Week 5

Dear ones,

Sorry for the delay in last week's update, email has been challenging but I am hoping to remedy this soon by getting a cell phone for our organization that will allow volunteers to access internet via our lap top. This week has been a week of work mostly – along with a number of visitors that have come to Nkandla to help with trainings (for the administrators and leading staff at the Center) as well as a visit from ARCK – one of the main funders of our outreach programs (it's a Capetown-based non-profit). One of the points that ARCK emphasized while they were here is the importance of Nkandla finding ways to be self sufficient – meaning their support won't last forever – which reinforced in me my commitment to identifying some way of getting sustainable income generation in place for women who are homebound due to their health or the health of their children.



Which brings me to Sr. Sola – who, as my grandfather would have said, "Invented the God damn thing." She actually started Sizanani Center – which originally served as a place to train people in sewing, animal husbandry, gardening and raising chickens. Over the years, as new opportunities arose and the surrounding environment shifted, this work was not as necessary and/or drawing the same amount of interest – and the need for a children's center and a base for home healthcare and outreach work became the priority. Sr. Sola – one of the founding sisters and now 87 years old – moved her operations to the convent, where she now operates out of a little bungalow next to the garden (there's a sign on the front of the convent that says "Kwa Magogo" – which means "Grandma this way" – so cute! Among other things, she sells basic supplies (pens, sewing material, rosaries etc.) – but also seeds, beads and materials to make crafts which she buys back with money and small food parcels. The main things she has women and men working on are Zulu baskets, Nkandla beaded stars, beaded felt coasters and beaded necklaces and jewelry. The majority of these goods are then given to the Mother Superior who arranges for them to be shipped to Germany and sold. It is a very small operation on the external front – I don't believe they are focusing as much on the selling as they are the buying and providing income.



I've had a few ideas for additional crafts that I think would be easy to transport and have slightly wider marketability on an international scale since I've been here. I am working with Sister Sola to draft a plan for pursuing their development – it includes finding a start-up grant to do training and gather supplies, as well as developing prototypes and exploring the various costs involved – including management, shipping etc. This is really what I came to Nkandla to do, and while I don't think I'll come near to finishing this work while I'm here – I feel like after ARCK's visit I had the real impetus I needed to get it going. So stay tuned!



It's important to have things like this to focus on as this week the reality of the situation here really set in. I have attached something I wrote in response to the first loss I've experienced here. I will warn you, it's heavy – but it's reality. When you first come to a place where death is so constant, so frequent – it catches you by surprise. Then adaptation sets in, and you think, "so this is what it means to be surrounded by death." But you cannot know, you will not know until you experience it – until you trace its course and go from seeing someone so innocent and childlike in front of you one day, and having them gone the next. And even then you will know nothing of the reality of a mother having lost her child (or perhaps more than one), or the loss of one's parents or siblings – the people that make your own life have meaning. How can a community be expected to survive? How can a people be expected to persevere when the fibers that bind them together are breaking, one by one? These thoughts have permeated my week.



In healthcare we speak of the safety net – the system that catches the children whose parents have died or can't provide for them, who are affected by the state of society or the community around them. Here, the safety net needs a safety net. I have just learned that roughly half of our caregivers, all young professionals between the ages of 20 and 35 more or less are HIV+. One is on leave with full blown Aids, his girlfriend still at work each day with a job that takes her to homes where people are dying, whether on treatment or not. And then there are the stories about people who are so impoverished that they'd literally choose to go off life-saving medication, rather than lose the grants they receive when their CD4 counts drop. Sr. Ellen told us of a woman with a child who lost her child support grant due to the child's age, and her grant (because her health had improved) in the same month. It was her entire source of income – what was she to do? She literally had to ask herself if she'd stay on medication and starve, or go off, and face certain death?

I realize that such things may sound strange to us in a country where public assistance isn't so freely given (I'm sure many would beg to differ, of course). But when you're in a community where there are no jobs, or where your health prevents you from working – this assistance is critical. I am still trying to understand how all these factors come together and influence the state of being the community finds itself in – where is the help most needed? What factor, if changed, could set off a chain reaction and improve the situation as a whole?



I know this email is heavy, so I want to end on some positive things – the things that make up my daily life here and have me counting my blessings throughout the day. Among them: Waking in the morning to children's voices and laughter, hearing them down the hall as they take their meals and say their well rehearsed prayer with a loud "Ah-men" at the end, watching them play in the afternoon sun – the older boys kicking around a soccer ball and taking frequent breaks to dog pile each other with laughter and silliness, the younger kids playing with the "barroon" I've blown up for them, a pile of three sitting on the world's smallest skateboard and wheeling crazily down the path, little Nophiwa putting her arms around Sinzhle (who is blind) and helping her to stand up – such moments I know I will revisit in my mind a thousand times once I've left this place.



Tonight as we walked back from dinner it was as if the night had captured the heat of the day and thrown in just the perfect amount of breeze. There was a crystal clear toenail moon to accompany the vast smattering of stars which were our only light. As we turned up the hill towards the Center the Southern Cross hung prominent and in the distance a few flashes of lightning illuminated the horizon to our left.



Then I kicked off the top of one of the day's dung heaps with my flip-flopped foot in the darkness. Such is life in Nkandla!



Much love,



Megan