Friday - Share

I woke up this morning to the sound of monkeys on the roof, so not only was I woken by Chris snoring during the night I had a early wake up call from this too!  We also found that during the night the monkeys had eaten our rusks, tea bags, sugar and milk! Chris had to chase the monkeys away to get what was left of our tea bag supply. I'm use to mine and AJ dog Charlie eating our food but not monkeys..

Kat shared with us about the background to the community of Share. Lots of people move to South Africa from Mozambique so therefore have no SA ID. They are not able to receive any until their parents die. The challenges that they face are completely different to those at Siyathuthka.

At breakfast Chris asked Cat to pray for us before we went back into the community. Cat spoke briefly to us about a verse from Isaiah chapter 43 vs 16

" For I’m going to do a brand-new thing. See, I have already begun! Don’t you see it? I will make a road through the wilderness of the world for my people to go home, and create rivers for them in the desert!"

Cat reflected that us going into the communities was like a river rushing into a desert. She said that the encouragement that we gave to the Care Workers was so important and it is on that love and encouragement that the communities grow. She then prayed for our second day in Share.

Once we had had our tea and breakfast we set off back to the community. It was about a hours drive from where we were, 90% being in the dusty dirt road.  These roads are very bumpy and rough so by the time we got there we where ready to get off the bus! 

The day started by greeting the Care Givers, it was great to see them again as even though we had only met them the day before it felt like we where saying hello to friends we had know long time.  A couple of us started to prepare the food, cutting cabbage, tomatoes, chicken and beat root.  All of this is cooked over one single open fire, which every time I see what they have prepared it amazes me, I struggle too make a meal at home with the oven and microwave (AJ does the cooking) let alone over a fire..

The others that weren't preparing food carried on repairing the outside shelter which is a basic shelter but with green netting as the roof to create some shade. This had ripped causing it to hang free. So with climbing on chairs, shoulders and stacks of tyres we managed to repair it and create some much needed shade for the kids.

We then went on some Holy Home Visits - we went with our Care Worker Promotion, Mark, Sarah, Vivienne, and Bethwell, one of the Service Centre Team.  The house we visited was about a 15 minute walk away, and along the journey we where greeted by many children coming out of the local school, some goats and couple of cars with people waving. 

We arrived at the GoGo's house. Bethwell had explained to us on the way that the GoGo looked after 3 children. Two of the children's mother and father worked away on farms and visited sometimes and the other childs parents had passed away.   In his words he also explained that she was 'mentally disturbed', so I really didn't know what to expect when we got there but I then found out that Vivienne was a mental health nurse and Mark was a counsellor so I thought that between them two and their skills we would be ok!

We spoke to GoGo with the help of Bethwell, who translated our English to Siswati while Promotion translated it to Tsonga, so how much she understood of what we where saying I don't know but you could see the happiness it bought her with us coming to visit.  We told her about ourselves and asked about her and the grandchildren. We then sang some songs and tried to tell some jokes but the punch lines where lost in the translations.. But we all had a great time getting to know her and  the grandchildren.  One of the grandchildren Precious was shy to begin with and she was sat in the dirt playing with a stick so I went over to her to say hello.  She gave me a look to say who are you? why are you here? I held my hand out and she then squeezed my finger and came over to the rest of the group.  We continued to sit and chat, sing songs and we all had a nice time. It felt like they were all happy that we were there and we weren't intruding on their space. 

When it was time to leave, the vulnerable child came with us to the feeding point. This meant leaving the other two children with the GoGo as these children weren't to be seen as 'vulnerable' children as there parents where still alive.  Precious was sat on my knee and as I stood up to leave with the others she started to cry, I tried to comfort her but what ever I did or said just made her cry more, she clung on tighter and tighter.  The GoGo came over to take her but that made her scream even more,  I had massive feelings of guilt having to leave this child whilst the other came for food. I wondered would she eat tonight? Did she eat yesterday? But then Bethwell came and said if she comes there will be an even more vunerable child that doesn't eat, a child with no mother of father. I still feel guilty, what would you of done?

Blogged by DJ!