Turkey and Johnny Cash

Here in Cape Town I am working with a group of young adult men and women through a group called LifeXchange.  I will speak more on the group at a later stage.  Most of the guys that we work with come from an area called Ocean View.  They come from a wide variety of back grounds; orphans, homeless, gangsters, drug dealers, etc., etc.

So what I have I been doing at LifeXchange.  I have been working on some curriculum for the guys to do as part of their requirements to be in LifeXchange.  These "assignments" serve many different purposes.  First and foremost, they are great topic and discussion starters for the mentors to do with mentees.  Second, it something productive that we can have the guys do when they come into the office.  Thirdly it is exposing them to new thoughts, ideas, and possible job/career possibilities that might otherwise never knew existed.  It based primarily on my experiences in Scouting although we are also working in some spiritual disciplines as well.

Enter Collin, aka Turkey.  I have met turkey before on one occasion, but today I was to pick him and several other guys up and take them to Cobus' (founder of LifeXchange) house to work on some things.  Collin lives in a Wendy house all by himself.  A Wendy house is basically a small to medium sized shed that you would see at Lowe's or Home Depot, just with some windows and a proper door.  Not sure about electricity, but I am 99% sure there is not water.  People with houses will let you put up a Wendy house in their yards and then charge rent for the space and electricity (which I am 99% sure consist of an electric cord running out the door into the Wendy house).  I will confirm my suspicions at a later date and maybe take some photos if I can get Turkey to give me the tour.

When we arrive at Cobus' house he says he wants me to try out some of my assignments with Turkey.  Turkey dropped out of school after grade 7.  His reading is not so good.  I had him look at my list of assignments and he picked 3; video games, photography, and music.  We did photography and music.  It probably took about an hour to do both.  There were only 3 questions or so on each sheet, but we read them together and discussed.  We listened to some music together as part of the home work.  I introduced him to Johnny Cash, which he had never heard of.  He also had to sing a song with more than two verses which his friends and Cobus helped out with.  They sang what I guess you would classify as a gospel song.  I will try to get a copy of the video.  It was great.  Part of the photography homework was to take 10 pictures, which he did and talked about them numerous times on the way home.

I got home and had an email from Cobus.  He said that Turkey was a test and if the assignments can work with him they can work with any of the guys in LifeXchange as he has the lowest grade of school completed and has had pretty extensive drug abuse in the past.

So we will continue to tweak the program, but the trial run seemed to go well.

Shelby