Club Ethiopia trip from December 27th, 2009-January 9th, 2010.
Danielle with Ambo street boys
The beauty of the Ethiopian people is found by observing their way of life. In this culture, there are no watches, nowhere special you must go next, and no one is more important than the person sitting directly in front of you. Relationships are key. This beauty is what brought me back to Ethiopia for the third time with Mocha Club this Christmas season.
One of the core goals on these trips has been working and forging relationships with the street boys of Ambo. These boisterous and sometimes unwieldy young boys have been orphaned or abandoned and are not culturally accepted by society. It would seem, at first glance, that these boys would be the last group of people with whom we could form relationships. But what we quickly discovered is that the boys were instead teaching us how to have true, meaningful relationships through their sacrificial acts of love.
What form did this take? It was Girma feeding me his injera when he probably hadn’t eaten all week. It was “Ceasar” teaching me his language, Oromic, so that I could teach English in an effective manner. It was Bronhu wiping my tears with the only tissue he owned. This is true beauty, which resembles that of Christ.
Lessons learned and remarkable experiences along the way, similar to those described above, are too numerous to count. We went with a heart to serve, but we ended up getting so much more. Their love, their faith and their hope is a beautiful treasure.
Our time in Africa is drawing to a close. I’m blogging from an airline lounge in the Johannesburg Airport. We board a flight to Harare, Zimbabwe in just a few minutes. We’ll spend five days there and then head up to Ghana for a quick four-day trip. Then we head back to the United States. As the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun! This trip is no exception. We’re wrapping up a great (and incredibly challenging) journey across the continent of Africa—visiting eight countries in all.
Visiting South Africa has been a real joy for me personally. I have wanted to come here since I was a little kid – beautiful beaches and the history surrounding former President Nelson Mandela being just some of the reasons. Cape Town is as beautiful as people say – miles and miles of white sand beaches wrap the rocky coastline. Families spend vacations splashing in the warm, turquoise-colored water. The food is incredible (try the seafood) and the possibility for activity is pretty much endless.
Cape Town waterfront
But even better than outdoor activities or climbing Table Mountain is the people we met. A personal highlight was our time spent in townships in the Cape Town area. Mocha Club works in several of them – Oceanview being one of the smallest and Khayelitsha being the largest with more than one million residents. Here is an overview of the projects Mocha Club is working on in South Africa…
Mocha Club partners with Learn to Earn – an organization that provides job training to people in townships. Students are trained in everything from sewing to graphic design and are then given jobs in the community. Another organization, Living Hope Community Center, works to stop the spread of AIDS and helps those who already have it. In addition, Mocha Club funds several dozen daycares. This program provides a safe and fun learning environment for kids until they are old enough to attend primary school. Our newest project is an auto mechanic school. Set to open next week, the school will teach township residents to fix cars and earn enough money to survive.
We’ll tell you more about these projects in our next webisode. Let’s be honest: we’re getting tired, so the video will take several days to edit. But know we are working hard to bring you the stories from the Mocha Club Experience in Africa! Talk to you soon.
The Mocha Club Experience: Starting November 1, 2009, Seattle Pacific University recent graduates Daniel “Skiff” Skiffington and Charlie “Char” Beck visit all of Mocha Club’s current projects in 7 countries and take Mocha Club supporters and friends on a three-month virtual adventure to experience real life in Africa. Stay tuned for regular updates!
