Day 4 - Tuesday 17th July - Ladies prayer, Mafambisa and Holy Home Visits

The day started with Women’s prayer at 8:00am. We started by explaining how we felt through different types of weather, for example many of the women felt “sunny with slight clouds” as in they were happy but had a few niggling problems. We then went on to praise and prayer; personal thanks and group prayer for communities and people in and around the work that Hands does.

We joined with the men for our orientation with Kristi who is our host here at Hands along with her husband Daytona. She talked us through Holy Home Visits which we would be experiencing later today. Holy Home Visits give the Care Workers the opportunity to look behind the curtain on some of the Young people’s lives to understand their vulnerabilities and how they can be supported further.

Kristi then joined us on our trip out to Mafambisa. We arrived earlier than we did yesterday and got stuck into prepping for the children’s dinner; Pap, Potato stew and Cabbage. A local kindly unknowingly provided a dropped beat soundtrack which provided the opportunity for the care workers to relax a little and dance with us as we chopped, peeled, grated and stirred.

After lunch had been prepped ready for the car workers to cook up, we prayed with the team before separating into two teams to embark on our Holy Home Visits. We visited two homes between us, both a fair walk from the centre. 

The first was a Gogo - Granny, we’ll call her Emily, she is the care giver in her home, with the young people all being her grandchildren... nine in total, a further six live just down the road. The house is a room, no bigger than a garage, with a large bed, fridge, freezer and some shelving within it. This is where all the family sleeps at night. Emily talked to us about some of her health problems that have kept her in bed these past days, and we discussed the garden where she grows vegetables to supplement the maize she uses to feed the family. Due to poor construction, the fence around the property doesn’t keep the cows from eating her crops. One thing that struck us about Emily was that she didn’t complain about her lot, she provides how she can for her family without complaint and welcomes the interest, support, love and company she receives from the people who visit her. What made the visit extra special was that we had bonded well with two of her grandchildren the day before and so it was great to be able to have a further insight into their stories.

The second one was a family of six, a grandmother, her daughter and her three sons and one daughter. Their home as well was the size of a garage however they were gifted with enough wood to build a second identical size shed by a neighbour. This building was build completely by the grandmother, who also dug a trench to stop a stream from forming in the middle of their plot of land by herself too. The building, however, was not suitable for anyone to sleep in, therefore all six of the family had to sleep in only the other room. They also had a garden where they grow bananas, sweet potatoes, potatoes and beans. Unfortunately, cows are able to break through their fence and eat the crops that they grow, because of this, the grandmother is in the process of fixing and improving the fence. Hands is also planning on building this family a new, bigger and stronger home as their house at the moment isn’t anywhere near big enough to shelter this family.

When the day was over and we’d eaten a lovely meal of chicken curry, we went up to Kristi’s house for a debrief and cake. During the debrief, Kristi introduced us to an activity where we had to pick out different body parts, for example, eyes and ears, to describe things we had experienced today. Different body parts represented different experiences, like eyes represented something that we had seen today and ears represented what we had heard. Each of us gave two different body parts which consisted of experiences like watching young children encouraging others to approach us and also how we noticed that the role of an adult male figure is almost non-existent for the majority of the children which was something we were disheartened by.