A challenging week

This week so far has been challenging all round for many different reasons....

...the most seemingly insignificant perhaps being that the power steering in the van decided to fail, so my arm muscles have had a real tough time of it - being very weedy to start with. Who knows, by the end of the week I may actually be able to do a full set of monkey bars! (curing a somewhat painful memory from my childhood).

We've also been organising the Sports Saturday coming up this weekend. This involves teams from all the townships we coach coming together at the local country club to play a tournament. The children always love the event so there are always lots of them -they'll be at least 144 children this time round, so the day has to be organised with military precision! I feel one of my key roles in the village has become sport so there seems a lot of responsibility which I'm both apprehensive and excited about. The Dutch girls will be on hand but have never played netball, so the responsibility for setting up and umpiring has been given to me!! Luckily we've now got four girls in the volunteer unit so they'll be a team of us...I was also really excited when rooting through the various bags of kit we have had donated (nearly ALL football - typical!) I found a pile of brand new women's Nike running tops - so there are lovely prizes for the winning girls' team sorted!

This morning Heather and I went out with the Thembacare nurses to do their rounds. They visit their assigned outpatients in the community to check how they are feeling and whether they are up to date with their medication and visits to the doctor/nurse/councillor. If patients miss some of their ARVs, they can fail their course and their bodies will become immune to the medication. There are three types of ARV course available here so you have three chances to get it right or there is no other treatment - checking patients are taking it everyday is therefore critical.









I am full of mixed feelings about the morning, which are hence very difficult to describe. It first and foremost felt quite intrusive, venturing right into the centre of the townships, into people's homes and into their lives. It's this feeling of being an observer that I have been struggling with most here - I have wrestled with whether to take photos or not: keen to have a record of why I am here, what the project does and why its so important that it exists in this community; but also conscious of pointing a lens at what is essentially a struggle against impoverishment

....However, all the people we met seemed quite happy with the intrusion when they saw we were interested in how they were feeling and what the Themba nurses were doing for them. One of the most welcoming patients was Anna - who was busy caring for 4 little babies in her small shack. She was happy to see us and when we left she sent us all off with an apple - and an apple means an awful lot in a home like that.

Anna's home

Anna's daughter and friends

Driving through the townships everyday we see how ramshackle and run down they are, but going into them brings a wholly different revelation - the better have walls lined with wood and floors with nailed down plastic sheeting - which allows people to keep the inside relatively clean. Some have electric lighting, although this involves bare wires hanging down from the ceiling, hooked into the mains wiring outside. Some have furniture, cupboards, pots and pans...But others, one in particular, are dark, dank and about as far away from homely as you can get - the first house we went in had no floor, only the dirt ground, like outside. There wasn't really any furniture, the walls were made of cardboard and everything was very dirty and very smelly. I don't think I can really get across the feelings this evoked in me but I'd say outrage, pity, sadness and also an immense sense of uselessness would go some way.

The experience filled me with a sense of the immensity of the poverty here and thus a sense of the meagre effect my presence here may have on the problems faced. I went away feeling quite deflated and heavy with the weight of what I'd seen. However, on reflection, I think it also reaffirmed why the Village of Hope is such a worthy place to invest my efforts. There is nothing like it in the region of Grabouw and yet the need here goes above and beyond what this project alone can provide. I am just one small part of a larger ongoing cycle of volunteers - and thus, this project provides a (hopefully) sustainable source of support, care and comfort for the people of Grabouw. I hope, however small a part I play here, it is also one that draws on the very best parts of me and adds to the meaningful work being done here in my own individual way.