Been in southern Africa for a month now. It feels like home, whatever home is ... home is where your kids are well, and by that gauge,what a great place for Kina and Marly this is. We go horseback riding, swim in mountain streams, lounge around reading and drawing pictures looking out over a valley dancing through every possible shade of green in the shifting light. We get all excited about rainbows and we are bored to tears when it's raining. The other kids around here? Many of them are not alright. In the grocery store yesterday they were playing that 80's carol, "feed the world, do they know it's christmas". Talk about a bad song getting all the sudden much worse...here we are milling around buying sausages with fat Afrikaaners, listening to Michael Jackson singing "we can make a better day, just me and yooooouuuuu!" The ironies are many; savour them.

We were on our way home from a Christmas party for orphans from 14 villages in the mountains of Lesotho. Only double orphans (those who have lost both parents) were invited because there wasn't enough food for the single orphans. The scene - a hundred odd kids all standing there, some with other kids on their backs, waiting for their apple and rice. Thinking about them as I pushed my cart around the Supermarket, listening to "feed the world", wondering what Michael Jackson's idea of making a kids' day better involves. I'm still figuring out mine; these kids live in mountains whose beauty is like medicine. There is no pollution; the streams run clear and plastic is a rare sight. They don't have to rush and they don't have to watch out for traffic. There aren't any strangers but some of the familiar people do strange things, especially if you happen to be a girl child. The whole thing, where we're supposed to be judging these kids lives as awful, terrible, shameful... it's hard. their innocence keeps getting the better of my maudlin, bleeding heart. Maybe I'm crusty and my heart is leathered over, maybe I have spent too long facing pain and pushing it down so I don't turn into a bawling mess when I'm supposed to be the grown up. But no. I know how my heart feels when I look and look at these kids, who are not afraid to stare and definately don't feel the need to smile back at me... it buckles and leaps and I start to cry and then I have to laugh - three girls are taking turns peeking out from behind each others' shoulders and taking pretend pictures of me, miming my surreptitious photo taking perfectly. They are beautiful, simply, and many of them won't make it through the coming year. Their situations are desperate; they watched their parents die, they have little brothers and sisters to look after, there is no money and hardly any food, they are always hungry. This is what they know; their lives are their lives. Some are serious, some are clowns, some are empaths, some are bullies. Yesterday they played and ate and got together with a bunch of people who look after them when they can. Yesterday they got to eat as much as they could; yesterday was fun.

Do they know it's Christmas? they sure as hell do. Do they have any idea what our notion of "happy childhood" is? not at all. so we see what's missing but they see what's in front of them, and make out somehow... like children anywhere they ride on the thin edge between laughing and crying, falling off to either side from time to time. sometimes there might be something we can do to help them out... and there are some amazing ideas that must come to us up through our feet.... and sometimes there is nothing we can do, nothing we can share... on the big walk up the road back to our car, we were accompanied by a big bunch of kids all asking for money, sweets, food. we started chanting "efedile! efedile!" which means "it's all gone! it's all gone!" These kids who we just watched eat their body weight in starch and fruit were using the only English they know, and the phrases they use on all the tourists they see; "I'm hungry! Give me!" So we teased them and they teased us back and it was bearable.

Home is where we pray. The soundtrack for southern Africa is "amazing grace". this is a hymn that has touched down in my life like a bolt of lightning a very few times when things were really, really tough... the song is a life raft when you are drowning, and when you sing it in good times you remember how much you once needed it, and are grateful.

it plays over and over here, and oh people sing it like they mean it. they sing as if their lives depended on it. we are talking singing from the bones, bawlin' wailin' celebratin' wretches turning their faces upwards, the light falls on them and lo! they are angels after all. what is music but a way to bear the horror and the beauty that we are tangled up in? it is a sword to part the curtains of reality and enter a bliss that is indifferent to our everyday dualities, a place where pain and pleasure are joyfully fucking . how sweet the sound.

Home is where you are safe and sound... that not so true, the newspaper headlines are a daily ice bucket over our warm and cozy, with stories of rape, murder, and atrocities only reported when there is some twist that lifts commonplace, everyday butchery to a new level. Somehow we have found this loophole, in South Africa where robbery is a national sport - we've gone so far from the main road that we don't have to lock our car. The violence we are confronted with is more a seeping kind of malevolence. Yesterday in the midst of the kids' party, Mamello, a woman who runs a centre for orphaned and handicapped kids, brought up three little boys to meet us. The youngest looked about 3; he was actually 6. They are brothers looking after each other; their caregiver stood away from them and watched us fall apart at hearing their story. They lost their parents to AIDS 2 years ago. They are all HIV positive; the middle boy is on ARVs and is visibly ravaged by sores. This makes him an outcast in his village, where superstition meets regular old discrimination when it comes to this terrifying sickness. Their caregiver has TB and struggles to keep herself in medication. There is no food and they are asking us to help. Mamello has decided the centre can only afford to adopt the youngest child, so he will be folded into the blanket that she spreads over her community. And in a brutal way, requiring a superhuman ability to face down screaming injustice and somehow not go mad with grief, Mamello was picking the winner out of 3 siblings, the one who might make it.

The others? I can't imagine how these frail looking boys have made it so long just with their isolation, their chronic hunger, and their lack of immune systems. I don't want to think about how long they have to live, if they don't get cared for. Rescue! My heart screams. Pick them up and carry them off to a warm bed and a full belly. But my head won't let me hold them; if I connect, says reason, I know I will also have to pry their fingers from my shoulders, put them down and walk away when it is time to go. There is no answer. We aren't tourists looking to salve our guilt by helping the odd person; we are part of a concerted effort to help by feeding the community's centre and hoping it spreads right out to the edges. Every dime we get for Mamello trickles all the way down, even to these orphan boys who are all shyly holding apples, extra ones bulging out of their back pockets. But there isn't enough, yet, for Mamello to take these older brothers in. For our part, we have a role in this community and we have to be careful to stay in it; if we give handouts we risk becoming big, stupid white Santas who will never be respected, and will be forever pegged as suckers. The point is to be together with people as much as possible, follow their lead, and not disturb the balances that have developed - there are no lottery winners but, in good times, there is enough to go around. In bad times, and this is one, you have to bury a lot of friends. Mamello knows we're going to be all confused by the boy's situation, and in her wisdom she is bluntly putting us in the position she finds herself in every day. 'OK, guys, she's saying; you're feeling all good about how "the project" is going, you might even feel a tad heroic, here's some MORE reality for you.' Because no matter how well all of our lovely "development initiatives" are going, this is a pandemic that is killing people, a lot of them before they've had time to lift their heads and see it coming, and there are so many dreadful situations that arise from that. You can be slaying dragons all day long but more just keep on coming.

Home is where you can live with yourself. We decide that we'll give the boys some chickens and a rooster to raise; they can eat eggs right away, and Mamello will buy the chickens when they are ready for the pot. Maybe there will be a jackal that comes and eats them; maybe there will be some chicks. Hopefully there will be some chicks. And in the end, even if it is no solution to the whole crisis, and you know there are thousands, millions of orphaned, hungry kids in Africa, you still enjoy your Christmas morning chocolate binge. This Christmas I am going to eat, enjoy life, share what I can, and live with myself in imperfect, amazing grace.

Much love and thanks for sharing,

Andrea

Greg Felsen, Peace Corps, discussing the importance of sustainable agriculture projects, SOLID Leribe, SOLID Canada and introducing Motholo, our agriculture expert.

Hi All

Want to update and share what has been going on here in Lesotho. Last night a lightning storm ripped through the mountains as we were walking home, offering a good reflection on our work here. One minute you can't see your hand in front of your face, the next the mountains are lit up purple for miles around.

Visiting time of year, and we have been receiving some interesting guests. The other day we were all set to go to town when an approaching storm changed our minds; the road turns to slush in even light rain, and in this,the wettest summer on record, the road gets deeply carved by rain so intense you have to shout to be heard by the person beside you. Anyway we turned back...... and who should arrive at our doorstep but Russell Armstrong.

You may have heard his words of wisdom in an earlier video post; he is the hospital administrator at the Tsepong Clinic, Lesotho's first full service AIDS clinic. Russell is involved in all kinds of interesting NGO activity, including helping the Tsepong Clinic's People Living With AIDS group score a $150,000 grant towards strengthening and expanding their work to other communities, training the trainers in HIV prevention and treatment. The group are part of SOLID Leribe, and manage the Gardens of Hope medicinal / permaculture garden. So Russell strolls up our garden path and asks the big question, "So What Do YOU Do Here?"

The answer in short - follow in the footsteps of our African teachers, pulling the supports for their visions out of our big western hat. In long - connect the dots by making introductions, being a point of contact between the Development Game and the 'fire from below' , being a lens through which the west can see Africa undistorted. We expressed to Russell the idea of setting up a co-operative space in which NGOs and community groups could network, co-educate, share resources, get online, source markets and funds, and create a collective "seed bank" where models that work get described and shared outwards. The SOLID Leribe office. Russell offered to help SOLID Leribe write its' constitution and mentor the group through the process of becoming a registered NGO - he also described a project he is participating in (funded by Irish AID) whose goal is to help fledging community groups with basic accounting and organizational structure. Those groups would then go out and train other groups to build their capacity. We discussed the possibility for SOLID Leribe participating. Another series of dots, connected.

Then we had Mamello and Ben here, our friends from the highlands who run Phelisanong Disabled Group at Pitseng. This is the second house of ours' Mamello has visited, the first being in Canada, when she came to our Community to Community 2 conference last October. Mamello, as usual, laid her vision out with her customary confidence... she has been working with 14 outlying villages in the mountains who receive no services to speak of and are dealing with appallingly high HIV rates... no-one knows the stats, but Mamello has been at many a death bed, and helps feed many an orphan. She told us that over the next 14 months she will be conducting month long HIV training and testing in each of the villages, doing week-long counselling in prevention and treatment culminating in a day of testing. The groups that test together will form support groups, and identify income generating possiblities that can help them fund their trips to the AIDS clinic where they can access treatment. She has applied for funding through the Peace Corps to pay the trainers from her village to travel and to offer lunch for workshop participants. This kind of training, done by villagers who themselves are HIV positive, does more to smash fears and myths about HIV than any PEPFAR programme..... the urgency these teachers feel, combined with their innate understanding of cultural taboos, are things outsiders can't grasp. Mamello will do this training, funded or not, but she did request that we help by funding a vehicle for transporting not only the trainers from village to village, but to bring groups of positive people who need CD4 counts done, and ARVs dispended, to the Tsepong Clinic.

Our next interesting guests are Paffi and Asaf, a couple of young Israelis who have been travelling in Southern Africa for a month. They work with special needs people, Asaf specializing in autism, and Paffi a teacher and journalist who has also worked with the handicapped. They have a vision to set up a permaculture centre for the disabled, and came to Rustlers', where we live, to see how they could find meaningful volunteer work to further their understanding of permaculture in a 'resource poor' context. So we took them to Ha Makhata, another Gardens of Hope, the disabled centre run by Mamello. This place always reduces people to jello - the beauty of the setting, the hardship people endure, the spirit of togetherness... this was all illustrated the day we went with Paffi and Asaf in a little girl with Down's Syndrome, who was standing in the middle of the circle of visitors getting DOWN and funky, dancing in the mud against the sweep of green, green hills.

The Israeli couple have been back several times, and plan to return in January to develop a guesthouse at Ha Makhata, where international travellers can stay, and volunteers, WOOFers, and visiting supporters of the project can be comfortably but simply lodged. It will be a wholistic design, like most of the homes in the area, with a simple kitchen and ablutions, and will provide employment to locals as guides, taking guests to the local caves, mountain swimming holes, and on foot and horseback through the mountains. The coolest part of their plan is that instead of funding the lodge themselves, they are offering a micro-loan to Mamello to build the lodge, so it will be the first backpackers hostel in Lesotho to be owned by Basotho. The profits, when they come, will be shared with the handicapped centre at Ha Makhata, and will sustain Mamello and her husband who have worked incredibly hard on a voluntary basis for years. We'll be doing the media, and connecting to the international permaculture networks to invite organic farm volunteers to come and help out at the project.

We took Paffi and Asaf up to the sangoma valley yesterday, an ancestral pilgrimage place inhabited by traditional healers. These people spend their lives in prayer, living in simple cave dwellings. There are altars everywhere with trenches worn around their bases from people dancing. Beside the huts a waterfall pours a hundred feet down ; smoke and sunlight shine through the water and it carries the spirit of the place downstream. These people live in earth, their provisions meagre: cabbage, carrots, scrawny chickens; their few possessions shared.

Andrea

And Gary's note that accompanied the video link:

So this is Christmas, and as usual Africa exsists in two extremes, incredible joy and celebration on one hand, children who look after children and children that are going to die soon on the other. There is so much that we can learn from this community on all levels. The girl in the black dress with her sister on her back at the begining lives with her grandmother and looks after her two younger sisters. Look in her eyes - she's a mother. She carried her sister for the 6 hours of the party. They got a pair of shoes between them as gifts. The three boys, it appears that two of them are HIV positive and they very seldom have any food. These children are on the front line of a battlefield.

There's some work to done, don't you think?

Go well.

Hi Everybody,

This is really worth reading...... a story about justice, which is just US.

We are spending 6 months in Lesotho, southern Africa. This week, visiting the Phelisanong Disabled project at Ha Makhata village, where orphans and handicapped people all gather to care for each other. Wheelchair bound men weave hats from grass and the hairdresser has put aside her crutches to braid a toddlers' hair, the way her mother would have, had she lived. Everyone looks up to project founder Mamello, this childless woman who has brought us all together - Mamello, the mother of this project, in her long red gown and her red scarf wound through her hair, going between us all, sorting things out, giving commands - beaming now, stern now, seriously in charge she inspires every one of us to give it all.

Mamello is a fire, pouring her lava all over us, changing things that have been fixed - seems like forever - she makes new land where once it was barren. She melts taboos and reforms them into fair play. Collecting orphaned children, neglected elders, and confused teenagers, she makes a whole family out of fragments. She looks after people whom her culture declares untouchable; handicapped people, albinos, people with AIDS.

Today she brings us a group of 15 girls, all at that tender age between girl and woman. They are shy and proud and vulnerable...they are painfully beautiful. I have a hard time seeing past all of the perils that are in front of them, to their strength that will carry them through. Early marriage. Rape. Brutal trade offs - dignity for base survival. Sex for food. I am worried about them.... want them to keep their innocence, want to shake them awake to the harsh realities that they now face as adults.... sex here is like a sword. It can empower you and it can gut you. It can be inflicted on you and it can kill you. But these girls must claim their womanhood and I want to hand them all a good sharp sword to protect themselves from all the blades that are turned their way. they need a bit more mothering yet.

Anyway. Here's a group of 15 girls and Mamello is asking us to help secure their futures. They are all brilliant, she says, and they all want to go to high school. They need help; this ones' parents are dead, this ones' mother has AIDS and is not working; this one is the last of 8 children and the father has passed away.... Then they take turns standing in front of us so we can take their pictures. They don't pose so much as they reveal themselves . Look at the pictures...... they just say, here is me. Look.

All members of the HIV support group in the village, they also do a lot of theatre and acting. These dramas they create tell the stories that surround them and are wicked cautionary tales. As grim as the tragedies are, they are full of singing, humour and great characters, and the girls love to parody and tease. They don't hold back; when they do the mock funeral scenes their exaggerated mourning offers such release. It is over the top; it is maudlin, macabre and so funny. We ask Mamello how often the support group meets, and she says, "Oh, they come EVERY day!". This isn't some kind of after school club; it's survival.

As we are leaving, they hand us letters they have each written, expressing why they want to go to school and giving some reasons why they can't afford the $350 a year fees. Even if they had parents, the fees amount to half a year's wages for a working class person. So we go away with these pieces of paper and these photographs. No pressure .... school starts in 2 weeks and they need $5300.

This is where the community to community part comes in. We have all of you, all of these friends in Canada and all over the world, who actually watch the video emails and read the letters. You may have come to conferences, you may have been with us in Lesotho, you might have the misfortune of being related to us and therefore be a captive audience. But you are listening. Mamello knows a lot of you; after coming to Canada and setting everyone on the edge of their seats at the Community to Community 2 conference, after checking out your nice houses and hearing you promise to help how you can, she knows what you are capable of. I'm very glad to be used by her! and passed on the girls' scholarship appeal without the usual hand wringing apologies. You all got the email; Here's an idea, $5300 anyone?

OK, maybe not as easy as it sounds, there is conspicuous silence from over there. Is this really a sustainable development initiative? What about all the other girls out there? How can we keep something like this going, year after year? We don't even know these girls! plus it is a hell of a lot of money, and we just blew the wad on Christmas. I do understand, but I have this instinct that there is someone who will hear through all those disclaimers and come forward. School, right? The first step towards just about anything a person does. The best way for girls to avoid HIV and early pregnancy. Teachers, the school community - A family when your own has collapsed. Mentors when you are on your own. Not to mention the very tangible school lunch that means you get to eat well at least once a day. While there are lots of great "sustainable development" projects to support, education is undeniably the biggest leg up a person can possible gain in a world where ignorance = death. And while funding individuals isn't something most agencies do, we know these girls' names now, and we know their stories. Something's more compelling about a face than a statistic.

For church, we go to this neighbouring valley known as the sangoma valley. It is an ancestral pilgrimage place, where people go who are sick, or troubled, or who want to cleanse their spirits in a holy place before going back out into the world. It is just around the corner from our home, this living outdoor church. Gary and I were married there, by a sangoma called Monica. Not your regular Christian, her robes are leopard skin and porcupine quill. She knows the Bible off by heart but her truest psalms are in Sesotho and Zulu, songs for the ancestors and the elements. We went to see Monica and gave her the girls' scholarship letters. Asked her to pray for the hopes and wishes of these girls to be realized. Monica says, yes, I will pray hard for them. She puts them on the 'altar' in her house, by the statues of Mary and Jesus, beside the candles that are being slowly eaten by rats. We thank her and depart. What is faith? knowing that prayers matter.

We return to that other world, of cell phones and email. I start with email; there is a message from a friend saying she will work with some students to fund one of the girls' scholarships. OK! one down, 14 to go. Then we get a text message on our phone from Mamello. "How r u coming with scholarships 4 girls? meet with them today 2 choose who will have schooling." SHIT! Ok; maybe this is something I just have to let go of. I'll have to tell Mamello I couldn't help, and she'll have to pick the winner out of 15 girls who should all have a chance. Maybe next year we'll be more prepared, fundraise in advance, make sure we've got discretionary funds for things like this that come up that don't fit into the box of formal aid projects. Maybe I'll write something to my immediate family and start to... well, beg.

Back to the computer to compose the email..... and there is 1 new message. It reads:

"After reading your email regarding the scholarship fund for these young women, we would like to sponsor all 15 for the next year. In $$ that would mean 15 x $350.00= $5,250.00. We will have that full amt available to send on Jan 10/07."

I swear to God the tears shot right across the room. Can you kick off your shoes and dance in your socks with us on this one???? Hooting - hollering - laughing - crying - kitchen dancing, Gary and I hugging and jumping up and down and then rushing to open the patio doors, shouting to the mountains... "THANK YOU MONICA!" .... and thank you community to community, this is working its magic and we don't know how but this wretched story has a happy ending.

Justice. Is our life just? A bird comes into our room, flies around, finds a window, flies away. we come to Africa, witness people's lives, and then leave. Is it fair that these girls and not these ones ? would it be more fair if it were none ? is it fair that we get to be the ones to tell Mamello the good news, even though it isn't our money? we are a strand in the braid of this story. 15 girls are going to school this year and at the end of it all, that's fair enough.

So that's how we celebrated New year.... brought in with a raucous affirmation. Rustler's valley, where we live, has a new year's festival every year as well, so without having to go anywhere, we were at a great party. Music filling the valley and lights, banners, colourful costumed revellers and primal fires grounding the thump thump thump of the techno-coloured yawp!!!! Deep down celebration, gratitude for this community that lives in natural harmony, grateful for our birthright that is justice.

Tucking daughter Kina in on new year's eve, we lit the candle she made me for Christmas, little round green apple, and made wishes for the new year. Wishing that all girls be well, that they carry strong hearts and sharp swords. Balancing the candle on the way back to the party, the wax warm running into my palm . Candle in one eye/moon in the other. One is a daughter/one is a mother. Can't see for the light in front of my eyes..... I'm swimming through the darkness, guided by candlemoons.

Everything, absolutely all of it, is a lesson and the stillness and slow pace of it all, the letting go, is healing. Just when you think there can be no consolation for all the dying, suffering, horrible abuse and downright evil in the world, someone pulls back the veil and you glimpse amazing grace. Hail Mary, heal Mary.

May you all have a new year filled with community, may you have a firm grasp of your sword, may you be part of many happy endings and beginnings this year.

Love

Andrea & Gary

I love you guys and thank u 4 listening.

Kids have the greatest Mary Poppins nanny who takes them on adventures & does projects with them. Marly has a big crush on her; when she has to go home we must pry him from her leg. They have their own little garden and an incredible, huge sandpit where they can dig caves and tunnels. Maybe they will grow up to be miners. They are the best thing in the world to come home to every day & occasionally we take them with us into Lesotho. Last time, we were at a fancy restaurant in the capital city, with a lovely fountain in the courtyard. Marly thought he'd try and grab one of the goldfish, so he reached in his fat little arm ... and somehow his whole fat little self ended up very wet. You should have seen his face as he had to shlorp, shlorp, shlorp across the crowded patio back to us in his soggy soggy shoes as all the diners erupted. Kina was very pleased. Nothing more enjoyable than a chagrined little brother.

We go to Lesotho just about every day. Once you get where you are going (in our rocket ship Saab we are traveling in) things slow right down. Yesterday we were off looking at irrigation with Terry, a crotchety old Boer with a thousand tall tales up his sleeve...hint - do not encourage a Boer to talk about hunting. He was very moved by the projects that we are involved with, saying in 25 years he has never seen anything so encouraging. Nice words from someone who knows the terrain. The biggest problem in Lesotho isn't lack of resources or labour ; these are in somewhat short supply, but there are plenty of fallow fields and idle people - the issue we are confronted with over and over is dependancy on aid; it seems to have killed a lot of initiative here in Lesotho; people expect a handout and won't get things started on their own. Plus government is wickedly corrupted ... the trail down from donors to the people is lined with greased palms. So donors come in, design projects, fund them to the hilt, then expect people, who actually only see 10% of the funding, to carry on once the funds are dry. A vicious cycle. Even farmers stop producing food when the World Food Programme comes around, but who would say food aid should be cut off in a place where people are starving????? Not stuff that is easily solved. And AIDS complicates things......... all the people my age are dying, leaving their kids behind..... it is a country of grandparents, widows, and orphans. And these guys are the nicest people you ever want to meet - cheerful, full of rhythm, and teasing each other all day long. How do they keep up their humour? They are really the most amazing people. And everyone is a character; Tim Burton would be in heaven picking extras around here, with all the big fat nuns and tall skinny old men dressed like Cab Calloway and the cock-capped young hustler's at the helm of brightly decked out donkey carts. Gorgeous. The architecture is tin shacks and perfect round mud huts, there are no bookstores, museums, or concert halls, but this place is a living, breathing opera. i think i mentioned everybody sings, all day long.... sitting by this lovely little spring yesterday, all the women started singing a hymn..." by the rivers of Babyon, I sat and wept, when I remembered Zion..." Harmony.

Fortunately we have very limited funds to spread around (!) and we have observed that money is the last thing people need... they need leadership , self-confidence, and ownership of their projects and ideas. So there's a lot of listening, and as the layers peel back we find out what we are really here for.... like yesterday, arriving in a village with our big irrigation scheme... turns out there are 2 natural springs & all we need to do is build a stone tank and gravity feed water down, will cost 20 bags of cement and a couple of day's labour.... at the end of the meeting, we were introduced to a woman and her adopted child. They hope we can help get her into the new school Salt Spring islanders are building here in Lesotho. It is to be a primary school for AIDS orphans, special needs, and 'vulnerable' children). So here's this woman laying on the ground, her holey shoes testament to her destitution, with her adopted kid who is mentally and physically handicapped. The girl, who is 8 but looks 5 (malnutrition will do that) literally can't sit, smelling strongly of urine, grinding her teeth and lolling her head. Dear Gary just sat and held her, and calmed her down with his stillness. He has learned much from his daughter about patience. So the story comes out; the woman is also mentally handicapped, lives alone, and occasionally her home is broken into by young boys and she is gang raped. Happened again last week. She is about 40. The girl is a double orphan, both parents died of AIDS; they are all each other has. I have no idea how they manage to eat. So we are asked to help get this strange and touching family to safe ground. Screw "sustainable development initiatives" - this is basic human dignity. We help. The school also has a residence for disabled kids, so these two can go and live there. The "mum" will be an extra pair of hands to balance the extra mouths they have to feed. What do we have to do with this story? We're just the chauffeurs.

do we make a difference?

This morning, after walking Kina and Marly to school, we set out for our day. Kina is in a class of 45 kids, grades 4 and 5 combined, in a small cinderblock building with 2 teachers. There are only 6 girls in the class... the mystery of where all the young girls are continues to baffle me. Her workbook is getting full of English grammar, Math, and Sesotho... she aces English, Math is very much like it is all over the world (and she does well at it when she decides to), and Sesotho is really HARD!!! but she's got 45 eager teachers and class spills over into the playground, where the real language instruction starts. Marly marches off to his kindergarten class, 30 kids and 1 young and energetic teacher, with 12 of them disabled in one way or another. He organizes ring around the rosy.. kids chuck their canes and grab each others hands, and do a good job staying standing and walking in a circle... wasn't ring a round the rosy popular during that other plague??? anyway, Marly and Kina are fine, so fine, and so brave to be along with this adventure. They will go further than I ever will at understanding this culture, and their world view will be forever influenced by their experience of this level of poverty, and the depth of community that is needed to survive (and sometimes thrive). Kids at school, done; on to our day.

First we pick up Mamanie, a girl who was diagnosed with TB yesterday when a couple of doctors from Maluti Hospital, originally from Boston University, came to do a clinic at Ha Makhata. Any kids who were sick were seen, along with some of the more severely disabled kids. You could see the doctors, who have only been in the country for a week, struggle to keep their emotions together as the parade of the sick and the maimed, in miniature, filed past them. This clinic took place in the little stone hut usually reserved for resident disabled kids. The community was happy that there was only 1 TB case, but we were sorry to see it was a girl who we really like who is sick. So this morning, Mamanie,a teenger, chucked her crutch in the back seat, we picked up Mamello, her mother, and Paffi, the Israeli volunteer who is helping build a guesthouse, and flew off in our flying saucer Saab. Up the hill to London, dropped off mum, carried on to pick up another girl, Lebohang. This girl is one of the scholarship students who is being sponsored by Salt Springers; she is a beautiful girl, a brilliant writer (once I sent you all a letter from her, "a 14 year old girls persepective") and is HIV positive and scared. She has been boarding with a family across the road from her new school, Khanyane High School. While it's close to the Tsepong Clinic, Lebo has been afraid to be seen walking in and out of the hospital, fearing the stigma from her peers. So we drove her there and met with the nurse, who tasked us with ensuring that Lebo keep her appointments and stick to her medications.

While Lebo was getting her CD4 count done, Paffi and I wandered into the support group's vegetable garden, a project that was supported by the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Here we saw beets and carrots, ready for the picking. Today is the support groups' meeting, where Motholo, our agriculture mentor, is coming to give a workshop about greenhouses; the group received funding through Omidyar Network to build a greenhouse and tree nursery so they can grow market seedlings and trees. The group will prepare the ground for the greenhouse and tomorrow we deliver the poles and hardware to erect the greenhouse frame. Outside the clinic, in the little memorial rose garden set up for clinic patients who often wait hours to see a doctor, we bumped into Ntate Ramphesa from the Tsepong Support Group, sitting on a bench. Last we saw him his wife was pregnant; they have just had a daughter, who is 2 weeks old. Born HIV negative thanks to the clinic's PMTCT programme, her name is Pride. We arrange for Ramphesa to meet with Lebo when she comes out of the clinic, to counsel her and invite her to join the support group. Being part of that community will help Lebo overcome the stigma she fears, and give her a group of adults who can help her with the practical aspects of her treatment, and give her the emotional support she needs.

We also arranged with Rampesa that the support group harvests the beets and carrots in the garden, which we will buy for the school lunches at Ha Makhata. Ramphesa is having trouble buying milk for the baby, as his wife (who is HIV+) can't breastfeed. The money from the vegetables will help. After dropping Mamanie off at the TB clinic for her chest xray, we carry on towards Maseru, the capital. At the ATM we run into Masheane, a police officer who helped us through the unbelievably complicated process of importing, and registering, a car in Lesotho (ever seen the movie "Brazil"???? a labyrinth of complications, orchestrated by incredibly sloooooow moving clerks, each wielding their stamps like scepters, aware of our dependence on their benevolence... a maze of line ups out the door that turned out to be the wrong line, offices closed at 2 pm, required papers that don't exist... that in the end, we gave up on protocol and just forged the last signature... forgive us, Lesotho Gov't, but I was too impatient!!!! meanwhile whenever we have crossed borders or been met at police roadblocks, we never get asked for our registration, even though we have no license plates and sport an expired south African sticker on our windscreen ). Anyway, Masheane helped us, and now he is trying to get the school fees organized for his young wife, who wishes to complete high school. $200, anyone? It's tough, all these relationships are good, but people do tell us their stories and ask for our help. We do what we can, but it is a struggle to try to decide what appeals to put out to you all , and what ones to keep to ourselves .... it comes down to what is do-able, who we feel is in their integrity and ready to make the committment necessary to use the money responsibly, and where the need seems most pressing. Cops make $200 a month, and Masheane looks after his sister and her baby since his father passed away from AIDS last year.

And here we are on our way to Maseru, reading all of your emails. Someone has a foundation and is buying a farm near Ficksburg, South Africa, (in our backyard!), to provide care for AIDS orphans; someone else is seeking to develop micro credit lending for Basotho entrepreneurs; another person has given a huge donation towards irrigation; someone else donated money to buy musical instruments for a youth HIV support group.... wow, this community to community thing is working....

Anyone who hasn't seen the appeal for funding for the school at Ha Makhata, please visit the project site and DONATE!!! www.solidsaltspring.com (go to links for Ha Makhata school) The school is operating on a wing and a prayer, and needs investors to help keep the teachers paid, get the school kids fed, and to complete the building. The vision is becoming real, with 250 kids, mainly orphans and many special needs & disabled kids, attending primary school. There are 5 teachers from the area and one fantastic volunteer from Canada, Sue Richards, who is helping develop the curriculum, teaching some classes herself, and taking on doing art therapy with 10 orphans as part of an after school programme (thank you Maggie Ziegler!). We feel blessed to be part of such an energetic community & these kids are getting a chance at a future.

Andrea

Melanie

While we were visiting in Lesotho Melanie and her new husband James drove from Zimbabwe to see us. It was wonderful to see her again. She's been working in Zim for the past year at Kafunda Village.

Melanie and James. Should have really done something about the red eye thing before I uploaded this to flickr.

A letter from Melanie that I just received today.

It’s been another typical week in Zimbabwe. No power for three days straight, i spent a few days at the hospital with sick friends, I drove for hours looking for fuel.

Work feels like something I do when I am not trying to survive and get the very basics of life done. In fact, now that I have a chance to reflect, I realize I did get some work done this week. I got out to the urban community that Kufunda works with. Kambuzuma is our only urban community, the other five are rural. I went here with Allan, their community worker who is also living at Kufunda. We spent three hours writing proposals for the businesses they want to start up. Candle making, herb processing, and sewing school uniforms. They all seem like viable projects, but only one get enough funding to start up. They are an impressive and motivated group of HIV+ folks whose main reason for wanting to make money (besides to just survive) is to help pay for the child headed homes in their community that cant afford even the basics, never mind school fees (which are seeming more and more like a luxury here.

They are busy organizing themselves to do all this community work meanwhile at least one or two members is always absent from the meetings and work because they are too sick to get out of bed. I couldn’t help feeling shocked and scared when James, one of the members whom I admire for his passion for alternative health and wisdom in nutrition, showed up looking like he had lost about 20kg’s. I had heard the last time I was there, which was about two months ago, that he was sick in bed so I was prepared, but I guess the extreme change in his appearance brought home the reality of the severity of the disease. I guess I still have this naïve attitude that it isn’t going to make sick the people that I really care about, that it wont take them away from me, esp. if I try as hard as I can to make them healthy. I then remembered that every one of these people I am sitting with is HIV+, poor, undernourished and unsupported by a failing healthcare system that doesn’t take care of its people, impoverished or not.

We got through the three proposals, which I didn’t realize in my ignorance was also going to be a lesson in filling out forms. I call it is a proposal, but really it is a basic outline for a project.

Meanwhile Sophia. We went in for her two-month check up at the OI clinic. There has been a meningitis scare. 12% of the patients have come down with it, so we were in for an extra intense day when she was told that she had to be tested. No warning, no preparation, no anesthetic. I don’t know, in Canada do they offer anesthetic for meningitis tests? Can someone let me know? Here they don’t, patience doesn’t even know about it.

She cried from the pain and I cried from witnessing this amazingly strong woman having to go through YET another struggle in her already difficult life dealing with this disease. Holding her hand, drying the tears and sweat running down her body, watching this crystal clear elixir of life dripping from the metallic 8-inch needle into three tiny glass bottles. I wondered how much we have of this vital “water” as the doctor called it, how much can we spare?

When the doctor, who is a caring wonderful woman, told me I had to ask the nurse where to take these three tiny bottles, I almost fainted myself! ‘ I have to carry this sacred fluid to the lab? She trusts me to do this?! Is the medical system in this country really that impoverished that they can’t hire someone to chaperone these samples to the lab!?! What if I trip and break them and she has to go through this torture she amounted to be as painful as child birth (“but”, she said you don’t get the baby after so it is worse than child birth”).

Anyways, I did it, carrying these three precious bottles; masking taped to the request forms by the doctor. Carry them for what they were worth; my dear friend not having to go through that pain again, carrying them upright, as the rusting lids, (one had a hole in it), carrying them up unlit staircases where the light bulbs hadn’t been replaced for who knows how long, past rooms labeled ‘bacteriology laboratory’. I was led to the three different labs where they took one sample each and showed me the way to the next lab, down dark hallways, cardboard boxes stacked to the roof, making the corridors even more narrow. Once again, surprise took me when I walked freely into these labs, witnessing the only equipment they had. It looked like out of some 1940’s horror movie or my grade 9-science class. “Trust”, I had to repeat to myself. Trust the system will work and my Sophia won’t be called in to go through this again cause this ancient equipment failed.

We got the results the next day. I had to go back, retracing my steps and memory to those three offices, to retrieve the results. She is fine, no meningitis, anyways, but just a chronic headache.

Today she is vomiting blood, but repeating over and over that ‘god is great, god is great.’

I e-mail Melanie and shared my own long ago experience with lumbar puncture and Meningitis. She can let Sophia know that even white folks in Canada are made to suffer the pain of that 8 inch needle. No cure at all when I had it at the age of 14, but I beat the odds to live and walk. I had far to much work to do.

Heather

Wanted to say hi to you all from an old friend, wonderful work you are doing,and how how your lives must be enriched hi to all love feexxx Meron s'Mor'z said:

They've arrived ... in a one horse Camero

For the next 6 months the McNutt family (Gary, Andrea, their 2 kids and Gary's father) will be in Lesotho guiding and reporting on SOLID projects and the Gardens of Hope.

Andrea and Scotty

Wanted to say hi to you all from an old friend, wonderful work you are doing,and how your lives must be enriched hi to all love feexxx