Baby Blankets

As a mom, there is nothing more satisfying than taking good care of your baby. When your baby is cold or hungry, moms are there to provide for every need. But not all moms can. If your home is a metal shack with a leaky roof and dirt floors, it is hard to stay warm and dry. If your husband takes your small monthly stipend and spends it on drink, there is no money for food for your baby.
Such is the reality of thousands of women in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Many women raise their families in such conditions with no electricity and if they are lucky, water from a tap outside. If a storm is especially severe, the roof may tear off in places, windows can break, and the rain makes the dirt floors muddy.
It is these women and babies my heart goes out to and who I think of often, especially when someone asks me if I can take donations of things to South Africa. The Holy Comforters, a group of quilters at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield, VA have provided a wonderful blessing to these women and babies in rural Eastern Cape South Africa. I packed an extra suitcase filled with handmade quilts and receiving blankets lovingly created by the Holy Comforters. I was blessed enough to have a midwife named Karen Clarke in Hamburg, South Africa, take me to the women she has recently helped give birth. I was able to show up at their shacks with a handful of these baby blankets made a world away and allow the women to choose which one they wanted for their newborns. I visited three mothers who had two-week and three-week old babies. They were so thankful and joyful that we arrived with the blankets. They had fun choosing the right one for their baby. And then they lovingly wrapped their babies and held them proudly.
Up the coast from Hamburg, a four-hour drive, is another rural village called Canzibe, where 25:40 also has a project. I stayed on the mission property, which is adjacent to Canzibe hospital. Another NGO here has developed a nutrition center on the hospital grounds for moms to come with their children when the hospital staff notices the children are malnourished. Nokuphila offers them a place to stay for awhile and hands-on training for growing a food garden. I also visited Nokuphila with the baby blankets and was able to give them to a few moms – one of whom looked like a very young teenager.
It’s a small thing, one that most people take for granted – having something to keep your baby warm. But when a mom has next to nothing, it really is a gift from God.
Amy Zacaroli

Midwives

Women living in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa can tell you horror stories about the care they receive when they give birth. Except since it is the only care they know, they have no idea their experiences are horrific.
Xhosa women live in shacks and tend to birth at home or go to hospital when labor starts. Typically they do not seek pre-natal care. During labor, they may be tended to by mothers or aunts at home, but if something goes wrong at birth, like a cord wrapped around the neck, many babies die within the first week. If the women make it to the hospital, they are treated poorly by the nursing staff. A typical maternity ward is a big room with 20 beds and no privacy. Guests – husbands, moms, sisters – are not allowed. Women give birth alone. The women are forced to stay lying down in their beds and if they cry out or scream they are slapped on their thighs. Internal exams are harsh and the only goal by the staff is to get the baby out, regardless of whether the woman is tearing or having other difficulties. The babies are taken from them right away to be put in incubators until it is time to feed. There is very little opportunity for mother and baby to bond. Then they are sent home.
These women are abused by the health system and gone through uncaring labor and go home with a baby they don’t know how to care for. This can often lead to a disconnect between mom and baby and the natural instinct for mothering and nurturing is missing because of their experiences.
Noelle (not her real name) had three babies when a midwife named Karen Clarke was checking her during her fourth pregnancy. Karen asked how many kids she had and she replied 3, but Karen only saw two. Where is the other one? “Oh. That one was not right,” Noelle replied. After prodding, Karen learned the baby had a lack of oxygen at birth, probably because the cord was wrapped around its neck, and had difficulty breathing and suffered some seizures early on. He died when he was 8 months old. These things are so preventable with a trained midwife attending the birth.
Karen Clarke moved from Cape Town to Hamburg three years ago with her family to practice in her trained profession of midwifery. Karen’s dream is to eradicate the horror stories of labor and delivery and replace those with positive outcomes as a result of nurturing care for the women of Hamburg throughout their entire pregnancies. The results are already starting to show themselves with the numerous births she already has attended. Right now, Karen tends to labors in the homes women live in – metal shacks. Karen’s plans are to build a small birthing home in the center of town where moms-to-be can labor and deliver in a comfortable, safe environment. Karen will keep them at the birthing home for a week because that is when most newborns die.
She tries to encourage pregnant women to come to her when they first learn they are pregnant so that proper pre-natal care can be administered. It is during this time that Karen can establish a relationship with the women, learn their histories, and test for HIV/AIDS. A simple test can detect the virus and a simple dose of medication can prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS to the baby during birth. About 30 percent of pregnant women whom she has seen have HIV/AIDS. Simply having a midwife in Hamburg can eradicate transmission of AIDS from mother to child during birth – a huge and significant step towards a healthy, AIDS-free society.

Students Get a Second Chance

HAMBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- About 50 teenagers and young adults are embarking on a final chance to pass their high school exams through efforts of a community-based group that formed in 2009 to address social issues in their village.
The Hamburg Social Development Project is a group of 10 community leaders, including the high school principal, teachers and former teachers, with the goal of addressing the needs of children in this resource-starved setting who are not receiving an adequate education under the existing public school system. HSDP’s first priority is to help teenagers who have dropped out of school because they failed their matriculation exams and are unable to retake Standard Grade 12 due to a change of the national syllabus in 2007.
Through 2009 the group worked hard to register as a non-profit organization and set and prioritize goals and to communicate to the community their ideas.
The group has made amazing strides in just the last six months. They negotiated with St. Charles High School in Hamburg the use of three classrooms for the finishing school. They will also have an office at the school. HSDP member Mr. Paliso negotiated with the Hamburg community to be granted 5 hectares of land with the longer-term goal of building a community center at which will be the finishing school, the HSDP office and skills training centers, such as plumbing, carpentry, construction, and engineering. The skills training center is necessary for those students who do not have the means to go to college. Hamburg is in the very rural Eastern Cape where jobs are scarce and the quality of education is poor. With specific skills, young adults can aspire to become professionals.
On Jan. 18, the finishing school opened its doors. On the first day, there were 15 young people who registered. The next day 21 showed up. On the day I visited a week later, there were 46 students who were eager to get started. The news had spread beyond the three nearby villages – Hamburg, Bell and Bodium – to villages a bit further away – Lovers Twist, Wesley, Tceku. These students have a deadline of December 2010 to pass their final exams under the rules of the new curriculum. They cannot take the test again if they fail.
HSDP member Thelma Ncumani, who also is principal of St. Charles High School, gave the students a little pep talk. “This is your last chance. We want plumbers, electrical engineers. You must be very serious. This is for Hamburg. This is for you. We don’t want you wandering around the streets,” she told them.
I spoke with a young woman named Portia, who is 23. She finished school in 2004, but did not pass her final exam. She was very excited to take this class so that she could graduate. I asked her what her dreams are. She said, “I want to matric and then help my community.”
--Amy Zacaroli

New Beginnings

In 2009, God planted seeds for two new 25:40 projects in South Africa that we pray will blossom in 2010. I am writing this just two days before I leave for a two-week trip without my family to visit with the people who are working on these two projects.
In Hamburg, South Africa, a group of community leaders organized last year to form the Hamburg Social Development Project. This group identifies issues in the community that need attention and then works to solve those issues. HSDP formed in 2009, established a bank account, and is in the process of registering with the South African government as a non-profit. It has held a fund-raising event and has identified the first issue it wants to tackle -- students who have finished high school but not passed the final exam to officially "matric". HSDP has negotiated classroom space with the local school and is now arranging for furniture, materials and teachers so that these students can be tutored and then eventually pass their final exams. This will give a huge boost to these young adults who would have no hope of finding a job without passing their final exams. While job prospects in the Eastern Cape are quite limited, these students will be the beneficiaries of model citizens who are volunteering to help them and thus help to improve their community. This gives the students hope and a more secure future.
25:40 has encouraged HSDP to get started and organized and we continue to do so. 25:40 will also help financially when necessary. These types of community-based groups are the lifeblood -- and will be the saving grace -- of villages in the rural areas. 25:40's help has been, we hope, the most constructive. Rather than simply giving food, we are teaching to fish.

A little further up the Eastern Cape coast is the Ngqeleni District, a very rural area of rolling hills between Umtata and the Indian Ocean. There are 22 villages that are spread out and very poor. In 2009, 25:40 funded a survey, executed by Small Projects Foundation and community health workers, to find orphans and vulnerable children. The survey identified 1,504 orphans and vulnerable children in that area. In November 2009, 25:40 hired a local Xhosa man, Nkosana Menzi, to oversee what 25:40 is calling Project 1504. With SPF, we have identified immediate and long-term needs of these children, which 25:40 will fund and carry out with the help of Nkosana, SPF and the community health workers. I will go to Canzibe, where Nkosana lives and works, to review the goals of our project and meet some of the Project 1504 children
I will blog as I can from there. Please pray for travel safety and that 25:40 will properly nurture the seeds God has planted into full-flowering fruit. Most importantly, pray for the children in South Africa impacted by AIDS and poverty who deserve a fair chance at a healthy, happy life. Peace, Amy Zacaroli

The Gogos

The grandmothers.
Without them, there would be hundreds and hundreds of children living and dying on their own.
The grandmothers.
They are the safety net for AIDS orphans. Here in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa, the lack of infrastructure means there are no orphanages to come to when their parents die. The special homes they go to are the rondavels or huts of grandmothers, sparsely furnished, usually without electricity or running water. The grandmothers, who have done their birthing and raising and scraping together enough food and school fees for their own children, are now grieving the loss of those adult children. And having to start over with raising their grandchildren left behind from the scourge of AIDS.
But now these grandmothers are old, tired. Some are uneducated; some are haunted by the stigma of AIDS. Some do not even know about AIDS, yet their grandchildren have it.
It is impossible to know how many children in the Eastern Cape have lost their parents to AIDS and are living with their grandmother or aunt. It seems the norm here, rather than the exception.
For years, Eunice Mangwane, an AIDS counselor at Umtha Welanga, has felt the need to reach out to other grandmothers. She is one herself, who has a daughter and a grandson with AIDS. As an AIDS counselor, she assumed AIDS would never affect her family. But when it did, she crumbled. She turned to Nokwanda, another grandmother at Umtha Welanga whose daughter and grandchildren have been affected by AIDS. They bonded. And her life as an AIDS counselor suddenly got more intense and more effective. “When it’s not in your family, you don’t speak the same language,” Eunice said. Now she speaks the same language as her clients.
Here in Hamburg in early August, Eunice and Nokwanda hosted the first meeting of the Gogo support group. Gogo is the Xhosa word for grandmother. About 15 grandmothers showed up with their grandchildren to unite, to support each other, to share their stories, each as tragic as the next one.
Joyce Williams stands up at the meeting to share her story. She speaks in perfect English. She is warmly dressed, with two little children, 4 and 2, at her feet. She proclaims in a strong voice – like a preacher -- that God is with all the grandmothers there. He will show them through. Then she tells her story. Her son was married and had two children but then his wife fell ill and died and then her son died too. Now she is left with the two children– one of whom is HIV+. If her story of losing her son were not tragic enough, she explained that just that morning her daughter had passed away from bone cancer. “I came here because Eunice had invited me and I feel it is very important to be here.” The room fell into a stunned silence, even the children at the Gogos’ feet were quiet with their coloring.
Susan Paliso, probably the oldest grandmother there, then stood and shared her story. Her three oldest married and moved from the rural area to work and raise children in the bigger cities. Her youngest son Dumile commuted to the big city to work and back home to share his income with his mother. He was her breadwinner after her husband died. But then he stopped coming home. For five years. He was too ashamed to admit to his mother he had a girlfriend and they had a baby. And then he was sick and so was the girlfriend, whom Susan never met. Finally someone called and said “You must come. Dumile is ill.” Susan did not go. Dr. Carol Baker went and brought him home, but he died very shortly after that. Then the girlfriend’s parents called and said she had passed away and can you take the baby? So Susan did. By this time, she was working as a domestic helper for Dr. Baker and so the child got medical attention – He has AIDS.
Now Susan is 85 years old. Her grandson is 11. He receives a child disability grant from the government but that will end when he is 14. As an orphan, the grant continues until he is out of school. But Susan cannot prove that he is an orphan because she does not have a copy of the mother’s death certificate. She does not even know the name of the child’s mother. So what happens to her grandson when she dies? What happens if she cannot find a death certificate? Where will he get money? Where will he live? These are all questions none of us can answer.
But she comes here to seek support with issues her peers are also facing. The only answer I know is that with the grandmothers, the children have a little more time before they are alone.
-- Amy Zacaroli

MUSIC

It is quiet in Hamburg, South Africa. The only sounds you hear are the tide of the Indian Ocean, the cooing of doves and melodies of other birds, dogs barking, the wind blowing, the rustling of monkeys in the bush. Sounds of television and that four beat Microsoft Office tune are out of place here – like an errant horn blow when the symphony is at rest.
One other sound is at home here – people singing. Their voices pure, strong, and without any instruments – just the voices God gave them. Umtha Welanga Health Care Center, the AIDS clinic in the center of the main village, is a beautiful place. It is well built, tan cement with a red roof. Colored glass tiles are glued onto the outside front pillars, creating a welcoming mosaic. Huge windows frame the view of the Keiskamma River and the rolling green hills of the Eastern Cape. It has the feel and character of a very old building, which it is, with its uneven steps painted red and slanting floors, but a solid building. It also has good acoustics.
Patients come here day and night, summer and winter, rainy season and dry, for treatment for HIV/AIDS, opportunistic diseases and palliative care. Every morning around 8:15 or 8:20, someone – Thandie an AIDS counselor or a patient perhaps – breaks into song. Just one voice at first, the others listening to see if they know this song, if they have the strength to join in. Then some patients sitting on their beds will start to sing, and a patient stands from her bed and joins in. Then perhaps Rachel, the head nurse, will join in as she’s writing her morning notes on each patient. The men patients in the nearby ward will walk in slowly and join in. Eunice, another AIDS counselor, will climb the steps from her downstairs office and also join. Soon the room is loud with beautiful, strong voices, joined in a praise song.
And one after another, they sing praise songs to God and to Jesus. Even though most of the songs are in Xhosa, you can still feel the spirit. Then they sing the Lord’s Prayer in English and a patient or a visitor may be asked to pray.
Thandie explains that even if patients cannot get out of bed that they at least listen and try to sing along. “I believe if you sing and pray, then God will help you. Some people who come here do not believe in God, but maybe the songs will move them.”
Athwel, one of the four drivers at Umtha Welanga, said the tradition of morning prayers did not start with the staff. He said he has had patients die in the car with him as he’s driving them to the health care center or the hospital. “Before they die, they want to sing their song,” he explains. So they sing, and then they die peacefully with a strong spirit.
The patients in the health care center may be having a very hard time and Dr. Carol Baker will be attending to them. And the patient struggling, and perhaps other patients nearby, will start to sing. The singing unites everyone and makes the patient strong, Athwel explains. Realizing how singing positively affected them, the patients started the routine of morning prayers.
Alec and I have been touched by morning prayers every time we come here. We go home and try to explain it, but I don’t think we do it justice. So this year we’re bringing a version of morning prayers to the United States. To commemorate World AIDS Day (Monday, Dec. 1), Thandie, Athwel and others from Umtha Welanga, will travel to the Washington, D.C. area and sing at several churches in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. Through their music and their stories, they will share with us the hope and strength their faith brings them from a place full of hope in the face of poverty and AIDS.
-- Amy Zacaroli

School Days

Children at the Hamburg Primary School open every morning with singing and praying at 8:20. This after a long walk up a rutted road to the top of a hill that is one of the highest – and windiest – points in Hamburg. Alec is driving a decades-old Land Rover that is much better equipped to handle the road to the school than our VW Polo rental cars. As we approach the last half-mile to the school, we see a group of about 20 children all dressed in their school uniforms making their way to the school. We stop and ALL 20 children come running and somehow pile into the back of the Land Rover with our four children. They are excited for even just a few minutes’ ride in the truck to the school.
At the school, they all pile out of the Land Rover eagerly and form in about 8 lines in the “courtyard” of the school. They are lined up by grade facing the principal and their teachers. They begin to sing – and sing loudly and beautifully. Some songs are in their native Xhosa, some in English. They sing praise songs and the Lord’s Prayer. Everyday a teacher or a student reads from the Bible – today a teacher reads Psalm 121 from her Xhosa Bible. I look it up later and realize it is one of my favorites and hope that the school children take this message to heart.
“I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth … The Lord will keep you from all harm – he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”
They have a prayer and then they bow to the principal, who says a few words. Then they start singing “Marching in the Light of God” and they all march in line to their class rooms. Thus begins a day at Hamburg Primary School. The teachers then go into the principal’s office and sign in, collect materials, and go to their classes. The school looks in much better shape since the first time I saw it in 2004.
Pat Thomas, Alec’s mom, has come several times and spends several months at a time, teaching and equipping the school with shelving for each classroom, a computer and printer for the principal’s office, uniforms for the girls’ net ball team. In February, she had students and some paid laborers to sand the desks and paint them bright colors of the South African flag. Today Alec talks to the principal about securing an extra room so that they can install a few computers for student use.
We visit Grade 1 and Mrs. Luvuno instructed her students to pull out plastic containers that rattled loudly when they handled them. When the students opened them, I saw why. They are filled with used bottle caps, which make quite useful counting manipulatives. The young students practice counting to 10 and 20 and backwards from 10. Some have a hundreds chart taped on their desks.
This is the school for the poorest families in Hamburg. Those parents who work and can afford the transport send their children to a better school in nearby Peddie. A very select few send their children to boarding school.
This school has such promise – the teachers are good and well-educated and the principal and the assistant principal are motivated to connect with other principals in the area and improve the services that the local government sometimes fails to provide.
The goal here is to get parents involved in the school, to have regular meetings with teachers, to ensure their children do their homework, and to hold the staff accountable. This seems so logical to us Americans, but it is a cultural shift to bring this to Hamburg Primary School, where parents may not have had education past elementary school themselves and do not feel empowered to involve themselves.
People here and volunteers like Pat Thomas and 25:40 will be involved in helping the school as much as we can – because these children are all our children and deserve the best we can give them.
-- Amy Zacaroli