Day 4

Below is Mike's Day 4 wrap up.  They were busy! He's loving it there and is amazed at what God can do through people and a church who are totally sold out to making much of Christ and ministering to the needy around them.

 I dropped off the kids at his mom's house since I work tomorrow and Saturday.  I had the rudest ignoramus lady ask about my kids today.  I'll tell you later--you transracial adoptive families are gonna die!  I am supposed to be writing my nursing paper, but alas, I am enjoying hearing about Mike's trip too much.  I'm going--that is for sure--just not sure when.  Oh and honey, if you read this:  if one of those darling babes with the huge brown eyes happens to jump in your suitcase, I won't mind too much :))

Nokhukanya Crèche(means feeding center) is operated by Mbuse (sp? … m-boo-say), an impressive woman who is openly HIV+.  Most people do not want to be tested because a positive test can mean loss of a job, being socially ostracized, and even being kicked out of one’s home, so to be openly positive is pretty gutsy.  Mbuse uses her status as a means to encourage others to be tested and to get on antiretroviral medications in order to manage the disease.  She is a believer and has a tremendous ministry to care for the sick and dying in her area.  She operates a crèche that was basically built in her backyard by funds God provided through Two Tunics (used to be operated out of her home).  Her arms and legs were covered with small lesions and she was thinner than most other women I’ve seen.Many of the children in her crèche are HIV+.  They were adorable.  In other places, kids wanted to have their pictures taken and then look at themselves in the viewfinder.  These kids were motioning to me and holding up their hands.  I thought they wanted their pictures taken, but Robin told me, “Mike, they just want to be held.”  I put the camera down (I was worried they might grab for it, but they completely ignored it), and took turns picking these beautiful kids up and holding them tightly.  They fought and jumped up and down for attention just trying to get to be hugged. 

Home Visits1) The first home we visited was in Murchison near the community center we visited yesterday. It was about the size of our kitchen and dining room and the walls were bare concrete blocks.  At first I thought the pallet was empty until I realized we were gathering around it. Then I noticed the gray haired head on the pillow. The body was so thin that it didn’t even show underneath the covers—only the side of a head indicated that someone was there. The little old lady was ill and not doing well. Mike encouraged them to continue giving her the medicine she’d gotten at the hospital and to feed her well. Amos led in a song, and Dr. Nash prayed over the woman. I never would have guessed that this was one of the nicer homes we’d visit today.
2) The second home we visited was half destroyed.  It appears that it halfway collapsed (it was primarily made of mud and sticks) and now the government was going to build them a new home, but they ran out of money midway through, so there’s a half-finished cinder block house next door with no roof on it. The kitchen had no ventilation and the walls were black with soot since all cooking is done over open fire.
That home currently houses the sons of the family who used to live there. Amos was telling us that the mother and grandmother lived nearby when he pointed and said, “There she is.” We looked across a grassy, narrow gully about 40 yards away and saw something moving in the grass. Robin asked, “Is she crawling?” and Amos said she was—that she had lost her legs to “sugar diabetes.” Sure enough, the grass parted and we could see this woman dragging herself toward us with two small children (about 2yo) following her through the high grass.  Basically what’s going on is that the grandmother (no idea how old she was—said she was born in either 1912 or 1915), mother, and two small children lived in this two-room shack. Dr. Nash and Robin gave them a parcel of food and the grandmother clapped her hands and thanked us over and over. I just can’t describe how poor these people were. They truly depend upon God for “daily bread.”
Dr. Nash took a look at a cut Robin had found on the woman’s knee—probably sustained from crawling over the rough, trashy ground. She had the elastic upper section of a sock pulled up over her knee as a sort of knee pad, and under it was a pretty good cut. I went back to the car and got my antibiotic ointment and some Band-Aids which he used to bandage it up as best as he could. She was very grateful. I wish we could get her some knee pads or something—there’s no way a wheelchair would be of any use on this hilly, rough terrain. Amos said that the ladies used to come to his church, but they can’t get there now, so we sang and prayed with them. When it was time to go, the ugogo (grandmother) thanked us and told us not to forget about her.
3) The third home we visited belonged to a Christian woman named Evelyn who runs a crèche(feeding program) out of her home called Salvation Place. It was nap time and there were about 25 kids laying in rows on the floor in her living room. Needless to say, our arrival didn’t help facilitate naptime!
4) The fourth and final home we visited was a shack in Mkholombe (the shantytown). It was just dreadful.  We weaved down paths between houses about 10X10 made of old pieces of junk lumber, sheets of discarded tin, old signs, and even cardboard. Mike told us that the government owns the land and lets people live there, but they cannot build anything permanent. I don’t know how they ever found the house they were looking for, because it all looked the same to me, but we finally entered a tiny room with a small cookstove, a bed, two plastic lawn chairs, and small shelf/counter.  On the floor was a baby about a year old asleep on a neatly folded blanket under another blanket. An older woman knelt on the floor by the baby, and once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see a younger woman on the bed. Amos explained that the woman on the bed was named Tendaki, and that the older woman was her mother and the baby was her son. Tendaki is HIV+ . The older woman stood up, and we prayed and sang. During the singing, the baby woke up and looked up at me (I was standing right over him) and had a major “When the heck did all these white people get here?” look on his face!
The room was stifling hot because the walls were sheets of tin and there was no ventilation.  Yet here lay this poor, sick woman under a heavy blanket on a rickety bed with no running water and the nearest toilet a fairly long walk away. Mike said that the family actually consists of 10 people who share this room and the one next door.

 Mkholombe was probably the most hopeless place I’ve ever seen. There was trash everywhere. Everyone in the entire camp shared a few toilets (outhouses really) on the edge of the camp. Children wandered the alleys between shacks unattended. There was nothing green anywhere.

42yr old HIV+ man at Genesis Care Center who told Mike he was too young to die.

Stinkin adorable darlings at a community center program!