A Ball with No Air

Aug. 15, 2011
In May, the Canzibe Mission took the initiative to launch with us an after school care program for orphans and vulnerable children who attend school nearby. 25:40 funds the program and has helped developed the model for the curriculum. It got off to a rocky start. Phila, 25:40’s OVC program manager in Canzibe, had gone to the two schools to inform the principals and teachers and invited the children and their caregivers to opening day on May 19. Canzibe Missionaries Wikus and Carina van der Walt had prepared a program with the teachers, Tumeka and Nolubabalo. The cook prepared lunch.
Nobody came.
But they pressed on and Phila visited the schools again the next day and miraculously the following week 40 children showed up. It has been busy ever since.
Tumeka is one of the teachers we hired. I met her in April and she seemed quiet yet compassionate for children. She had a rocky start, as well. The first few weeks of aftercare it rained and it was cold. The aftercare was meeting in the vestry of the church, which has no heat. In fact none of the buildings here have heat. When the sun is warm, the houses and classrooms are warm. But when it is cloudy, rainy, windy, the structures also take in the cold.
The children came to aftercare despite the rain and cold. Most of the time in the Eastern Cape if it is raining or too cold, nobody comes out of their homes. Most kids stay home from school because they know their teachers won’t show up. Life here is so close to the earth that the rain stops routine dead in its tracks. Yet the children kept coming to aftercare. They felt that this is something different, something good and promising in their lives without parents, a warm house, enough food.
Here on the mission, aftercare is something good and promising. The teachers love the children, they nurture them, they help them, they show respect and kindness and God’s love.
Yet the kids were slow to open up. Tumeka says that children in aftercare were like a ball without air, empty on the inside, unable to bounce, sitting down without help. Many children could not write the alphabet. Many did not participate in the games.
“Some were not interested in anything and my heart was falling apart when I noticed this,” Tumeka told me. One day a boy’s book fell out of the plastic bag he uses as a backpack and Tumeka helped him put it back in. She struck up a conversation about who he lives with. He just mentioned children and when Tumeka asked him about his mother or father, he just said no. “My heart was bitter knowing that the parents are not alive. Then I cried on my own wondering how is the situation at home. This child looks sad most of the time.”
Tumeka went through a serious bout of depression after this, but after much rest and prayers, she heard God calling her to stay and to help these children. The program picked up a bit when visitors came to help and train the teachers and children. Then Jay Rowley arrived in early July on behalf of 25:40 to help the program. He has done a great job organizing the teachers and putting in place a schedule for the teachers follow each day, with time for homework help, Bible lesson, tutoring in math and writing, play time, and a meal. He and Phila established a master attendance list and a system that politely turns away the students not on the registry. Word on the street and in the schools is that this is a good and fun place to come and all the kids want to attend. But because we have limited space and teachers, and because this is a pilot program 25:40 will replicate in other villages, we have to keep the numbers small.
Alec and I were there for two weeks at the end of July and early August and were heartened to see a robust program in place. The teachers are engaged, the kids want to be there and thirst for the lessons they are getting. We established a weekly chapel time for the kids, launching it last Thursday with the kids singing and marching into the church, more singing, and a puppet skit by the Zacaroli and van der Walt girls on Matthew 25:40. They read from the Bible and laughed and sang and prayed. When they returned to their classrooms, a group of boys spontaneously picked up dolls and put on the skit for themselves.
That day the atmosphere was so filled with warmth and love I could feel it in each of the kids. These are now kids who are like balls filled with air, who can bounce on their own. Tumeka is determined to help them now bounce in the right direction.
Amy Zacaroli