Richard Hoff: June 11, 2008
Mlumbisi is a section of Queenstown on the Southeast Cape of South Africa. Poverty level among the highest in South Africa (unemployment at 60% plus, most people barely surviving on $1 per day). Some of the homes are made of bricks and compose a ‘shantytown,’ while newcomers and more impoverished people build ‘squatter.homes’ from anything they can find. They may live in their squatter homes – 200 square feet or less – year after year after year.
Another hold-over from the decades of apartheid and human degradation.
Accompanying the Community Health Workers – Lindiwe, Bukelwa, Mathabo, Ntombekaja and Mbuya - Sally Roberts and I find care and compassion on a level not easily found back home. Women who spend 5, 6, or 7 days per week visiting their neighbors who are suffering from HIV/AIDS, TB, skin infections, blindness, hunger, old-age ailments or loneliness.
We find an elderly woman who is caring for 11 orphaned children, all distantly related to her. They range in age from 2 to 17. She does not make ends meet on her small monthly stipend for food, school and care. The children – very cute, very rambunctious - are now destroying the small garden she has cultivated, unwilling to listen to her, waiting for something or someone that never comes. The old woman does not know how much longer she can carry on and fails in her effort to hold back tears. The health workers listen to the old woman and speak with the children.
The community respects these women who have taken courses from Tshwaranang Resource Center, which receives financial and technical support from Hope Africa, which, since its inception 7 years ago, partners very closely with Episcopal Relief and Development. Hope Africa and Episcopal Relief and Development have now expanded these and other programs to many parts of South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola.
The local government health center often refers patients they cannot help to the Health Workers. Patients who have nowhere else to turn find support, advice and encouragement within their communities from these women who understand their situations. Oh, yes: Linda earns $15 per month; the others receive no ‘honorarium’ whatsoever. They are ‘volunteers’ in the true sense of the word.
The next woman we visit has an infected leg wrapped with what is now a dirty bandage. Her husband died of AIDS, she is HIV positive, has no income and her 15 year-old daughter is now pregnant. Our health worker cannot re-bandage the wound because the woman does not have the $1.50 for paraffin to heat the water. She promises to return the next day with the paraffin.
Then there’s the older woman whose husband died four years ago. Her shack is the smallest we will enter. She has no living children, no relatives to go to, no income, and ‘depends on the kindness of neighbors’ to keep her alive. The pain she feels is hunger: She hasn’t eaten in several days. Quietly asking Mathabo if she will give our sandwiches to the woman, she agrees.
Our intercession was momentary; these Health Workers speak with neighbors to assure future assistance and will return at least twice per week to befriend and assist this gracious, proud woman..
This community covers many square blocks and we spend at least 6 hours walking from one home to another this first day. There is constant conversation among the women, and with us. They joke, speak vibrantly and with great animation. There’s a camaraderie Sally and I are able to share in. Sometimes we understand, sometimes not – and we just enjoy it. And enjoy the hilly landscape all around un and the winds that come howling through.
Continuing on another 20 minutes, we are invited into a two-room house – a bedroom and kitchen, 150 square feet. The wallpaper is precisely that: newspaper that has been carefully pasted up, advertising cell phones and toilet paper, bicycles and soaps, from floor to 6-foot ceiling. This is the home of a 52 year-old woman who has recently learned she has AIDS. We meet her and her daughter-in-law who is helping care for her. Several of her children have died from the disease which afflicts 20% of all South Africans (a much higher percentage exists in the 18-45 year old bracket). We see a two-month old baby and are asked to take a photo of 5 of the 15, mostly females, who inhabit this household.
This woman is fortunate, because the local hospital deems her ill enough (less than 200 T-cells) that she is being given retroviral drugs to treat AIDS (these are free – if you can survive the opportunistic infections most people get prior to this point in the disease’s progression). This woman tells the Health Workers that the drugs are making her nauseous and she doesn’t want to take them. At this point, Linda says (in Khoshi, of course), “I was diagnosed with AIDS nine years ago. Look at me – I am healthy and strong. I smile and take care of my family. I took these drugs and they have helped me and they will be good for you. We will help you.”
Another woman adds, “Yes, you feel nausea, and have diarrhea, but you must take the pills. We will help you.”
Up to that point, we hadn’t known who had the disease and who didn’t, but it became clear that too many of these woman - and men - are living with HIV and AIDS, living with poverty, and still smiling and helping one another. It’s a spirit that will long outlive any individual, it’s a spirit that is the future of South Africa.
It they can have hope and laugh and continue their struggle, can we not take a moment to help them do this – through prayer, through activism, letter-writing, advocating and donating?
Mlumbisi is a section of Queenstown on the Southeast Cape of South Africa. Poverty level among the highest in South Africa (unemployment at 60% plus, most people barely surviving on $1 per day). Some of the homes are made of bricks and compose a ‘shantytown,’ while newcomers and more impoverished people build ‘squatter.homes’ from anything they can find. They may live in their squatter homes – 200 square feet or less – year after year after year.
Another hold-over from the decades of apartheid and human degradation.
Accompanying the Community Health Workers – Lindiwe, Bukelwa, Mathabo, Ntombekaja and Mbuya - Sally Roberts and I find care and compassion on a level not easily found back home. Women who spend 5, 6, or 7 days per week visiting their neighbors who are suffering from HIV/AIDS, TB, skin infections, blindness, hunger, old-age ailments or loneliness.
We find an elderly woman who is caring for 11 orphaned children, all distantly related to her. They range in age from 2 to 17. She does not make ends meet on her small monthly stipend for food, school and care. The children – very cute, very rambunctious - are now destroying the small garden she has cultivated, unwilling to listen to her, waiting for something or someone that never comes. The old woman does not know how much longer she can carry on and fails in her effort to hold back tears. The health workers listen to the old woman and speak with the children.
The community respects these women who have taken courses from Tshwaranang Resource Center, which receives financial and technical support from Hope Africa, which, since its inception 7 years ago, partners very closely with Episcopal Relief and Development. Hope Africa and Episcopal Relief and Development have now expanded these and other programs to many parts of South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola.
The local government health center often refers patients they cannot help to the Health Workers. Patients who have nowhere else to turn find support, advice and encouragement within their communities from these women who understand their situations. Oh, yes: Linda earns $15 per month; the others receive no ‘honorarium’ whatsoever. They are ‘volunteers’ in the true sense of the word.
The next woman we visit has an infected leg wrapped with what is now a dirty bandage. Her husband died of AIDS, she is HIV positive, has no income and her 15 year-old daughter is now pregnant. Our health worker cannot re-bandage the wound because the woman does not have the $1.50 for paraffin to heat the water. She promises to return the next day with the paraffin.
Then there’s the older woman whose husband died four years ago. Her shack is the smallest we will enter. She has no living children, no relatives to go to, no income, and ‘depends on the kindness of neighbors’ to keep her alive. The pain she feels is hunger: She hasn’t eaten in several days. Quietly asking Mathabo if she will give our sandwiches to the woman, she agrees.
Our intercession was momentary; these Health Workers speak with neighbors to assure future assistance and will return at least twice per week to befriend and assist this gracious, proud woman..
This community covers many square blocks and we spend at least 6 hours walking from one home to another this first day. There is constant conversation among the women, and with us. They joke, speak vibrantly and with great animation. There’s a camaraderie Sally and I are able to share in. Sometimes we understand, sometimes not – and we just enjoy it. And enjoy the hilly landscape all around un and the winds that come howling through.
Continuing on another 20 minutes, we are invited into a two-room house – a bedroom and kitchen, 150 square feet. The wallpaper is precisely that: newspaper that has been carefully pasted up, advertising cell phones and toilet paper, bicycles and soaps, from floor to 6-foot ceiling. This is the home of a 52 year-old woman who has recently learned she has AIDS. We meet her and her daughter-in-law who is helping care for her. Several of her children have died from the disease which afflicts 20% of all South Africans (a much higher percentage exists in the 18-45 year old bracket). We see a two-month old baby and are asked to take a photo of 5 of the 15, mostly females, who inhabit this household.
This woman is fortunate, because the local hospital deems her ill enough (less than 200 T-cells) that she is being given retroviral drugs to treat AIDS (these are free – if you can survive the opportunistic infections most people get prior to this point in the disease’s progression). This woman tells the Health Workers that the drugs are making her nauseous and she doesn’t want to take them. At this point, Linda says (in Khoshi, of course), “I was diagnosed with AIDS nine years ago. Look at me – I am healthy and strong. I smile and take care of my family. I took these drugs and they have helped me and they will be good for you. We will help you.”
Another woman adds, “Yes, you feel nausea, and have diarrhea, but you must take the pills. We will help you.”
Up to that point, we hadn’t known who had the disease and who didn’t, but it became clear that too many of these woman - and men - are living with HIV and AIDS, living with poverty, and still smiling and helping one another. It’s a spirit that will long outlive any individual, it’s a spirit that is the future of South Africa.
It they can have hope and laugh and continue their struggle, can we not take a moment to help them do this – through prayer, through activism, letter-writing, advocating and donating?
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