Invisible tragedies

Yesterday we got back to sports club to my great relief - after being here so long and becoming so involved in the everyday sports I feel a sense of uneasiness when we have a break from it. I feel too far seperated from the children and the community there, after being a weekly presence in their lives. I feel that constancy is important for them - that day when they can let themselves go in a game of sport and feel that we are there, taking an interest in them, giving them that personal contact and interaction. When we're back at the village were close enough to the townships to hear the noises of people out and about but you can feel a million miles apart when safely enclosed within the gates and wire fencing.

As we all gathered together at the end of the session we prayed for a young boy in the group who's shack had burnt down a week ago. We said our thankyous that another shack had been rebuilt so quickly and prayed for his family. We only found out later, when we talked to him, how ferocious the fire was, and that it happened when his brother was at home, killing him. If we hadn't had thought to ask, we never would have known - he wouldn't have said anything.

We ended up driving into town and buying him some school clothes, as without books, pens and uniform, he hadn’t been able to attend school; a small token for a family who has nothing left. The mother took us up to show us the fire site and there really was nothing left - just the blackened framework of the house, burnt books and belongings strewn over the ground. Their new shack was one small room with two broken wire bed frames (salvaged from the fire), one mattress, a chest of drawers, and nothing else - the young boy only managed to save his shoes from the fire, which his mother was now wearing as we talked to her. She didn't understand much English but a relative translated and the hug she gave us told more of her appreciation than she could probably could have explained – although it felt silly in a way – presenting a bag of school uniform to her, as we stood in a bare room, without fire, cooking pots, food, bedding or anything essential, with her 5 other small children crowded around the doorway, peering in.

Fires like this are too numerous to name and it is this ‘normality’ that is the hardest thing to come to terms with- just like the ‘normality’ of living with HIV or the ‘normality’ of struggling every day without the money to feed your family. It's as if people here have become hardened to tragedy and suffering, purely because they have to be and because, in this strange divided reality, they believe it is somehow their ‘lot’ – an unquestioning stoicism out of necessity. I think it was this realisation, brought home by being so close to an individual trauma, that made me feel whatever we do as a project – there will always be that disadvantaged group who will go unnoticed because their lives are sidelined and hidden from the rest of the world. I still feel heartbroken by what I saw and confused about how to process it - we stood side by side with a woman, on the charred remains of her and her family’s life and then we drove away, to safety and comfort, leaving it all behind – how do I reconcile that in my mind?

All I can think of, to try and counter a deep sense of injustice and helplessness that is growing in my mind, is that by being here, at least there are people in a position to reach out and touch those lives that otherwise go unnoticed. At least we were there to ask about what happened,  at least we were there to go and see his mother and tell her how sorry we are, and at least we could make that gift of a uniform, however small, to allow him to carry on going to school. At least that’s something.