106.1 The Goat

Hey everyone!!
I got a call from the radio station in Lloyd a few days ago. They did an interview and it'll be aired Monday morning. I can't tell you what time, so I guess just listen all morning. My apologies for making you listen to Nickelback and Hinder just to hear me, but I'm sure it'll be worth it!!

How YOU can help

Hey everyone,

I just want to THANK YOU ALL from the bottom of my heart. I can't believe the response I got in e-mails after that last posting and the willingness of you all to help in some way. Here are some ways you can help:

1. Check out the website www.handsatwork.org

2. Donate money through Hands at Work website: you can pay with paypal but PLEASE make sure if you do this you e-mail me to let me know you did it and how much, that way I can talk to Craig (the finance guy) to ensure that the money gets transferred to Masoyi HBC

3. Volunteer your time! Hands is ALWAYS ALWAYS looking for volunteers and this route is encouraged moreso than just giving money. So go to the website and find out how you can get on board. We are trying to reach 100, 000 orphans by 2010 and need more hands.

4. If you want to spread the word and obtain promotional items (flyers, brochures, etc) or want to talk to a Hands representative, contact the Hands Canada Office at info@ca.handsatwork.org

5. If your church wants to partner with Hands at Work, contact the Hands Canada Office by e-mailing info@ca.handsatwork.org

You all encourage me!

Heavy on my Heart

My heart is breaking. My heart is breaking.

I just got out of the Masoyi HBC staff meeting. It’s a reporting meeting from all the programs under Masoyi HBC (Forward Education, Young Mums, Food Delivery, Youth, etc.). We report on how each program is running.

Every week, it is a sad report from Food Delivery. I had mentioned in an earlier blog the problem. The funding they used to receive has expired and they are scrambling to feed all the children under their care (approximately 3000)in the six areas within the community. For the next 3 months only, MHBC can only afford to distribute food parcels to 10 houses in each area. ONLY TEN. That means 60 homes total. The purpose of home-based care is just that – home based. There are desperate children traveling to the office to get food. They are pushing their wheel barrows all the way to K2 to obtain food and we are turning them away because we have no food. They come with an empty wheel barrow and they leave with an empty wheel barrow.

They have calculated that it costs approximately R250 to feed a home consisting of 1-2 children for the month. R250 works out to be approximately $33 Canadian.

How can I feel okay about this? How can I feel okay about teaching these children during the day and then sending them off to a foodless home while I’m fantasizing about the chicken and rice dinner that I’m going to prepare. What gives me the right to eat? And it’s not because I’m “following God’s will” for my life that I deserve it. It’s not because God has blessed me that I should dwell in the riches I have. Has God not blessed them? Is God not with them? I don’t believe God has given me all these things so that I may enjoy them, and continue to live above others. God wants for them as he wants for us. And if that means giving half of what I have to my neighbour who has nothing, then that is the purpose of my riches.

The volunteers at MHBC are becoming so desperate that they are talking about paying out of their own pocket. They talk about how starving children is unacceptable. They made promises to the children’s dying parents that they would care for the children. They say they are not holding up to their promises. MHBC does not receive pay. They are volunteers and are willing to pay out of their empty pockets to feed these children.

This, I believe, is unacceptable. It’s time for the church to feed the orphans and vulnerable children. It’s time for the church to step out of their affluent religions and take action.

Forward Education Video

This is a video we made to explain what I do here and what Hands at Work (the organization) does here. The purpose of it is to show to my church, Lakeview, in Saskatoon. We're hoping Lakeview will become a partner church to Hands at Work.

The music at the beginning is the students, Darryl, and me singing before class one day. We always sing before class. This song is my FAVOURITE song to sing here. Elvis is one of my students who is so strongly passionate about the condition of the community and is hoping to become a social worker. Stanley is a student from last year. This guy has the best laugh in the world and invokes laughter in me every time he laughs. He is currently running the very successful Youth Program at Masoyi.




Feel free to share this video with others.

I'll beat you with a brick!!

There's a little saying the kids throw around here. Often they can be heard chasing after one another, saying "I'll beat you with a brick". Violent, yes, I understand that, but still pretty funny. So, one day (a month ago) I decided to adopt this little saying. I would say it to the kids and they would laugh and I would say it again, and they would laugh some more and I would laugh. Then as I was saying it, I'd do the universal Africa "I'll beat you" hand symbol (which is that snapping-of-the-fingers-chew-tin-packing thing. And then they would really laugh. So I'm enjoying myself using this expression.
Until last week.
One of the rules in the classroom is that the students have to speak English.

Khulumani Silungu

And at first when we implemented this rule, I felt a little shaky on it. This being because I understand what happened in residential schools and I understand that language is an important and VITAL part of being and knowing and learning. BUT these students are living in their community and in their homes and speaking their language all the time, so if they want to master English as a functioning language, they need to practice speaking it. Ahem. There's my excuse. I really had to develop this reasoning to feel okay about it.

SO.

The students are always speaking Siswati in the class, so on the board I write:

Khulumani Silungu
(Or I'll beat you with a brick)

And the students thought it was hilarious.

But later on in the day, Sesinyana was joking around asking me why I wanted to steal Patricia's boyfriend. I said I didn't want to. She tells me I've been saying it all day.

Oh yes.

"I'll beat you with a brick" ACTUALLY means "I'm going to steal your boyfriend"

Sort of awkward considering I've been saying it for the last month to kids age 10-20.

On a different note, I've been reading "Into the Wild". I haven't watched the movie and figured the book would probably be better anyway. I was hugely inspired and challenged by this passage of the book:

"So many people live within happy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism al of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

And on ANOTHER note, I've been blown away by this passage in the Bible:

"But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.'
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me." (Isaiah 49:14-16)

I love that imagery
ENGRAVED on the palms of His hands.

Masoyi Home-based Care

I want to spend some time talking about Masoyi Home-based Care. These are people I see everyday. They have the biggest hearts for doing what Jesus did and I am inspired by them daily.

Masoyi Home-Based care is a network of care given to people within the community of Masoyi. HIV/Aids has taken control of this community, this country, and this continent and seeing this devastation, Hands at Work recognized the need to care for the individuals left to die, allowing them to die with dignity. Volunteers within the church identified people in the community that need care and a care-giver was assigned to them. This person visits their patients every week, providing medication, food, prayer, love, and hope. As these patients began to die, children were going to be orphaned and left with no one to care for them. Masoyi HBC promised to take care of these children. So now, not only do volunteers visit homes of sick patients everyday, they also visit the homes of child-headed households, ensuring they are healthy and have the basic needs (food, school uniforms, blankets, etc).

Masoyi is having trouble right now. They were strongly attached to Hands at Work in the beginning, but the goal was for Masoyi HBC to be independent, running on its own strength and its own people. But lately, donors that they depended on to provide money in order to buy food for all the children have stopped giving (due to expired contracts). Now they are left to figure out how to feed thousands of children that are in their care. They budget R20 000 (approximately $2500) a month to feed all these children (although that still isn’t enough). Because the donors have backed out, the incentives Masoyi could provide to its volunteers has been cut off. These are volunteers with families to take care of. They devote their days to caring for the sick and orphaned. Without these incentives (which still aren’t enough to survive off of) they have nothing to provide for their families. Now many volunteers are leaving to find jobs. Where there used to be a team of 12 volunteers for a certain area, there is now 5 or 6. With fewer volunteers, fewer people can receive care. This is saddening. I don’t have a solution. All I know is my heart breaks when I see the exhausted volunteers that are still devoting their time and my heart breaks when I see children that now don’t get food.

Three Days in the Community.

I stayed three days in the community with one of my students, Nokuzola, from June 11-14.

I arrived and Zola was very hospitable. She showed me where I was staying. Honestly, when I first walked in I was quite surprised. The door leads into a kitchen. I’d say a pretty large kitchen – larger than an apartment kitchen and comparable to an average sized cooking area. They had a beautiful wood stove used to cook and heat the house. Her Gogo’s favourite spot (where I saw her about 90% of the time) was on the floor on a homemade mat right beside the wood stove. She would sit there slumped over until she had something random to teach or say. She spoke English alright and would tell me stories about when she cooked for the white people. She was constantly teaching me SiSwati, which was great, because I was eager to learn. At times she would speak to me only in SiSwati but used extravagant hand gestures, which were enough for me to follow most of what she was saying.

After passing through the kichen, straight ahead was a large eating/ resting space and to the right was a long hallway. The space ahead had a couch, a radio, a dining table, a fridge, and a freezer. Not much time was spent in there. Down the hallway were four bedrooms. Zola and I slept in the spare room (which had two beds) and Daphne and Gogo slept in another room. Zola has her own room also.

After getting settled in, Zola cooked supper: chicken, rice, and a bean salad. It was delicious and sparked the questions of if they eat like this all the time or if they just brought out the best for the guest. After supper we sat around in the kitchen for an uncomfortably long time, drank coffee, and then proceeded to be around 8:30.

Preparing for bed is interesting when there is no indoor plumbing. They have water from the tap just outside their house (which is a luxury) and store it in buckets inside. This also means there is no bathtub or toilet. In the middle of the night, I heard Zola get up and pee in a bucket in our room. I tried my best to time my excrements (I didn’t want to have to take a large dump in the middle of the night – OR a medium-sized one for that matter) but on the last night I got to (enjoyably) experience peeing in a bucket in my bedroom.

Now taking a bath was definitely my favourite part! Every morning Zola would grab two basins, create a perfect mixture of hot (boiled on the stove) and cold water and place the basins in our room. We would then proceed to get naked and bathe in our separate basins. I was unsure how to do it at first and without wanting to look foolish, I asked. She was a bit surprised and said “are you serious” but it is in her nature to politely teach. So there I was standing in a small bucket trying to reach all the necessary parts. The bucket was probably ½ a meter in diameter and the water level probably had a height of about 3 inches. But how efficient!! It was quick, efficient water usage, and it left my skin feeling like a baby’s bottom.

In the morning Zola would have my breakfast and coffee ready for me and I’d be off to work for a day. She was always up at 5:30 getting the fire in the stove and feeding, dressing and shipping her 7 year old sister off to school. This is the life of a child-headed household.

I was basically up at 5 every morning too because apparently all the roosters in the community like to sing in unison upon sunrise. At night we go to bed at around 8:30 and fall asleep to the beautiful chorus of dogs.

On the last night, I brought a deck of cards to have a little fun. I taugh Daphne ‘Go Fish’, which seemed like a great idea at first – until she pestered me every second to play until I left the next day. And OH how she cheats! But how do you scold a child when you do not speak the same language and when you are a guest in her house? Well, you shake your finger where you can and pretend mismatched pairs are normal.
The last experience that was enjoyable was doing laundry. I requested we do laundry Saturday morning before I left and so we washed a couple things I had: a bra, a couple of skirts, a couple of t-shirts, and a jersey (sweater). We had 3 basins: the first with soapy water, the second with rinsing water and the third with Stay Soft fabric softener. So we scrub scrub scrubbed the clothes in the first (keep in mind her ratio of clothes done to mine is 3:1) then rinse in the second and then soften in the third. And – yes my arms were dead tired, the muscle falling off and all by the end and yes – my knuckles were bleeding.
An incredible three days!!
The men’s reactions to a Mulungu in the community, although, is another story…