I’m just going to prepare you: this will be long.
Yesterday was my first day at my service site, Ethembeni! I had the best time. I’ll start at the beginning:
My group got together the night before to talk about our goals/expectations for this time, and then to pray together about this journey we were about to go on together. The coolest thing for me was just seeing how similar our hearts were in regards to our hopes for this time. God totally aligned so many of our desires, which made the whole preparation process flow so much better.
So the next morning, we all got together again and prayed over our day and headed to Ethembeni, which is about 30 minutes away. We started the day by getting introduced to the purpose of Ethembeni, which means “Place of Hope”, and learning more about the culture of the township, Mpophomeni, where Ethembeni is. We asked the site leader, Grant, if we could do home visits to families in the township, and his response was, “Well, do you want to see people who are sick and dying?” He went on to explain that, yes, it will be part of our experience to do home visits with a social worker that we will each be partnered with, but he said that it will not be easy. He said he’s been doing it for almost 3 years and it’s still so hard to handle. So I’m praying that God will prepare my heart for what I’ll see, and that He’ll provide both the strength & compassion that will be needed.
We then spent basically the entire day with the kids. In the morning, it is mainly preschool aged children (up to age 6) and then in the afternoon kids up to age 18 come hang out. In the morning, I spotted a little girl who couldn’t be more than a year and a half, sitting by herself in a corner. I went to pick her up and ended up holding her for hours. She just did not want to be put down. After holding her for so long, I became super attached to her….a little Mama Bear :). That afternoon, one of the volunteers at Ethembeni told me I would be able to meet her mother, because she would come to pick up both her and her older sister (who is 4 years old and also at the site). I was shocked when her mother walked in, and was a 17-year-old in 12th grade trying to finish high school. And honestly, I still don’t know why I was so shocked. There are teenage mothers everywhere; I know multiple people back in the States who were/are teenage parents. And they told us that most of these kids parents’ were teenagers, but for some reason, I was so surprised and saddened when I figured that out. She was younger than me and had two daughters.
Another beautiful thing I got to see in these kids was the relationship between two brothers that were there, around ages 6 and 3. The younger brother spent the entire first day crying. Anytime anyone would go near him, he would cry. Even just standing by himself, he was always crying. The only person he wanted was his older brother. And for being 6 years old, he showed more compassion and love to his brother than I’ve ever seen in a sibling relationship. Nearly every time I looked over, the big brother was holding his little brother, drying his tears, wiping away snot, trying to play with him…it was beautiful. He showed such sacrificial love, and he’s only 6. I was blown away.
A huge blessing we have at Ethembeni is a volunteer named Claire. She is from Manchester, England and is staying here in South Africa for 3 years (she just arrived a week ago!). She is such a blessing though because a) she speaks English, b) she has been to Ethembeni twice before so she understand their culture, language, the site, etc and c) she also understands our culture and what it’s like being a volunteer, etc. She is just absolutely wonderful and brings such unity between the people already there and us. AND! Crazy story: I was talking to her about her first trip out here, and she said she came with Soul Action, which is connected to the church I visited this summer, Soul Survivor. I couldn’t believe it! It is such a small world.
Day 2: We came back this morning to the site, and all the kids flooded toward us, which was so fun to see that they remembered us. We played with them again in the morning for a couple hours and then Claire asked if we could clean out their office, and then another storage room that they want to turn into a play therapy room. Oddly enough, I was excited about this job. Weird, I know. But we divided up into groups and each tackled a room. I was in the office and had the most AMAZING thing happen.
Background first…the first day, we talked to the leaders about painting a big picture of the world on one of the walls, and then letting the kids fill it in with paint. The only problems were that none of us are really artistic so we needed to somehow print a picture of a world map, somehow get that picture onto a transparency, and somehow find an overhead projector to trace it onto the wall. Seemed rather overwhelming, but we were determined to do it. Today, while cleaning out the office, God showed how awesome He is. My friend Kailey was organizing some papers and suddenly started freaking out and showed us a whole packet of transparent maps of each individual continent! She just found them amongst everything else. We all got so excited, and ran into the other room to share the good news with everyone else. They couldn’t believe it either and a guy in our group Eli said, “Now we just need God to provide an overhead projector.” We all kinda laughed and we went back to the room. I kid you not, less than a minute later, I picked a pile of clothes up off a box, and just started laughing from pure joy. The box was labeled “overhead projector.” Can you believe it!?!?! I couldn’t. We all screamed and ran in (once again) to tell everyone else. We were all just overwhelmed with joy. GOD IS SO GOOD!
We spent the rest of the day cleaning, on a high from finding everything we needed and everything just working out so well. Things about today were also hard though. While cleaning, we found a book called “Ngithanda Ugogo” which means, “I love Grandma.” We were reading it and the whole book was about a grandma and the love they have for their granny, which was so cute. And then the last page said, “Our mom was Grandma’s little girl and Grandma didn’t smile the day Mom died. Then we came to live with our Grandma and she loves us very much.” That was the last page of the book. I couldn’t believe it. All of our children’s books in America end with “they all lived happily ever after” and these end this way. I was just thinking how kids who are 2 and 3 years old are reading this and growing up thinking that it’s normal to have your parents die at such a young age. I also met another girl today who is a teenage mother. She is 18 and has a 3-year-old son, and both her parents have passed away. Her mom died 2 years ago from HIV/AIDS, and her dad died 10 years ago. This girl lives with just her and her son. She’s on her own. The thing that struck me was the normalcy of it all for these people. When this young girl was explaining her situation to us, there were two other teenagers sitting in the room and I just thought to myself, “They probably have so many friends who are parents. They probably know so many people who have died of AIDS. This is their reality.” In America, people always throw statistics and facts at you about AIDS in Africa, but talking to people who either have it or know someone who has it…it honestly feels as though I’m hearing about it for the first time. The shock and sadness I feel about the devastating affects I’m hearing about, it’s as though I’m just now hearing about it. It’s just devastating. But for these people, it’s their lives. It’s their circumstance, their reality.
Despite a lot of hardship, I absolutely love my service site. I have fallen in love with those children in only two days. I think the service that Ethembeni is providing is remarkable and such a blessing. I feel so honored to be there with them. My team that I get to work with everyday is fabulous. I just love everything about this experience so far. Please keep us all in your prayers! It’s emotionally & physically exhausting, but so rewarding.
With love from South Africa,
Alex
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