The creche at Thembalihle
This day is one that I will long remember. Jan and I visited the Eastwood township, an originally Colored area in Pietermaritzburg, in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. We were there to meet with Rev. Awie Booysen and Chrisandra Webster of the Eastwood United Church. This is one of the ‘pilot’ churches of the church-to-church program for relationships between KZN and Massachusetts’s churches, so we have had a lot of contact with them over the last few years. But, we first came to know Rev. Booysen through the local community outreach workshops which we helped coordinate for the UCCSA’s regional Mission Council in 2001 and 2002; and we revisited them in 2004 initially because Florence Madlala, the convenor of the Mission Council, wished to view their soup kitchen operations, to compare to what she was involved with in her home township of Lamontville near Durban.
This day is one that I will long remember. Jan and I visited the Eastwood township, an originally Colored area in Pietermaritzburg, in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. We were there to meet with Rev. Awie Booysen and Chrisandra Webster of the Eastwood United Church. This is one of the ‘pilot’ churches of the church-to-church program for relationships between KZN and Massachusetts’s churches, so we have had a lot of contact with them over the last few years. But, we first came to know Rev. Booysen through the local community outreach workshops which we helped coordinate for the UCCSA’s regional Mission Council in 2001 and 2002; and we revisited them in 2004 initially because Florence Madlala, the convenor of the Mission Council, wished to view their soup kitchen operations, to compare to what she was involved with in her home township of Lamontville near Durban.
The purpose of this particular visit was to help them by taking digital pictures for their use in an eventual brochure about the “Eastside AIDS Strategy Homebased Care, Orphans, Recreation, and Feeding Scheme Project,” which is what is growing out of those first soup kitchen efforts. Awie has a goal of inviting local business representatives to a meeting at the end of May, to interest them in the project. He has a great deal to do before that meeting, including the production of the brochure.
We arrived at the Eastwood United Church about 11 and Jan took several pictures of the women preparing the soup in the kitchen. They hammed it up for him and he showed them the pictures on the view screen – they laughed and laughed. He also took a few pictures of the folks waiting for the soup. This was similar to what we had seen in 2002 – and those of you have seen the 2005 version of the program video for the “13L” church to church effort, will have seen and heard the ladies microchopping cabbage for the soup. But the need continues…they are still feeding up to 400 people twice a week.
Then Awie took Chrisandra and us in his car, along with one of the homebased care volunteers, to see Thembalihle, an ‘informal settlement’ now accepted as permanent, but the poorest part of the townships on the Eastside. In particular, they wanted us to see a creche (a child care center) within this township, which the church’s soup kitchen supplies with food. Awie did not know the way by heart; the volunteer knew how to walk there but not how to drive. But we arrived, grateful that it was a dry, pleasant day when we saw the steep track down to the creche, which clings to the hillside. Awie is shaking a bit on the way down. It is a struggle for him to maintain his balance and footing on this hill with his bad back. But he does it.
Children’s clothes were draped over a ramshackle fence to dry, by the path down the hill. If you stop on the way down, find a foothold to brace yourself, and look out across the valley to the next hill, there are what seems to be hundreds of shacks and houses, with here and there groups of the newer government-constructed cinder block houses that people aspire to. This area was grazing land not too long ago, before the flood of people from the countryside into the city began.
The creche is called Masakhane, and is run by a woman by the name of Grace. The center cares for 77 children, including 15 orphans. The 50 or so older, healthy children were in a room perhaps 12’ x 20’, along with a few toys. Each child had a room to sit, and not much more. There are educational posters and handmade teaching aids hanging like banners from the ceiling. A few of the kids have colorful backpacks hanging on hooks by the entrance. They sang a song for us. Both Jan and I felt our hearts warm and break at the same time as we looked at the children.
There are 4 adults running this place; we passed one who was on her way to the church for soup for the children. It would be carried back in a large bucket, balanced on her head. Grace has a big heart and courage, but this is such a huge undertaking. The orphans stay with her around the clock; Jan was shown where the mattresses are stored for the day, piled in Grace’s own small room in the back. These 15 include a few who have started school; she badgered the principal into letting them start. Some seem to be receiving the available government stipend, but most do not because they have inadequate identity papers. Grace is also trying to help pensioners who find themselves raising grandchildren. She charges those children whose parents are employed, but you get the sense that that is not the majority.
Jan looked into the room with the babies and took a few pictures, but I did not. I did not want to see. We came back out of the dark of the main room, climbed back up the steep hill to the road, and felt the warmth of the sun. It will soon feel cold, here in the higher parts of the province.
Ruthann and Jan Tore Hall