Beauty and the Beast

It is so hard for me to reconcile the jaw-dropping beauty of the Eastern Cape of South Africa with the profound poverty of the people who live there.
I’m in awe of the dramatic, deep green hills and valleys nestled near the Indian Ocean. Cows and horses, sheep and goats roam freely, contentedly eating the green grass. The huge blue sky is as quiet as it is vast. There are no airplanes, no large buildings, only small rondavels and square houses dot the countryside, an occasional pole stringing electricity to a small village. The pace is so slow. We’re on Africa time – a blessing and a curse at once. A blessing because there is always time to stop and strike up a conversation with someone, to practice my Xhosa, to play Simon Says with a child. A curse because progress is painstakingly slow.
While I am living among this beauty, I ache for the children I see at school with holes in their sweaters, barefoot, eating lunch near a trash pile outside of a rusty shack, crooked on its dirt foundation. A thin little girl just stands quietly in the midst of playground chatter, waiting patiently for someone to finish eating so that she can use a bowl. She does not have one at home to bring and the school provides only the food – not the plates or utensils. I watch one girl absently eating her porridge out of a dark blue square plastic container, spooning it to her mouth with a ruler.
One of the four classroom buildings at this particular school is so dilapidated the gutters are broken, so that the adjacent green tank that collects rain water looms impotent and empty. I spy some children without shoes. I remember someone telling me students cannot go to school if they don’t have shoes. I ask Nkosana about this. He tells me that on the first day of school, a child who has none might borrow school shoes from another family. After the first day, no one checks.
At another school, at least a third of the students are not wearing a uniform. Likely they are ostracized for this. Lessons comes to a standstill because the Department of Education is visiting on the first day of February – at least two weeks into the beginning of the new school year – handing out school supplies to each child. They each receive two composition books, a test book, a glue stick, some pencils and a brand new blue ruler. Some struggle to carry the awkward load without backpacks. But I can tell they are excited and proud, yet possessively guarding the handful of school supplies they can call their own. This is their back-to-school shopping spree.
On my first full day in Canzibe, a grandmother and a 14-year-old girl come to visit Nkosana in the office. He is 25:40’s coordinator of Project 1504, the action plan we are implementing with Small Projects Foundation designed to meet the immediate and long-term needs of the 1,504 orphans and vulnerable children in the Ngqeleni District.
The grandmother is dressed in traditional mourning clothes – meaning her husband has died in the last year. The teenage girl is in her school uniform, her gray skirt ripped in the front at the seam. She carries her books in a yellow plastic bag from a local store, the handles broken. These two are barely related. It seems the grandmother’s husband was a cousin to the girl’s father. But right now, that doesn’t matter. The woman in mourning is this teen’s permanent caregiver. The girl’s parents have both died and she has spent most of her life jumping from relative to relative, leaving whenever she wasn’t treated fairly, common for orphans. They have come for help in getting a foster care grant from the government. This small monthly stipend will help the grandmother raise this poor, lost girl.
Nkosana checks their documents – affirming they have proper identification. The Department of Social Services is coming tomorrow for an outreach day, Nkosana tells them. They will set up just outside a local shop and help people apply for the grants they are entitled to but are not yet receiving. Go to them tomorrow, he says.
They leave and it is all I can do not to stop them and sew up the girl’s skirt before she heads off to a day at school.
And typical of Africa time, Friday comes and we get word that the Department of Social Services is not coming after all to this area. Sudden change in plans. It will be rescheduled.
So we wait.

--Amy Zacaroli

Nkosana

Nkosana had been praying for a job. For a few years he had none, but he came from a family of hard-workers and endeavored to find one in the rural, poverty-stricken area of the Eastern Cape in which jobs are scarce and intermittent.
A Christian man he met invited him to celebrate Easter 2008 at Canzibe Mission – a 13-hour drive from his home in the southern part of the country. Nkosana, a sweet-faced, patient Xhosa man of 25, accepted willingly. He stayed for a long weekend and then returned for good in January 2009. He serves as handyman and interpreter for the missionary, who is a native Afrikaner and whose Xhosa is sparse. Nkosana proved himself worthy, loyal, with a deep and caring heart, especially for the children in this area of green, dramatically beautiful hills dotted with rondavels. Nkosana’s first prayer had been answered, but now he wanted more – to be able to help the children, whom he found poor and hungry.
Even though he is not from this area of the Eastern Cape, he quickly immersed himself in the community and the villagers know him, love him, and are beginning to trust him, not an easy task among people who are reticent of outsiders. He plays soccer with the adolescents and takes pre-schoolers to an early morning prayer meeting before school starts.
He has a deep faith that is nurtured through his work with the missionary. He is taking college classes on the Bible, its history and interpretations, so that one day, if he wants to stand up in church and preach, he will have authority and knowledge to do so.
Nkosana’s heart is with the children. He tells this story. One day last June he was in Mthatha, the closest city to Canzibe. A 14-year-old boy named Themba came up to him and asked him for 2 rand. Nkosana noticed his tattered clothes, the holes in his shoes, the angry look on his face. Nkosana asked him, “What will you do with 2 rand?” And Themba said he would buy bread. Nkosana said to him, “I have bread in my backpack. I have an apple. And I have a sweet. I will give them to you. Plus I will give you 10 rand.” The boy was astonished at Nkosana’s generosity. Then Nkosana told him of the hope and promise that is in Jesus Christ. He explained to Themba that if he accepts Christ as his savior, Jesus will protect and provide for him and his family. Jesus will lead him to live in a righteous way – not to steal what is not his, even though he is poor and hungry. Themba seemed to hunger for what Nkosana said.
Then Nkosana asked him, “What will you do with that 10 rand?” a new Themba said, “I will take it home to my family. For we are poor and have no money and this will help my family.”
Nkosana likes to tell this story. He keeps a picture of Themba on his computer and tries to find him when he goes to Mthatha.
In mid-November 2009, 25:40 hired Nkosana to coordinate 25:40’s Project 1504, which has identified 1,504 orphans and vulnerable children in the wider Canzibe area. He will help ensure these children’s needs are being met – such as receiving child support grants from the government; being trained to grow food gardens; having school uniforms and being exempt from school fees; getting health care; and participating in after school care programs, which will provide help with homework, counseling, a safe place to stay after school, and a properly nutritious snack.
He is very well-organized, quite responsible and honest. Plus he has compassion for the children. He showed me a photo of children lining up for soup at a local school and pointed out to me a very small, thin girl in rags and no shoes. “Look,” he told me. “It is very cold. It is raining. The ground is muddy. And she has no shoes.” He just shook his head sadly.
Nkosana prayed for a job, one in which he can help children. 25:40 prayed for someone to help us with this project – to carry out God’s work for children who cannot help themselves. Our God is an awesome God, answering prayers – an ocean apart.
--Amy Zacaroli