February at St. Anthony's - Valentine's, New friends and Visits to old ones

Dear Reader,

Apologies for anyone who has been anticipating my next blog, time has run away with me recently, I can’t believe it is almost the end of Feb and I have been here for over 3 weeks!

A lot of different things have been going on here, it has been so varied that I really haven’t settled into any kind of routine yet. My newly acquired international driver’s licence has proven very useful and almost every day I run some kind of errand for the Home. Either driving the manager, Sis Pumi, to town to do the grocery shopping, or driving to Dundee – a 45min drive – to take children to the private clinic there. The clinic is run by a doctor who specialises in innovative ARV treatments for HIV. For several years now he has been providing quality health care for all of the children of St. Anthony’s completely free of charge. He has become very attached to some of the children and buys them clothes and toys – one boy even came back to the Home with a bicycle!

I was very happy to finally meet this doctor on Wednesday when I took 6 of the children for blood tests. We had to bring them between 7 and 8am, before the surgery opens, and he welcomed us with smiles and sweets for the kids, he also speaks good zulu and was chatting and joking with the kids, putting them at their ease. 3 of the children were already receiving ARV treatments and needed to have their blood tested to monitor their progress. The other 3 needed to be tested to find out if they were positive.

I waited with two of the children and the doctor's wife, who is also a Doctor, came to take their blood. They behaved like absolute angels, I couldn’t believe that they didn’t even flinch as she took 2 phials of blood from each of them. We then waited anxiously for the results of the 3 new children, it only takes a few minutes for the test to come back.
She came in holding one of the tests and looking excited, it was the results for the baby boy. ‘He’s negative, he’s negative!’ she said, my eyes welled up immediately with relief. The careworker holding the baby was overjoyed, the doctor came over to him and was cuddling him saying ‘you have to grow up to be a big, strong, man now, study hard and be a big clever boy’. That was it, I was crying right there in the reception of the clinic. It was a very emotional day and I was privileged to be able to assist, even in the small way of driving them there.

As well as regular trips to the clinic in Dundee I have also been trying to further benefit the children at the Home by organising an event on Valentine’s Day. We think it is an important thing to recognise Valentine’s day in the Home to let the children know that they are loved and to celebrate the love they receive from their careworkers. Also, because many of them have suffered from sexual abuse, they have a very negative view of relationships and also of their own bodies. Teaching them about meaningful, loving relationships and teaching them that they will one day be able to be happily married with their own children who they will love, is a very motivating and has a positive, healing effect on the children.

I arranged for the entire 90 children in the Home to go for a day trip to a nearby park which has games and a big swimming pool. We went straight from church and arrived by 12pm, the kids ran straight off to play, loving the fact they were away from the Home and able to run around in a new environment, it was like being on a school trip. Once they were settled I drove to town to buy five 5litre tubs of ice cream and a hundred cones. The children were ready for ice cream when I got back as it was such a hot day, although cloudy it was very humid. They were hungry for their lunch now so we gave them fried chicken [like home made KFC] and steamed Zulu bread [tastes a bit sweet, also a bit like a dumpling]. Once they had eaten we went round to the swimming pool, I was so happy to see that it was quite big, maybe 30m long, 20m wide. I also jumped in with the kids and we had great fun, I was trying to teach some to swim and also was giving others piggy backs up and down the pool. Most of them don’t know how to swim so they stayed down at the shallow end, just splashing around. I really hope I might be able to arrange some kids back at the weekends and give them swimming lessons myself. It only costs R3 per child, about 30p, and it is only a 20min drive from the Home. If I could buy some floats for them to use to practice kicking their legs, I could have a pretty successful swimming lesson!

Most of my time at the Home has been spent in getting to know the children, playing with them, talking English with them, and helping them with their studying. Since December there has been quite a lot of new children admitted to the Home. We are back up to 90 children but about 30 of them have left, and 30 new ones have arrived. It is these 30 new ones that I have been getting to know. In the teenage boys’ cottage there has been a pair of brothers admitted, they arrived on the same day as I did, 29th January, and have come from Ladysmith where they have been abused for the last 10 years by their grandfather [actually their great-uncle]. He would chase them from the house and most nights they would sleep outside without any blankets and with an empty stomach. The reason I know this story is that the older brother and I have become very close, he talks to me almost every night, telling me about his past and the way he is struggling to get over the death of his mother and the fact that he doesn’t know who his father is. He often feels angry at the fact that his father doesn’t care if he is even dead or alive, he hates to think his father is alive somewhere and doesn’t want to check on his son. Despite his many problems, he has a very strong belief in God and feels that He is the only reason he is alive today. He says that he often prayed that someone would come and kill him in his sleep so that he could be at peace. Even now he still feels that. He says he feels like there is something wrong with him, like he doesn’t belong in this world since his mother died. I don’t know how to help him, other than being his friend and always talking positively. Telling him that he is talented and loving and that he has a new future ahead of him, he can decide what happens to him now and can be anything he sets his mind to.

I have also been spending a lot of time with one of the teenage girls, she speaks perfect English because she is actually coloured, not Zulu. We have great fun together, just like we have found our long lost sister! It’s like having a younger sister, we went out to the cinema, to the shops, had a KFC, we hang out and listen to music, yesterday we made pizza from her school recipe book and then in the evening I straightened her hair. I really love having her around and it makes me feel like I really am part of a family here.

For those of you interested in the housing programme that I collected money for after Christmas, we are beginning to plan for a building project which is due to start on 6th March. I visited the family we will be helping, it is the mother of 2 of the children who stay with us. She has overcome her alcohol problem and has really got her own life back together. The problem now is simply with their living conditions, which are the poorest I’ve ever seen. They stay in a one room mud house, it is about the size of a small box room and is made of a wooden stick frame covered in dried mud. In places the mud is worn away and you can practically see sunlight through the walls. It has no windows, only a tiny square hole on the front of the house. Despite this, the house itself is kept impeccably clean, swept and tidy. There were freshly washed babies’ nappies hanging on the line and the yard is level and so tidy. The view from the house is of rolling green hills and mountains looming on the horizon. The day we went the sky was a brilliant blue and just a few pure white clouds drifted across the sky. We sat under the shade of her tree and it was just so peaceful and picturesque, despite the poverty and reality of the living conditions. There was no tap there, they have to use the neighbours, there was no toilet and no electricity. It is the most basic existence you could ever imagine.

Talking to the mother, we told her of our plans to build her a brick house. She said she couldn’t believe her ears, this was a dream come true for her. She loves her children so much and cried when we handed her a letter from her son. I am so excited to be part of this project and this week we will be finalising plans for the ordering of bricks, cement and sand, and the appointing of a builder to oversee the construction. We will be building a two-room brick house which has been estimated at about R10, 000 which is £1, 000. This includes getting the bricks, cement, door and window frames and a roof. It is simply amazing that just a thousand pounds can give a family a home and enable them to be reunited after so many years apart.

The final update I have for you is on my good friend Mark. I visited him on Saturday which is the first time since October! We were very happy to see each other and he wanted to know why it had been so long since my last visit. He had heard that I had gone back to England and he was worried that I wasn’t coming back. I told him that I had been busy before Christmas and that I had only got back at the very end of January.

He is doing so much better than when I saw him last. He says it is not all that bad now. He has made a good friend, another coloured boy called Dominic, who also came out to visit us. He seemed like a nice young man, it sounds strange I know! But it is only what they have done which is bad, they are actually very good people who made a mistake at one point in their life. They really deserve forgiveness and support, at the end of the day they were little more than children when they committed these crimes and they did so because they were desperate or misguided.

Mark said that he started his engineering course in January at the technical college which is based inside the centre. They are taught by people from the Amajuba technical college which is in our local township, Madadeni, and which some of our ex-Athonians attend. When Mark comes out he will be able to continue his qualification at the college, as long as we can find someone to pay his tuition fees. The problem is that the director of the Home is still very upset with what Mark did and he does not want to support him in any way anymore. When he comes out he will not be welcome at St Anthony’s so I just don’t know how he will get back on his feet on his own. If I was allowed I would visit Brandon every weekend but the director won’t allow it, and I have to respect his wishes as he believes visiting him means he won’t learn his lesson.

I agree - quietly and politely - to disagree. It makes no sense to abandon this young man, who has been in institutionalised care for most of his life, when he is at the lowest point of his life. Obviously the system of care has had its failings or else he wouldn’t have ended up in prison in the first place. You can’t blame him for committing this crime when you are the one who has brought him up. I will continue to try and find ways to help Mark make a success of his life. He is such a gifted young man, he really could be a gift to the rest of this world, not a criminal. I truly believed he regrets what he has done completely and utterly, and would take it back if he could, not just for the fact that he has wound up in prison.

I just want to share with you a little of what Mark wrote to me in a letter, so you can see what and intelligent, thoughtful and intellectual person he is...

“It is true that some things are easier to say when written on paper but still I don’t know how to thank you for the friendship that you have given to me and the love that you have shown to me, but one thing you should know is that ‘years may fly, tears may dry, but memories of you won’t die.’ I would like to apologise for the wrongs that I have done, although it is past I am still stuck in the consequences of my previous actions. I promise that it won’t happen again.”

He also shared the following quote with me which I think he must have read inside, and it makes me so happy to know that he is able to read this kind of encouraging and motivational material:

“It does not matter where you come from, the world is yours because no matter how dirty your past is, the future is spotless. Life is a blank page but it is written with a permanent marker, so make sure your marks are always positive so that when you read it, you will feel you have conquered and achieved all your goals.”

One thing is for sure, no matter what I achieve now I am in South Africa, I will feel I have let myself down if I do not continue to visit Mark and try and help him in any way I can through our friendship. I may be here to work at St. Anthony’s Home, but if St. Anthony’s has had to let him go his own way, I can still be there to help him on his way.