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Published: October 27th 2009
This was a very busy week following the fun day. I was very fortunate to be given the task of distributing the masses of food wherever it was needed. So, on Monday, Gugu and I sorted out what the Family Centre could use in the meals for the week, then we made food parcels for all the families looked after by the centre. Then I took enough food to the hospice for all the families they look after there, including all the home based care patients. On Tuesday, I sorted out lots of food & dropped it off at another feeding program in the township. I had to take Linda's bakkie (pick-up) to fit it all in & I even reversed through a tiny little gate without even crashing! You would all have been so proud of me & no more would ever be said about the church wall! Then, on Wednesday, with the food left over, I decided we must help the families on the waiting list for the Family Centre. Unfortunately, there isn’t the funding to help all the families that need help, which means that some people go on trying to survive in crippling poverty. It was these families that were really on my heart this week after an emotional visit to a family who at the moment aren’t receiving any help. There are currently 10 people living in a tiny 2 roomed house. The only person working is the mother, who brings home R150 per week (about £13), with which to feed all her children and grandchildren. The major problem with this family is that only the mother has an ID. Even though she has 4 children in their 20’s, none of them can find work because they don’t have IDs and they can’t get IDs because they can’t afford the R13 each to get a taxi to Howick. When you hear stories like this, you just want to give them the R130 they need to pay for the transport, but I’m learning that there are systems in place to help these people and I must stick to these systems. I think I’m just afraid that sometimes people fall through the cracks. So, it was because of this family, that I felt truly blessed to be able to make up food parcels and take them out to these families, who so desperately need help.
One particular family lived right out in the rural areas over the hills. Auntie Ellen, one of the child care workers told me I couldn’t go because Patsy wouldn’t be able to go on the roads. I told her this was rubbish, Patsy is a trooper, as Lindela says, she is a faithful car. Actually it was quite some time before I realized he was saying faithful, not fateful, what with the African accent! So I ended up having to take Auntie Ellen to guide us and Nhlaka, another child care worker as a translator. We set off, and I could see why Auntie Ellen had her doubts, there was more pothole than road, and huge rocks on the un-potholey part! I felt very sorry for the others who didn’t have a steering wheel to hold on to! We drove up over the hills and back down the other side, where I had never been before. Once in the valley, Auntie Ellen said we must leave the car there and walk the rest of the way. Nhlaka told me to lock the car, the first time I had done so as the lock didn’t work until Gareth fixed it a couple of weeks ago, but even then I was too afraid to lock it in case I couldn’t open it again! I thought it was probably wise though as this was our first visit, so we still had a car full of food and I didn’t want it to get stolen. We walked halfway up the next hill until we came to a track, which we walked along, carrying the bags of food. At one point, Nhlaka turned round to ask if I had seen the rat, luckily I hadn’t but continued along the path squinting so I couldn’t see anything but the path directly in front of me. I think if I had seen it I would have freaked out and tried to run away, although you couldn’t really move off the path with all the prickly plants. The bag I was carrying kept snagging on them and I was hoping it wasn’t too much further as the holes were getting bigger and bigger and I didn’t fancy chasing tomatoes! On the opposite side of the valley, we could see lots of school children running down the hill. School had just finished on the other side so all the kids were on their long trek home. Nhlaka said some children even go to school in Mpophomeni and have to walk there and back everyday, which is a good few miles through the hills on terrible paths. We eventually arrived at the house and stood at the gate for ages, calling the shy kids over who were in the yard. After quite some time standing there rather puzzled, I asked what the problem was as usually, you just say “knock knock”, in Zulu obviously, and walk in to someone’s house, whether you know them or not, yet here we were waiting at the gate. It amuses my actually because the word for knock is “ngqo” which is pronounced similar to the noise a chicken makes. If you walked into a strangers house in England, clucking like a chicken, you’d probably be sent off to the funny farm! Anyway, Nhlaka said we were waiting for the kids to move the dogs. I had completely forgotten Nhlaka is terrified of dogs, and it turns out Auntie Ellen is too! In fact, quite a lot of people are petrified of dogs, which makes me wonder how they manage to leave the house as the township has swarms of dogs just roaming the streets! We eventually went in to find a dark room with an old Gogo (Grandmother) sitting on a piece of sack on the floor, shielding her face. This little old lady is Francina, an incredibly inspiring 73 year old lady whose daughters have all died, leaving her to look after their children. Francina is what Ethembeni is all about. The hospice has been helping her for some time, she is now going blind and is extremely sensitive to light. She has a ridiculously hard life, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere with all these children to support, yet she is quite possibly the most thankful person I have ever met. I don’t speak much Zulu, but in the short time we were there, I heard her say “siyabonga”, meaning “we thank you” dozens of times. Ellen and Nhlaka told her I was there and she asked if I had a camera and would I like to take a picture of her. I feel quite strongly about not asking to take pictures of the people and homes I visit, because these are real lives, real people, and I don’t want them to think I’m only there for a sob story, another visitor from overseas wanting to pity them. I want to treat people with dignity and respect, to build relationships with them, but I think Francina knew what it would mean to me to take a picture, to always be reminded of her. I had heard so many stories about her, about how special she was, and meeting her I really could see what all the fuss was about. She is so gentle, so humble and so grateful, despite the awful circumstances she is in. I wish everyone could meet Francina, my visit was certainly inspiring, challenging and humbling. I wish I could find the words to do her justice. As I took the picture, she and I both winced at the flash in such a dark room, but she thanked me again anyway, with such joy on her face. I wish we could all take delight in such a simple thing as a couple of bags of vegetables, sometimes I think the more we fill our life up with junk, the harder we find it to be truly happy.
We left Francina, all with huge grins on our faces and I did the rat-squint all the way back to the car. Ellen and Nhlaka were walking so slowly due to the tremendous heat, but I felt as light as a feather and ran all the way back down the hill to the car, wondering what kind of magic this woman had to make me feel so joyful about her situation. I think it’s because she sees God’s blessings in her life so much more clearly than I can. So, a lot of the time I feel miserable about the way people are forced to live out here and the suffering they go through, but in actual fact it makes them grateful for every good thing in their lives. How much do I take for granted? We drove back to Mpophomeni to drop the other food parcels off at different homes, and then exhausted, made our way back to Family Centre.
On Thursday, now that the food was all gone, I got chance to sort out the Play Therapy room. Zwe used to sleep in a tiny little room at the back of the centre, but it had been used as a vegetable sorting room all week as Zwe had moved out. I realised that it was too small to use as a teaching room, but would be well suited to being a store room. So, I began the huge task of moving all the stuff currently dumped in the play therapy room into the new store room, including the massive tent used by church & all their sound system etc. It took ages. Thursday is also the busiest day at the Family Centre, when most of the meetings and chats between child care workers and kids take place. This meant that with the play therapy room out of action, they had to use the ECD room. Unfortunately, the new store room goes off the ECD room! So moving all the stuff through took much longer because I had to keep waiting for meetings to finish! Eventually though, I did finish the job and left the centre knowing I had done a hard days work, with the play therapy room now completely empty and all swept out! Hopefully it will stay this way until we can come up with a way to raise the money to kit it out properly, with all the right equipment needed.
On Friday, I had arranged with Linda that I would pop to Maritzburg to pick up plastic bags for the weekly food parcels. I didn’t mind doing this, it’s not too far to Maritzburg from home, about 25 minutes, so I thought I could quickly pop there then go straight to work after. However, the cash & carry I had to go to is owned by Muslims and it turns out I got there just when it shut for midday prayers at about 11:45am. I was told to go away for 2 hours then come back. Well, it takes about 45 minutes to get back to Mpophomeni, and I didn’t have much fuel left in my car, so that wasn’t really an option, plus it was baking hot, so, extremely frustrated, I went to the only other place in know in Maritzburg, the Mall. I chilled out, literally, eating an ice-cream from Mozarts. Yes, I am only saying that just to make the rest of the Transform team jealous ☺ Then I went back to the cash & carry, which by now was heaving with people also in a rush, so were like a tin of living sardines! I picked up the packets and a few other teaching resources and drove back to the Family Centre, arriving at about 3:30, to find Gugu panicking because the food parcels weren’t ready yet and the day was almost over! Well, a team of us did a fireman’s chain and got all of them sorted pretty quickly, averting a major disaster!
Saturday was a very cool day. In the morning there was a workshop at the family centre for all the local volunteers who help with the hospice’s home based care teams on a Thursday. These volunteers are all white and come from Howick Commuity Church. I was glad they were there because they showed me another side of apartheid, often I only see the effect it’s had on black people, but on Saturday, I saw a different point of view. The workshop was run by an American couple, Adam and Chrissie, who have lived in South Africa with their 2 children for 3 years, before that, they lived in China and before that, in Nicaragua. It was based on what they have learnt living and working with people below the poverty line all around the world. I had met them once before at the Family Centre, and I was intrigued to learn about their experiences and observations of different areas around the world. They are quite a remarkable couple in that they live very, very simple lives, Chrissie spoke about how, when they were living in Nicaragua, she had so few clothes that the locals started giving her theirs! I found the workshop fascinating, it really made me think about my role out here. The main thing that I got from it was the idea that different classes have different “hidden rules” on certain things. So for instance, if we broke it down to the poverty class, middle class and upper class, their general ideas on time, for example, would all be different. People in poverty think that the present is most important, their decisions are based on how they feel in that moment, or on what they need to do to survive right there and then. For the middle class, the future is most important, and decisions are made based on the effect they will have on the future. For the upper class, the past is the most important, with history and traditions playing a big part in the decisions they make. I learnt a lot about the reason why I react differently in situations to my friends living in poverty. They also spoke about the difference between finding yourself living in poverty following a set of circumstances, for instance, losing your job and not being able to find another one; and being born into poverty. So if you are born into poverty, you would have a completely different mindset, like you probably would never save money, because that is not what people living in poverty do, if they have money, they spend it. You probably wouldn’t be looking for a way out of poverty, you’d be resigned to the fact that this is your life and you can’t change it. It would be all you knew. Whereas, if you weren’t born into poverty, but found yourself there, you would be able to draw on some of the middle class hidden rules you know, like how to behave at a job interview for example. You would have hope, you would believe you could still be someone, that there is a different way of life. The workshop showed me that while people living in poverty are often lacking in the resources I think they need, like money, they have a whole separate set of resources, a set of skills that I don’t have. Like, they know where to find free food, how to protect themselves, how to clothe themselves with very little money. Over the last few weeks I have really been struggling with the issue that I am a white English girl. On the one hand, I fit in very well here, I love all the singing and dancing, the bright colours, all the joking around etc and people often comment on how “Zulu” I am, yet on the other hand, I don’t fit in at all, because I wasn’t born here and I haven’t grown up in poverty. I have been asking God why I was born where I was, there was clearly a purpose to it. On Saturday, I learnt that the hidden rules I have adopted because I was born in England, had a good education, a respectable family and enough food on the table etc can really be used to help the people out here who don’t naturally know how to do a lot of the things I take for granted, like being able to fill in an application form etc. I spent the afternoon at Zwe’s house, mulling all this over whilst trying to listen to his conversation with his mum. She doesn’t speak any English at all, which is kind of good for me as it pushes me to speak Zulu and I learn a lot from listening to her too. I was very proud of myself one day for telling her there was a goat in the yard!
Church on Sunday was very hard. I awoke in the morning angry at England, and on the drive to church was still angry because of the catastrophic effect we had on 2 countries I love - we took the land of the Aborigines and stole their children and didn’t treat the Zulus any better. I often wonder how God can let such bad things happen in places like this, that so many people are starving and dying of treatable diseases. I know we live in a broken, fallen world and that is why there is suffering. I just don’t get why there seem to be areas that go through much more pain and suffering than others. So, as I arrived at church, foolishly, I was questioning God about what exactly He is doing here. Right at the start, the Pastor asked us who had something to be grateful for, and 3 people got up to say they had been healed this week, 2 got up to say their mothers had passed away during the week, putting an end to their suffering, one girl had got a bursary through so she can continue with her education, and on it went. I realised that God IS here, that he is working in a remarkable way, that this is where all the action is! Mbu, who had been sick, got up to tell us that God can use anything for his glory - the Pastor had sent him a text during the week, declaring that he be healed in Jesus’ name - and he was! I realised again how foolish I am, that God is working here, otherwise what am I doing out here? An extended holiday? I think not! Shelly often says that God’s heart is for the poor, that He is so on their side - Luke tells us the poor are blessed, because the Kingdom of God is theirs - to be honest, it kind of makes me want to sell everything and join them! (Don't panic mother!)
Still, I left the service sadder than I arrived as Dolly, the Pastor’s wife, who was another one of the people healed that week, felt called to lay her hands on the sick. When she asked those needing healing to go to the front, I was one of the few left sitting. It was a stark reminder that sickness is still all around me, that these people are still living in constant pain. She spent about an hour praying for these people and there were quite a few more healings, which was fantastic. But I still felt that the real issue was not solved. Zwe left the service early to attend the 2nd funeral in 3 weeks of another cousin. 2 children from 1 family. I asked him what they died of and he just said they were sick, he didn’t know what they were sick with. The people who went up for prayer were asking for healing from colds and other minor ailments. I know that for many of those people, the root cause will be HIV but they won’t ask for healing for that. So my prayer is that people will no longer be ashamed, that this world, broken beyond description, will be restored by the great Restorer.
Pastor Elliot preached about dreams. We read about Joseph’s dreams and he spoke of Martin Luther King Jnr, then went on to tell us what his dream for the church is. Those of you who know Elliot will know he did it just as passionately as Martin Luther King Jnr. He told us that his dream is that one day all the people sitting in that tent would trust God completely, to see through the pain, the hunger and the need, to see how blessed they are. That Matthew 6:33 would be a reality for them. His dream is that they would walk with their heads held high, knowing that their Redeemer lives, I sat at the back, weeping, because that is my dream too. I dream of true equality, where those people know they are just as special, as important, as beautiful and as loved as any white person. I can't wait for the day when they realise the potential that is within them, that the God of the impossible is working through them!
So this week has been an emotional rollercoaster, it’s been challenging, painful even, but I think also the most rewarding. I’ve learnt a lot about poverty, AIDS and apartheid. I’ve learnt that I know very little. There’s been a lot of thinking, some productive and some foolish thoughts! I may have less answers than last week and definitely a lot more questions, but I KNOW God has a solution, and I’m privileged to be a part of it, to be allowed to do His work here.
Over n out
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Debi Williams
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Thanks for the weep
Claire, how special you are. I am so happy that you are having such an amazing experience. Isn't it wonderful to see God at work and glorified in ways that you had never considered? Keep "finkin'. Wishing I was there too. xx