Privacy Act

The privacy act has been brought to my attention and I am concerned that I may have breached it in some of my stories. I am now editing all posts and all children's names used in future will be fictionalised to preserve privacy. I can only apologise for such a terrible oversight.

My lucky escape!

I have realised that my blog has been ever so serious and even a bit depressing for you lovely readers, and that perhaps it is painting my life here as also very serious and depressing! When it is really not at all! I am going to recall some of the characters I have met here and an amusing incident I managed to get myself into...

Last week an English volunteer arrived who has been volunteering in India, in HIV hospices, for 7 years. Her name is Shelia, she’s around 65 but is so full of life, adventurous and determined you’d never guess! She worked in Waitrose for 20 years and when she retired, decided she would take the opportunity to travel and also finally live her dream of nursing people. India have recently changed the rules on Visas and now you have to leave the country for 2 months before you can apply for a new one [which takes a week to get]. So Shelia decided to work in another country for 9 weeks and found a place at the ARV clinic which is just behind St Anthony’s. As the nuns didn’t feel a person who was not a practicing Catholic could cope with life in the convent and all the prayers and routine, they asked permission for her to stay up here with me instead. It is nice to have the company but I must be honest, communication beforehand was not good so I was told to expect an Indian girl in her 20s...not an English pensioner! But oh well, it’s company all the same!

Shelia is fiercely independent and from the minute she arrived has been expressing her frustration at the fact she is not in a country with good public transport and is also living in an area where it is not safe to even walk to the top of the street. Even for black people here, there is so much crime in the area that you cannot safely walk up the road without the fear of being challenged for your money or phone. Shelia was used to driving round India [near Bangalore] on her scooter and living in her own flat in a completely non-white area. She feels like she is caged in here, describing it as a prison! Though I know it can be tough I have never really resented the fact at all, that I can’t go outside the gates. I just accept it, even though I too am used to lots of freedom and walking where I like, even at night, in the UK. I was a bit taken aback at Shelia’s reaction, even after 5min she was frustrated, it’s not like she’d been here a week and not gone out!

But anyway, we have booked her an organised holiday with a company, to go all round SA and see the sites she had been hoping to visit. Only problem is...she didn’t read the small print and it turns out it was cheap for a reason. It’s a camping trip! They have to pitch their tents every night, build fires and cook their own meals, working from a rota. I hope she can cope with it! I don’t think I could, and I’m 40 years younger!

Anyway, two nights ago I had to go out at 6pm and fill up the car with petrol as the fuel prices were due to go up the next day. I took Shelia with me so she could have an outing and also stock up on food and airtime at the supermarket in town. We were heading back at about 8pm and i was already pitch black on the roads, but it wasn’t too busy so it was ok. In the daytime the roads are heaving and taxi drivers speed down the middle of the road, overtaking incessantly [and the next minute perform an emergency stop in front of you to offload a passenger] so you really have to keep your wits about you. But now it was quiet and we were chatting away, I was laughing at one of Shelia’s tales from her travels. The next thing I knew there was a man standing in the middle of my lane, wearing a fluorescent orange coat and shining a torch to signal me to pull over. ‘O shit’ [excuse my language!], I said as I realised it was a traffic cop with a speed trap and I had just entered the 60kmph zone, still doing around 80kmph. I was annoyed, it was such bad luck, especially as I had a big 4x4 right on my bumper trying to overtake for a km which was probably what had made me keep my speed up. And he ofcourse, got away scott free!!

I put the handbrake on and rolled down my window, feeling sick to the pit of my stomach and wanting to cry, to be honest! The traffic cop greeted us with ‘good evening ladies’ but then ‘what were you thinking going so fast!? This is going to be an expensive conversation for you now!’ I was pretty gobsmacked and didn’t know what to say so just sat there. Then he reached in and patted my chest saying, ‘what is this? Your heart is beating like crazy! You don’t need to be scared!’ It was a bit creepy now I look back but at the time I was beginning to feel relieved as I thought, I think we might be able to get out of this one!

Shelia came to my rescue saying, ‘sorry officer, it was my fault, we were talking and lost track of the speed limit’. He asked for my drivers’ licence and I handed it over, explaining that it was an overseas one and had an international counterpart. Once he heard that, realised we were from the mythical land of ‘overseas’ I knew we would be ok! He addressed me as Rebecca and it gave me confidence to start chatting to him. I told him we were both volunteers, living at St. Anthony’s children’s home. He knew the place because he said he was schooling at St Lewis. That helped the flow of the conversation as I told him I also worked there too, teaching English, and he began to talk about the Sisters who used to run the place. Within a couple of minutes he was asking for my hand in marriage and my reply ‘what Lobola are you offering?’ seemed to please him as it showed I knew some Zulu [Lobola is the amount of cows [or money] the groom's family has to pay for the bride]. By the time it came to drive off he was saying ‘thank you so much, I’m so happy to have met you. Keep your doors and windows locked and don’t stop for anyone.’ ‘Not even for traffic cops?’ I tried to joke, ‘No of course you stop for us, you are safe with us!’ was his reply as he waved us off!

Me and Shelia rolled up the windows and burst into hysterics at our encounter! We felt so chuffed that we had, seemingly, talked our way out of a R400 speeding ticket and had even made a friend out of it! We were wise after the event, both saying, ‘I knew he wouldn’t fine us’. But at the time I was sure he would have to, even if he had a chat as well!

I got back and went straight to the boys’ cottage to relate the tale to Mlondi and Kaye, the careworkers there. I certainly exaggerated my role in talking us out of the fine, but then, why not? Anyone would! I certainly felt like I had won him round with my English accent and fancy pink drivers’ licence, haha! But getting back on the road today, I was extra vigilant and stuck to the limits all the way! I certainly don’t want to see if I can pull off that lucky trick again!!

Rebuilding a Family: the house in the final stages of the build

Families Together and Families Apart

Dear Friends and family,

Firstly, I wish you all a very Happy Easter! I hope you all have a nice time with your families, I am missing you all very much as this is the first time in 22 years that I haven’t been at home for Easter. It hit me yesterday when I was attending Good Friday service here in Dundee, I suddenly realised I had always spent Good Friday in Rayleigh. I have been staying here in Dundee with my godfather Peter, and living in the Priest’s house with him, since Wednesday. I was feeling lonely and depressed at St Anthony’s without the children, the place is like a ghost town when the kids are gone! So I wanted to get away...I am having a very relaxing time, just reading, cooking, watching some movies and enjoying the high speed internet connection that staying in the town affords, it means I could upload all the photos which ‘failed’ when in the township!

Since I last wrote I can update you on the progress of the house we are building. It is now almost complete, it just needs a roof! The 2 children are staying there now and I saw them last week, they are so happy and excited about the house. I went there just after 6pm and it had already turned pitch black. The rural life seems like another world in the dark! It was terrifying just getting out of the car to greet them as I imagined snakes in the long grass, or at least holes in which you would twist your ankle. It was absolute darkness there, you couldn’t see your hand if you held it up infront of your face. There is no electricity of course, but the full impact of that can’t be appreciated when you visit during the daytime. They were all standing round the glowing orange embers of a fire in a metal drum, standing outside next to the house. The smell of wood smoke stung my nostrils and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness Fiona came bounding up and was hugging me, saying ‘I am so happy to see you Aunt Becky’. Her face was alive with excitement and her smile shocked me back to reality, and to see her reality. My kind of shock and horror at the reality of spending a night here was totally thrown off by Fiona’s apparent ease and behaviour...this is her life. This is what she has always known. For me it felt crazy to be spending a night effectively, just out in the open, at the mercy of the elements. But for her, it was just any other evening in her home town, and she was overjoyed to be spending it with her mother and siblings. In the evening at St Anthony’s she is regularly in my house, using my laptop to type her homework and listen to music, and they came floating into my mind. The contrast seems unbelievable, they are like two different worlds. That’s when I realised again how much these children love their families and the place that they are from. Fiona knows she could have stayed somewhere else for the holidays if she had asked, she could have continued with her ‘normal’ life, having hot showers and electricity to use and regular meals. But they always choose to be with their families, no matter what conditions they are living in.

Just as I found myself sitting in church in Dundee and being overwhelmed by homesickness and missing my family in Rayleigh, so too must Fiona feel every day at St Anthony’s that there is one thing they can’t provide her with, they can never replace her family and the bond they have. No matter where we go in the world and what we are doing, home will always be with our families.

The importance of family is something which has been coming to my attention every day over the past few weeks. I have been working a lot on the Family Preservation Programme which we are trying to launch here, basically providing support for families in the community who are struggling with child care so that we can prevent social services coming and removing the child to an institution. It might be helping them get access to government grants, getting registered with ID cards for themselves and their children, bringing emergency food parcels and clothes, helping to dig vegetable gardens or paying school fees. Next month we are launching our first Parenting Skills workshop where our team of child care workers will be helping to educate some local parents in such things as behaviour management techniques, health and hygiene advice, budgeting skills etc. We also have plans to begin family counselling workshops with 3 families at a time where they will have access to things like bereavement and alcohol abuse counselling. Just to be given a chance to discuss, as a family, in a safe and supportive environment, the problems which they are facing and to see if there is a way they can be assisted in overcoming them. So often problems just continue unanswered, without facing them, and families feel like there is no one who they can ask for help. Our dream is to become a resource centre for the community and assist families in their homes so that their children do not have to be taken away from them, which often causes more problems than it seeks to solve.

Next Wednesday we have a very exciting visit, it is from an organisation which I applied to for funding for the Family Preservation Programme. They have decided to come and make a site visit and discuss further what we are doing and how we are doing it. They are flying all the way from Cape Town just to come and see us, so it is looking quite promising already! I will be heading home on Tuesday so that I can be there for that meeting. Hopefully we will even be taking them out to eMondlo to show the house that we are building as part of the Programme.

The other reason the importance of Family has really come to my attention over the past few weeks is because of a relationship I have been developing with one of the children from St Anthony’s. At St Anthony’s each child has a very different set of difficulties, each unique and each needing unique care to overcome them. But on average, the children we have can be divided into two groups, those with a family and those without. Fiona and Pete have similar stories, both have parents who are alive and love them, but are suffering from alcohol abuse and poverty. Their holidays are tough, and the conditions they face are beyond most of our imaginations, but they face them together as a family. The other group of children...are those with no family to visit in the holidays. The ones who are sent [and received very warmly and lovingly!] to host families for the holidays. For some, this Easter may have been their first encounter with that family, but others have built up relationships over the months and years and see these ‘new’ families as their real one.

Gerry is a very good example of a very successful host family. He stays near Ladysmith with a foster mother and his own real brother who is 2 years older. He misses them so much during the term and really wants to live with them permanently. The only thing standing in his way is his biological mother who refuses her permission for him to live with the foster mother permanently [although the boys haven’t lived with her for about 8 years]. I think she sees it as her sons being given away to another mother, and she doesn’t want them to abandon her. But the fact is, the transfer of affection has already taken place. When Gerry says ‘I want to see my mother’ and I ask ‘which one?’ he always means the foster mother, not his biological mother. He has found a new family and that is where he wants to be. He is turning 18 in September and I am hopeful that this will bring him the freedom to choose where he stays, he will no longer have to do as his mother says.

The child I wanted to tell you about today in regards to the importance of family, is an 18 year old boy who arrived in January. His story is one of abandonment and abuse, from the age of 4 when his mother left to find work in Joburg, he has been passed from grandmother to aunty, now to St. Anthony’s. He and his brother suffered abuse in their aunty’s house for 10 years before social services heard through a school teacher that the boys needed help. They had effectively worked as servants in their aunt’s house, doing all the cleaning and cooking, being treated as second class children compared with her own children and grandchildren, and sleeping on the floor in a kind of cupboard for 10 years. Their uncle beat them badly, the younger boy has a terrible scar on his face from a glass bottle, the incident nearly led to the police being involved which was when they were finally taken to social services.

I spend a lot of time talking with the older brother and the overriding issue that causes him to suffer and feel depressed every day, is not regarding the abusive family [who he forgives wholeheartedly] but the loss of his mother. Although she left when he was 4, he always felt a glimmer of hope that she would one day return for him and his brother from Joburg. The only reason she didn’t come, in his mind, is that she was not successful in finding work and didn’t feel she could return to them empty handed. But he never lost hope, in her, in her love for him, and in their final reunion. But in 2006, at the age of 14, news came that she had passed away. He had not seen her since she had left 10 years before but he was able to attend her funeral. He remembers every aspect of that day, and the pain he felt, and he was so distressed he wasn’t able to go to the cemetery. He says that on that day his life changed forever, that was the day when he lost everything. The woman who had brought him into this world and who had loved him, had left this world, and he no longer feels he has a right to be here either. He says he wants to go and be with her so that he can be at peace finally. He has never been able to properly grieve for the loss of his mother, and to find a way through his mourning. It is as if, even though it is 4 years later, he is still in the earliest stages of grief. He needs to experience real bereavement counselling to understand her death and to find a way forward, beyond it, to experience his own life and the happiness in store for him. It is as if he has reached a brick wall. Until he can understand the loss of his mother he will always be stuck in the past and unable to enjoy his present and future.

When I spoke to him yesterday on the phone he asked me ‘what will ever make me happy?’ I thought about it for awhile, and in the light of the homesickness I had been feeling, and the pain he is in, the answer which I fully believe will be the only solution to his sadness was ‘Family.’ The kind of love and comfort that he longs for is the unconditional and never ending love which a person receives from their family. Just as with Fiona’s situation; money, property, jobs, possessions, they are not what makes our lives truly happy or fulfilled. The only thing which can bring us real comfort and peace in our lives is to know that we have, somewhere out there, even if they are far from us...the unconditional love of our family. Fikile is happy, in her poverty stricken home, but with the love of her family. This young man cannot feel happy even when surrounded by nice things, caring people, good food, and a bed, because he feels he lacks a family. When someone doesn’t know where they are coming from, their gaze is captivated and obsessed with the past, looking behind them, to see where they are from. There is no chance to think of the future and the life you can have when you cannot keep from looking back over your shoulder. He will never be healed until he can be helped to understand his past, find some loving members of his family, and enable himself to look forward again. Once he can focus on the future, perhaps he will start to see that his true happiness will be completed when he begins a family of his own. When he has a wife and children of his own, he can make up for that family-less childhood, by creating a family and loving a family all of his own.

This young man is full of talent and potential and he has an amazing strength of character. He has been able to forgive the treatment he received at the hands of his relatives and he is an inspirational brother for his 4 years younger brother. He works hard at school and is praised by all his teachers for his determination. And he makes friends and people love him where ever he goes. At St Anthony’s people were quickly drawn to him and care deeply for him, I like to think, me most of all. But also at his new school, he has a teacher who he is close to and who really cares for him. Where ever he goes in this world, he will be successful and his character will draw people to him and provide great opportunities. But firstly he needs to learn to love himself for who he is. Then he will begin to realise those around him love him, and that he has a great future.

He is not completely without family, as he has two brothers, one older and one younger than him. I asked him what were their Zulu names and what did they mean. I was so happy and surprised to hear that the three names, when said in the order of their ages, almost read like a message from their mother. Their names are ‘We have Power, Together, We have enough’. The three of them, together, if they stick together and care for each other, have power and they have enough. Just the three of them together, is enough.

A message from a mother to her three sons, in her absence.

Together, you have power.

The three of you together, is enough.

As long as you are together you have all you need.

I really hope that I can continue to deepen my friendship with this boy and that, together, we can overcome the sadness and loss that he feels and look forward to a bright future. More than ever, since January and meeting this boy, I have felt like there is a strong reason and purpose for me to fulfil here. I feel needed, and more than that, I feel like I need this young man too! We have been brought together to share this part of our lives journeys and to help each other along the way.

One last thing, while being here I have discovered the very enjoyable importance of names and their meanings. To the Zulus, and all Africans, names tell stories and they always have a meaning. It inspired me to look up the meanings of my own names. I have found that all of my names are biblical, Rebecca was the wife of Issac, it is a Hebrew name. Sarah was actually Issac’s mother! Also a Hebrew name. Jane, I am not sure about, but it means ‘God is Gracious’ and is the female version of John. Sarah is Hebrew for ‘Princess’ and Rebecca means ‘to bind together’. I was so happy to finally know the meaning of my name and it has really shown me a lot about myself, who I am, and what my purpose is. I was so happy to remember the song

‘bind us together Lord,

bind us together with chords that cannot be broken.

Bind us together Lord, bind us together,

bind us together with Love’.

I really hope that somehow that is what I am doing here. Bringing people together through a common Love. My love for children, my love for families, hopefully they can share that love with each other through me.

When I asked someone, ‘so what would my Zulu name be?’ I was so happy and amazed to hear them say ‘Hlanganani’. Because, as you may have guessed, that is this young man’s name too.