Real life in Blaauwbosch township

Yesterday I was taken to visit a family who we are hoping to help through a new outreach programme set up by St. Anthony's called 'Family Preservation'. It is about tackling the problem of children going into institutionalised care at the grass roots level, and supporting struggling families so that their children don't have to be removed in the first place.

The following family came to our attention because when the husband died a few months ago, they had no way of burying him so they came to us. In the end it was the Franciscan Sisters who organised the funeral and paid for a coffin. Now it is time for us to go back and tend to the living.

When I got back after the visit I was inspired to write an account of what I had seen in as much detail as possible while it was still fresh in my mind. I want to be able to capture all the tiny details which made up their family scene so that in years to come I can look back and remember what Blaauwbosch was really like.

So...this is now going to be a 'copy and paste' job from Word:

We pulled off the sand track and onto a grassy hill where we came to a stop infront of a clay brick house.
Outside three ladies sat on a blanket, leaning up against the house in the shade of its afternoon shadow. A toddler girl sat between them on the blanket, dressed rather ironically in a peach coloured, silky party dress with a white lace collar, ragged with years of wear in much less than tea party surroundings. Her outfit gave a melancholy beauty to their scene, as if they really were just sitting down for a family picnic, minus the hamper of food.
The elder girl was directed to fetch something and she ran up the hill into a different house and came back with a wooden bench, its surface polished smooth by the endless back sides which had taken up residence on its homely plane. Now it was to provide rest for the posteriors of rather different folk to usual; a social worker, a community officer and perhaps strangest of all to the scene, a young white lady, still pale from the English winter.
Mbongiseni lowered himself onto the blanket and sat addressing the mother and owner of the house. Whilst they conversed in zulu and the words flowed off me like water off a duck’s back, barely penetrating the surface, I found that I myself had a captive audience, in the form of the baby girl who kept looking up disbelievingly into my dark blue eyes with her dark brown ones.
I wondered what she must be thinking, how she must feel, living in this world which is the only one she has ever known. Does she feel the pain of hunger the same way as a well fed baby would, does she know how much she suffers compared with the rest of the world’s babies? Does she even cry at night with half the passion, that a baby who has everything the world can offer, still balls into the soft air of their perfect home?

She sat there and didn’t make a sound. She just stared up at me, then stared down at her hands. I had to stop myself leaping up when I saw what kept her so occupied. In her tiny hands she twirled between her little more than baby fingers, two rusty screws, so sharp on the ends that I thought they were nails at first. She was transfixed by them, twirling the two round and round in her hands, every time just missing pricking her gentle skin on their threatening points.
Just as her peach dress leant the scene tragic irony; now her contrasting softness with the sharp danger of the screws drew another ironic contrast. It quickly brought the moment back to the shocking reality of the danger which this life poses to such a young, vulnerable child.

The others began to stand and I realised that we were being invited to look within the house itself. As I followed the others to the door I had to pick my way carefully over an array of what looked like abandoned rubbish, but their proximity to the other children indicated that they were no longer rubbish, but improvised play things.
Again my eyes were drawn to a startlingly tragic, and at the same time poignantly beautiful image, just infront of the door lay a headless, naked Barbie doll. The peachy plastic of her white lady skin reflected the strong African rays of sun but unlike mine it did not burn. She lay there headless and dusty but ultimately unchanged from the doll which another, very different child, must have played with in its early days as a new toy. The broken beauty of the doll, also reflected the broken yet beautiful picture which this poor family portrayed. Having suffered so much, they are shattered and damaged but yet refuse to cast their broken lives on the rubbish heap. They persevere, picking up the pieces and still managing to find the beauty in their lives which faintly remains, perhaps invisible to other eyes but clear to their own.

The inside of the house was quite a different picture. I could find nothing in that scene to echo beauty or hope of any kind. How they could face to crawl into that hovel every night, I have absolutely no idea. In the doorway lay the ashes of a recent fire, whether for cooking food or generating some heat to combat the chilly nights I don’t know. The walls were mostly glazed black from the soot of the fire, but on the far wall someone had tried to create a patch of brightness in that black expanse by sticking up 3 coloured pages from a magazine. The only other thing to break the darkness were the holes in between the bricks where the cement had crumbled away and the sun itself shone through in white beams. For now it was sunshine, but I’m sure there are many more times when it is wind and rain coming in through those holes.

At first I had thought the room empty apart from the ashes and some piles of clothing up against the wall, until I realised that laying amongst the clothes was a figure. Some Zulu was exchanged and then Mobongiseni translated for me, the figure was the eldest daughter, laying down inside because she felt sick with a headache. I could see many reasons for this poor girl to have generated a headache, probably the simple fact that she didn’t have enough to eat or drink.

Having seen the grim state of the house itself, the social worker enquired as to the rest of the families’ basic living needs. Where did they get water from? Where did they go to the toilet? The answers were as bad as it can get really. They beg water from their neighbour’s tap, and they relieve themselves in the grass surrounding the house.

Amidst this dire, dire poverty I would have thought all glimpses of hope would have been extinguished long ago. I have visited other families with homes with running water, an outdoor toilet and electricity [of a fashion], who have lost their hope and sense of dignity to the point of absolute despair. But something about this family holds them together, gives them the strength to continue the daily toil, gives them enough self respect to want to wear clean clothes, though they may be ragged, and to fetch a bench for their guests, though they may not have refreshment to offer.

The surest sign that this family still holds respect for themselves and the life they lead, came with the simplest of comment from the mother. Whilst showing us inside her home she said, without any question to provoke it, ‘I am very good at beadwork, I can also weave grass mats’. This statement of fact was just left hanging in the air, completely disconnected from the conversation, standing alone as a simple statement of self-belief and self-worth.

She knows we are there with the intention of helping her and her family. She knows we are a charitable organisation and that we want to help those in need. What she wanted us to know is that she does not just want a hand out. She does not want to be another charity case. She is skilled, she can work, and she wants to work. She was offering us the services and skills that she can provide, as the only form of payment for the help which she knows she needs to accept from us. She is proud enough to want to earn what she can through her own skilled work, yet not too proud to realise that in order to give her children a better life, she must come to accept the help offered by those around her with grateful arms.
Today was a good day. I didn’t just learn one thing, I learnt three.

There can be dignity in poverty.
Hope in the face of despair.
Self-respect in the most demeaning of circumstances.