A Place of Hope

Yesterday I was at Ethembeni, a care center for those who are HIV+. It is located in the township called Mpophomeni, about a 25 minute drive from PMB, which is quite overcrowded and very poor. Ethembeni has four hospice beds for those dying with AIDs and yesterday three out of the four beds were occupied. Ethembeni also has about 70 patients that live throughout Mpophomeni and the surrounding suburbs that they follow up with every two weeks. They have volunteers that do home visits and that drop off a bag of mealie meal (maize), a roll of toilet paper, and a full plastic bags worth of food. I am unsure if they drop off food every two weeks or if it is only once a month. But nonetheless, I cannot imagine the food would last a week when these patients have to feed their children and family as well. My professor told me that the majority of people that live in Mpophomeni do not have jobs. The live off the land and whatever pension they can get from the government each month. There is also this thing called "Ubuntu" among the Zulus -basically meaning "community" and that you care for those among you no matter what. If you have a job, you care for your mother, father, sisters, brothers, cousins, and in-laws, and whoever else that have no income. I think that our independent-driven America could learn a thing or two from these Zulus. Here I am in Mpophomeni:

Despite the overcrowding, the backdrop of Mpophomeni is breathtaking -blue skies, rolling green hills:

Mpophomeni reminded me of my time in Ghana a lot. Since my arrival in South Africa I have mainly seen the first world. But Mpophomeni is very third world and really made me feel as if I was in Africa. I guess it is just something about seeing how and where people really live. Mpophomeni had chickens, goats, and cows awanderin' about just like in Ghana. There were people walking without shoes, women carrying colorful umbrellas to shade them from the sun, and children cutting across dirt trails through fields to get to school. Houses were made out of mud and warped wood with tin or straw roofs. But God's beauty surrounded Mpophomeni -blue skies, white puffy clouds, wildflowers, and the most wonderful breeze.


At Ethembeni I was assigned to join some of the volunteers and help deliver food to patients who lived in a very rural area way past Mpophomeni, way up in the hills. So I helped hitch on the small trailer onto the back of a small pick up truck. I packed in the bags of food, mealie meal, and toilet paper and closed the lid shut with short metal wire. We then put in a thin dirty mattress on the bed of the truck which I assumed we would deliver to someone as well. But I soon realized, we were sitting in the bed of the truck and the mattress was our cushion! Haha, so I crawled into the bed... and eight others followed me! If only you could have seen it, we were seriously squished and on top of each other -totally nuts, but I loved it! Here is a picture of two of the volunteers that I worked with on our nice cushion:

We drove out of Mpophomeni and onto the dirt roads. We probably drove for about 30 minutes and it was seriously the bumpiest ride I've ever been on -our driver had no fear and we went over some giant potholes. Thank goodness for the cool breeze blowing through:


We delivered food to four different families. Most of what was said was in Zulu. I tried not to ask them to translate much because in the moment it never seemed okay to interrupt. It would take forever to tell you about each visit but one I would like to share. She was 26 years old and HIV+ since 2010. She said she was nine months pregnant but looked to be about seven, I am not sure if that is due to her small stature or her overall lack of nutrition. It was her first pregnancy. She called herself "lucky" because it is unheard of for a Zulu woman to have her firstborn at 26 years old, most have three or four by then. She thought it was "funny" that I did not have a child myself but then called me "lucky" too :) She lived in a four room mud and wood house -kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms. Eight others lived with her. We sat on maroon couches that sank to the floor and a floppity-bajillion flies joined us. She shared with us that she had just been to the doctor last week and was diagnosed with preeclampsia. She was worried about her baby and the delivery. She was feeling the side effects of her ARV medications and it was causing her to worry as well. She was nervous about becoming a mother but excited as well. She did not talk about the father of the baby and I did not ask. I asked if I could pray for her. And so together we prayed with chickens walking through the living room and with the breeze flying in from the lace covered windows.

I so wish you all could be here with me. Words and pictures are nothing compared to experiencing it first hand. These moments, sitting and talking with these "untouchable" HIV+ people, are the most moving and surreal and sad and beautiful and humbling moments ever. I am so blessed to be here -still need to pinch myself.

After we visited the homes we drove to a shady spot and had our "tea and eats." South African take tea time seriously -it's no joke, the totally stop whatever they are doing to drink and eat and chit chat. It's so fun! After tea, they drove me back down to Mpophomeni because they needed to travel even further into the hills and I needed to be back in time for my pickup to go back to campus.

So they dropped me off at the Ethembeni "community" center which is basically a daycare center for orphaned and vulnerable children. So for about two hours I was able to hang out and play with some adorable children. I love that children are children all across the world -language barriers are no problem, you can still have fun and play together with them. Here is my favorite little girl Akhona who is 3 years old and only 11kg. She has a very bad home situation and is not properly cared for. She entered Ethembeni last year and was not even able to walk on her own. She is so precious and I hope that I can see her again at clinical tomorrow.

Today we had Michael Cassidy, the founder of African Enterprise (AE) come and speak to us in our History of South Africa class. He told the chilling story of his role behind the scenes with South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. Those elections should have ended in a total bloodbath and a furious civil war. But Cassidy along with other Christian leaders were able to convince some of South Africa's biggest political leaders to come together at AE with their rivals for weekend dialogues. Understanding slowly took place between rivals over trips through game reserves. A twenty-four/seven hour chain of prayer was started. It's a long story that involves a plane with a faulty dial, a prayer meeting with 30,000 people, a Kenyan diplomat, and many Christian leaders coming together. In short, the newspapers got it right, the election that took place on April 26th, 1994 was a "miracle." The Almighty God intervened on that day and Michael Cassidy was an integral part of God's plan for South Africa. I seriously got goosebumps when he told us the story. After he shared I was able to meet him and buy his book which goes into further detail of all that happened with the 1994 miracle -I am so looking forward to reading it.