Rebuilding a Family: Brick by Brick

My gosh! This has been a very draining and troublesome 3 weeks...but it will all be worth it in the long run I hope.
Since my last blog, sorry again for the dry spell [that's Africa for you], but a lot has been going on here, as I have been attempting to launch a new initiative for St. Anthony's Home...the Brick by Brick scheme, Rebuilding Families :)

These are all my little taglines for it, officially it is called the Family Preservation Programme, but the Director has also been playing around with nice names for it, his chosen one is 'Insika' which is Zulu for 'Pillar', representing the strengthening of families which we want to provide, so that the can rebuild that 'pillar' which is the centre of the family and keeps them together. I also approve the name, as I tried to explain to him, my initials are RSJ, which in building terms is a Reinforced Steel Joist...i.e. the pillars which secure a house. So in a way...I feel like the scheme is named after me, haha.

So, it all began back in December last year, at the time when the schools were closing for holidays and we were delivering the children to their host/biological families depending on the situation. This was when I really started to realise that our children are here for very different reasons. Yes, some have suffered horrendous abuse, and they will never be returning to those abusive households. But others, actually come from families which they love, and who love them in return, but circumstances have become so bad that they have to be removed for their own health. The root cause of the problems in these families is invariably poverty...which leads to the age old problem of Alcohol abuse. 'Abuse' yes...but abuse to the body of the person who is drinking it, not necessarily to the children of that person. Yes, some people do drink which then causes them to abuse their children, but in other cases...especially in women who drink...the children suffer through neglect and lack of supervision.

I am still surprised when people come out with the question 'why do they drink?' and anyone who acts appalled at the idea of Alcoholism really, REALLY, just doesn't understand. Just one hour in the townships, seeing how these people live day after day, year after year, and you immediately know the answer to 'why would you drink?'. The question really is, why don't they do something worse. If there is any kind of life circumstance when you have a just cause to want to 'drown your sorrows', 'drink to forget' and throw yourself into oblivion...then living in a mud room, 2m by 3m, with no electricity, no water, no toilet, barely any furniture, and the most basic of foods...that is the kind of life you want to forget.

When you have lived this way for your entire life, you really cannot see any way out. It is not a case of, you're down now, brush yourself off and try again. When you are born at the bottom, in the worst situation known to humans, if that is how your parents lived, and your grandparents...there really will feel like there is no hope. The only way out of there is with the helping hand of someone else, and she hasn't seen one of those for decades. As far as she knew, help was NOT on the way, there was NO light at the end of the tunnel...so? Drink to forget. Block out the hell that is your life, with a blankness, the darkness of drunkness, when you can numb your pain, if only for a few hours.

In December, I visited the house of a child, a teenage boy called Pete. His mother is an alcoholic, his father and brother are in jail for theft, he was removed because he was also stealing to put food on their table. When I left him in a smelly, abandoned house with no furniture and mud floors, I just cried. When we asked if he would come back with us and stay at the Home for the holidays, where he would have food and a bed, he replied 'No, this is where I am meant to be.' He loves his family so much. He has not given up on them, even if his mother feels hopeless, he is determined that his family will stay together, will be united, he is the pillar. As we drove the 3 hours back, Mbogniseni and I had a good talk about what we could do for Pete. I said to him, I know I can raise the funds in the UK to fix his house up, money is just money, that is something I can get. This family needs a home. Pete wants to be with his family, if the only thing stopping him is the fact he has to sleep outside every night, that is something material which we can fix. We have to do this. Even if it is only one child at first, to that one child it is their whole life. We should be changing his life.

I spoke so passionately because I love Pete so much, and leaving him in that place nearly broke my heart. I didn't realise that what I said that day would have such an effect. But it did! Apparently that was the first time anyone had suggested helping in such a material way. Just saying, lets go for it, if they need a house, let's build one. Even if we can only do it once, let's just do it.

When I came back in January they had set a date for a house building project, 6th March, not for Pete's family but another very deserving one. Their mother also suffered from alcohol abuse but unlike Pete's mother, this one seems to have recovered and regained control of her life and the care of her 2 smaller children [10 and 3] and grandchild [1year]. We have not forgotten about Pete, but his social worker has been very uncooperative. But once this first house is done, we will be working on getting something done for him.

This is the story of a family, a mother and her 2 children, Fiona and Mike. It had reached the point in her alcohol abuse, where her 12 year old daughter and 10 year old son, were caring for her, rather than she for them. Understandably, they were going to be getting into trouble, not attending school [as where are they going to get the school fees and money for uniform?]and so social services removed them.
4 years later...and what have the social welfare department done?? Sadly, its the same story all over SA, sweet, sweet nothing. They have dumped 2 children with us, in the Home, and they have left their mother to continue to suffer in her poverty.

I beg the social workers forgiveness if I am not doing them justice but, as far as I have seen, they have made very poor progress with this case over the last 4 years. A family which was living in such poor conditions that they didn't have a tap, was still living like that until 7 days ago.

On Thursday 4th March Mbongiseni and I went to eMondlo, near Vryheid, to meet Mr. Mtshali the local principle of a primary school, who is also on the town council. He said he had arranged for skilled builders to volunteer their services in building the house, over the next 2 weeks. We met the main builder, Mr. Mazibuko, who is the brother of the Councillor for eMondlo [a paid position as a government official]. Together the brothers have been lending their services very generously in getting the build under way.

We drove Mr. Mtshali and Mr. Mazibuko to the site to see the current mud house and to meet the woman [the mother of the 2 kids] and to assess the site. Mr. Mazibuko was a very quiet, gracious Zulu man, who had very little English and a very polite, quiet respectfulness. The way he deferred to all 3 of us, very much reminded me of what it must have been like for him during Apartheid. He still behaves as if he is deferring to those above him, as a domestic worker would to their employer.

Once we were at the site, however, Mr. Mazibuko came into his own. You could see he felt at home on a building site and was happily giving directions as to where the best position would be, how big etc. We decided that we would build a 3 room house, each room 3m by 4m. This is pretty big for a house in the area! Just as we were about to leave, Mr. Mazibuko was looking around for something, and asked the Mother, 'where do you fetch Amanzi?' water! He had realised that he couldn't see a tap around, that is when we found she begs water from the next door neighbour. That would not do for Mr. Mazibuko. He spoke to Mbongiseni and then they translated for me, he was saying that he will come the next day, on Friday, and direct a line from the main pipe to make a tap in their yard. 'They will have water within 24hours' he said.

Mbongiseni said to me, this family has been without water for decades, social services have let them continue without water for another 4 years. Thanks to us they will have water within 24hours. That is a miracle.

My eyes welled up with tears in that moment. Realising that we really were going to make a physical change for that family, for the better. We went to the hardware store and bought the things Mr. Mazibuko needed for the water. 7m of pipe, an adapter, a saddle and a stand pipe: total, less that R240, i.e. just over £20.
TWENTY POUNDS! and 24hours. That is all it took. To give a family the miracle of water. Just £20. I could not believe it. It made me happy, yes...but at the same time you can't help feeling so angry that they have lived without it for so long when it cost so little, and was done so quickly.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in hardware stores and at the brick makers and quarry, buying all the necessary materials for Saturday, the big build day.

Saturday 6th March saw an early start for most of the teenagers who were travelling by our bus to eMondlo, I stirred at 4.20am when I heard the bus engine firing up...but rolled back to sleep! They were all up at 3.30am to get on the bus. Mbongiseni and I were leaving later, he was driving the nice 2007 Toyota Hilux...and I...the not so nice 1980s Ford bakkie...a real grandmother of vehicles. The gear box has aged some what, I have to let go of the steering wheel and use both hands to wrench it from 1st to 2nd gear...not the smoothest of rides! My passengers dont dare complain though!! We left at the much more reasonable hour of 6.30 and I pulled onto the hardware parking lot at 7.28 exactly, just in time to be the first customer.

I must admit, a young blonde haired white lady, in an ancient pick up truck, with 2 zulu teenage boys for bodyguards and an order for 26bags of cement...does raise a few eyebrows! After a few minutes they began to take me seriously and they loaded up the cement and we headed to the site of the build.
When we arrived, after getting a take away Wimpy for the boys ;), it was to find that a hive of activity HAD been going on, and in fact...they had all already crashed from exhaustion! They had been there since 6.30am and had cut back all the grass by hand and dug a large vegetable garden which they were ready to start planting. As we arrived, so did the huge truck delivering 1,000 blocks, so the kids had to get straight back to work.
3 hours and many sore hands later..we had unloaded the blocks and the work of digging the foundations had begun.
By 1pm they were mixing cement and filling in the base of the foundations. Some of the teenage boys had worked so hard! They had barely stopped for a break in over 7 hours and were still mixing cement, shovelling stone and pushing wheelbarrows.

As I stood taking photos of the foundations, one of the teenage boys, Sean, who doesn't have very good english, came to stand beside me. After surveying the scene and thinking for a moment, he turned to me, and talking about his friend who is the boy whose house it is going to be, said
'Mike has his dream today'.
The moment was just so poignant, and really expresses how great a thing we have done. I replied, 'yes he does Sean, he has his dream.'

The other children put so much effort into that day. They knew they were working for their friends, and they felt their friends really deserved to be given this gift. Another girl, Boo, said to me earlier in the day 'Auntie Rebecca, this is a really good thing that we are doing here. A really good thing.'
That is all the assurance and piece of mind I could possibly need. If the children believe we are doing a good thing, then no matter what problems we may have with the social workers, it is the children's opinions that matter, and which I value above every one else's.

The girl whose house it is was visiting me today and asked when we would be going back to eMondlo. She said to me, about the house, and what we have done for her family...
'Auntie Rebecca, you are a lifesaver.'
And that, right there, is all the thanks I need.
Ever.

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.

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.

Christmas and New Year!

Hello everyone,

Apologies for neglecting my blog, I have been very busy but this is no excuse I know!

I will try to summarise my life over the past 7 weeks as a lot has been going on that I haven't told you about.

Well, the end of November saw a lot of activity at St. Anthony's as the Home and the two local schools wound down for the end of the year - both literal and academic in Africa. The older children had exams to sit, and I had exams to invigilate, which was marginally more interesting for me - a first-timer - than it was for the other, seasoned teachers at the school. But standing in a boiling hot, tin-roof class with 60 teenagers, watching them scribble away, is I think, a fair time to draw a comparison with watching paint dry. But then again, it was nice to feel useful and I only had to endure it on a handful of occasions!

The approach of Christmas was a very busy time for me as I had undertaken the challenge of buying presents for the children of St Anthony's with money donated by friends and family in the UK. The response from everyone was overwhelming, and I can hardly begin to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone for such an amazing response. All together I received the grand total of £645!! Spread between the 88 children at the Home this was about £7 a head! The purchasing of 88 presents was for me, a confessed shopaholic, some of the best fun I have had in South Africa. The first collection of money I spent in South Africa before the children left for the holidays and required 2 mammoth trips to the shops, but with all the spending being in a single store called Jet. This is the South African equivalent of Primark, with clothes of a similar standard but with a better range and all in lovely bright colours. I had expected to be able to get a lot for the money out there but in reality clothes are not cheap out there, and better deals are to be had in the UK supermarkets clothing ranges. I guess the reason for this is that the proportion of the South African population who have the disposable income to fuel a demand for clothes on the almost weekly basis that we have here in the UK, is tiny in comparison. Clothes are a luxury to most africans and something which you might only purchase a few times a year. Therefore with the demand being so much lower, clothes are not produced in the same high volumes that we have in the UK which has driven the prices down and produced cheap clothing ranges in Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and of course Primark.

Therefore, my second collection of money, which arrived too late to give the children presents before Christmas, I decided to spend in the UK. This I think, was a great move as I have got more for the money than I could out in SA, and of a better quality, and from a larger variety of shops. The children will also, I'm sure, appreciate that it has come from the mythical 'overseas' that they all fantasise about - though I have tried to put them right by telling them you don't meet David Beckham and his fellow team mates on the streets of England, and we suffer from extremely pitiful amounts of sun [they only need to see how pasty white I am to realise the truth of that statement]. Nevertheless, the stock of leggings, hoodies and funky plimsoles will certainly go down well and make them feel they are wearing up-to-the-minute fashions. I will do my best to capture the happiness which this will bring them by taking photos but I guess it will be hard to do justice to the way a present can trully make these children feel so special. In our society, our children are constantly flooded with presents, new clothes, new toys and games, that it is hard to realise what a reaction these children have. They will have virtually never received a birthday present or christmas present in their life, and this is not just a poverty issue but, I was surprised to learn, a cultural issue.

In Zulu culture you do not celebrate birthdays. It is as simple as that! Therefore Christmas, the birth of Jesus, passes by almost just as unnoticed. Perhaps this is an unfair description, but certainly the form of celebration we have which centres around presents, is not one that they enter into. They mark christmas with a meal with their family but turkey, stuffing and christmas pud are a mystery to them. The people I know are extremely religious and many are devoted Catholics but those I spoke to on Christmas day had not marked the day by attending mass. Whereas in England, all those who never go to church the whole year round, find their way on the 25th!

So the presents which the children recieved will have been doubly special to them I assure you. They are so well cared for at the Home and the care workers are so loving and kind, but sometimes, with so many children, treating them as special individuals and not a group, is hard to maintain.

There is a big cupboard at the Home where all donations of clothes are sent to be sorted by the manager, Pumisele [my African mother, as I like to call her!]. A few times a year the children are called down in groups according to their age and clothes are handed out. Nothing is bought specifically with a child in mind, and often a skirt or jumper has seen more than one or two children in the course of its existence. I happened to be witness to one of these 'present giving' sessions as I walked past the corridor with the clothing cupboard off it. Pumisele was sitting on a chair in the hallway with a pair of new/nearly new, shoes on the floor in front of her and called forward a girl to try them on. They looked a little tight so she asked her to step out of them and called another girl to try them on. Still not satisfied she asked another girl to give the shoes a try. After the third try, each of the girls stood there, eyes eagerly searching the pensive face of Sis Pumi, waiting for her to deliver her verdict and award the shoes to the lucky Cinderella who fitted them best! She pointed at the lucky girl, pointed at the shoes and dismissed them all. The other two girls clamoured around, imploring Sis Pumi to find a pair for them but she almost without words, refused them and stood up to lock the cupboard door. I could see on her face, the truth of decades of work as a dedicated manager of the Home. No matter how much you give, how much you love, how much you help, sometimes you get the overwhelming feeling that it is never enough. There is always someone you can't get round to helping in the same way as you have helped another. There is always a child who wants more, who needs more, and most of all, deserves more. Sis Pumi has had to steel herself to the fact that she must do her best, and that must be enough. As much as we all want to, we cannot help everyone, but we must not let this depress us, or let us feel bad for the help that we do give.

Handing out 30 presents to 30 of the 88 children before Christmas, is actually one of the most horrible things I have ever done. I expected to feel such happiness, and pride in the generosity of my friends and family, but all I could see were the faces of those whose names I didn't call. At the time I didn't know if I could do it, or if there would be any more of a response from the UK, but I couldn't stop myself, I promised them there and then that I would come back after Christmas with presents for every single one of them. Thankfully, thanks to all of you, I have been able to keep that promise and I absolutely cannot wait to give the other 58 children their presents next Saturday. I really hope that I, and everyone who has helped me, will be able to enjoy a sense of achievement and the satisfaction that we did, actually, help everyone!

I've realised I have barely told you anything of what I've been up to for 7 weeks so let me just summarise with...
Mum and Dad arrived on 11th Dec, we had an amazing holiday for 3 weeks. The highlights were the fantastic safari [great lion sighting!] and the end of the trip where we walked out to Cape Point [most south westerly point of Africa and, apologies to Cornwall, a damn sight better than Lands End!] and rode to the top of Table Mountain...absolutely spectacular.
Flew back to Heathrow on New Year's Eve and drove up to Northumberland for my brother Simon and Lauren's wedding. It was a simply perfect day, beautiful bride, amazing venue, lots of snow to make it a WHITE white wedding, and one of the nicest gatherings of friends and family that I can ever imagine. I have already appointed Lauren as my chief wedding planner and know that if my wedding day is even half as special as their's I will be a very lucky girl.

So now, I am 5 days away from flying back to South Africa and have a lot of packing to do! 3 suitcases this time, 2 of clothes for the children and 1 containing my life for the next year! Well, not quite, a least a lot of my stuff is still in my cottage at the Home, but this time I am going prepared with winter clothes as my stereotype of a permanently sunny Africa where all you needed was shorts, has been blown out of the water. Anyone planning to visit South Africa for the World Cup, you have been warned! June/July is the coldest time of year, you'll need jeans, jumpers and jackets...trust me!

Happy new year to everyone, I wish you all the best for a very successful 2010.
Please keep in contact, on here, via facebook, email, or snail mail...I will be missing you all over the next 11 months and thinking of you all the time.

Much love, see you on 19th Dec! love Becky xxxxxxx

The run-up to Christmas in a Children's Home...

Hey family and friends, thank you for visiting my blog! Sending you all lots of love xxx

So, it's the first day of Advent but the Home is already well on the way to Christmas and celebrations are in full swing. Christmas is not really about presents here, it is all about family and happy homes. While everyone in England is out present shopping, here our careworkers and social workers are working their hardest 'foster family shopping'. You have to remember that it is summer here now and the school year runs from Jan - Dec. So the children are all sitting their final exams and have now finished for their long summer holiday. This is the culmination of the year and they have to review all the children's home situations and communicate with the field social workers to see if they are going to be returning to a family home for good or whether they are returning to St Anthony's in Jan.

It is also really important to us that none of the children have to spend the festive season still living in the Home but that they experience a family environment. So the social worker and 2 community workers have been working round the clock to make sure each child has a host family who will take them for the holidays. This takes a lot of work, having to make sure the family is suitable and the child is going to be safe and happy with them. We are responsible for that child and so we have to be accountable for whatever happens when they are out of the Home. Imagine having 89 of your own children each staying at a friend's house for a sleepover...we are trusting that parent with our own child, and we are still responsible for them and worrying about them every minute!

So, some of the festive activities we have already been enjoying here include the trip I had planned for last Saturday which was postponed until the weather improved on Friday. I have been in contact with the manager of a Game reserve in the local town and he is so eager to help St Anthony's out. I managed to arrange a completely FREE christmas outing for the teenage boys' cottage, we arrived at the park at 7am and had the chance to see their helicopter! They boys loved it, although they weren't allowed a go! They all got to sit in the driver's seat and asked lots of questions about it. The manager is called Tony Roberts, he is a white man who is actually of British origin and was born in Tanzania when it was still a British colony. He moved to SA when he was 12yrs and lived on a farm. This means he has an amazing number of languages! He can speak english, afrikaans, zulu and swahili! It was really great for the boys to be able to have a white man speak fluent zulu to them and he is so intelligent, teaching them a lot about the environment and the animals there. We walked around and got to see zebra, wilderbeast, impala and ostriches. It was so hot though! About 33oC and I was struggling to keep up on the 2km hike.

After the walk we went back to the swimming pool and the boys got changed and all jumped in. They were all fearless of the water...but some of them had a reason to fear it...only one of them could really swim properly! That was Pete, the boy I took shopping who lives up in a village in the mountains. Maybe he learnt in a river or lake or something. One of the smallest ones, Matt, said he could swim and jumped straight in to the deep end. Mlondi and I were standing on the edge and luckily he saw straight away Matt was in trouble. He had jumped in and just went straight under, he wasn't coming up! His arms were thrashing under the water and his eyes were bulging out of his head! The poor boy was so scared. Mlondi just threw his arms straight in and pulled him out on to the side. Luckily there was no lasting damage done and he just stayed in the shallow end for the rest of the time. I tried teaching them to swim from the edge but it was pretty difficult! They all just doggy paddled around and had no idea how to do the proper strokes. All my memories of primary school swimming lessons with Mrs Spooner came flooding back and I had great fun trying to coach them from the pool side. I am hoping I might be able to make an arrangement with Tony and see if we can use the pool on a regular basis for swimming lessons, maybe just with 12 children at a time, I would love it! And the kids really really would.

I got some amazing jumping photos of them all flinging themselves in the pool. For 3 hours they just ran and jumped in continuously! Then Tony made a braai and we all had sausages in buns, and juice and crisps - all donated by the manager of Standard Bank in the town, Tony had arranged getting the money. After eating the begged to go back in the pool again so they got another hour of swimming and borrowing my camera to take photos and videos. Some of the older boys are really inventive and funny - they made some comic sketches up and filmed them, they were really good! It was so nice to just see them being kids, doing what they felt like rather than following their routine of chores. With the timetable they have they get about 1hour of freetime a day! The rest of the time is packed with cleaning, washing, cooking and studying.

Then the next day, Saturday 28th, was Thanksgiving and they use that date to celebrate the end of the year at the Home. We had a tent put up on the field and there was a full schedule of entertainment planned by each of the Cottages - plus my choir was down to perform!! I was so nervous!! The kids are good singers when it comes to singing their own Zulu songs but the really struggle with singing english and I was worried they were not going to sound very good. My hand was proper shaking when I was trying to conduct! We sang 'eyes on the prize' and it actually sounded really good. I chose it because the words are absolutely perfect for them...
'Keep your eyes on the prize, don't be dismayed, don't be dismayed,
deep in your heart you must believe, everything is gonna be alright,
everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna be alright some day'
When they get to the 'everything is gonna be alright' they sing it with so much passion, it seems like it really does uplift them. There is nothing nicer than the feeling I get when I can hear them singing that song as the clean the floors or do their laundry. When it's hot and the windows are open I can always hear snatches of songs I have taught them drifting on the air. It makes me feel so proud :)

Then they were all awarded certificates and a present for each cottage - my Mum and Dad bought two dvd players for the teenage cottages as their christmas donation to the Home. The kids were so happy with them! They have already watched about 4 of my dvds on it, in just 2 days!!

After the entertainment we had a sit down lunch in the dining room and I got to sit with Fr. Peter which was nice, to finally get to catch up with my long lost godfather! He is such a busy man he is hard to track down. We spoke about our trip to the safari park, just 2 weeks away now!

In the afternoon I played with the kids, but it was so hot again! For about the 4th day in the row it was over 30oC and I had to go have a cold shower, its the only way to wake myself up again! In the evening we had a braai and a party for the kids, it was soooooo much fun! Unlike an english school disco where all the kids stand at the edge of the dancefloor too afraid to dance, these kids just went CRAZY! we couldn't even get them to sit down to eat their dinner, they were too interested in having dance-offs. It is amazing how talented they are at dancing, it just comes natuarlly to them! I swear this is true, I actually saw the 10month old baby dancing! I'm not joking, he was clapping his hands and bobbing his head in perfect time to the music - crazy!! At one point one of the older boys made me get up and dance. Before when we had parties with the staff I had refused but I'm not afraid infront of the kids, I don't feel like they judge me at all. I always say...give me 70 kids to teach rather than just 3 adults any day. I am much more nervous with adults, but right at home with the kids. I think this must mean I am immature...o well! Hope I stay that way! I never want to be serious. But it was still embarassing getting up and dancing Zulu style! I don't think I did too badly though and I actually enjoyed myself, I will have to be brave more often. It is just that I hate to be bad at something, if I am bad I would rather not try than attempt and fail. I really must work on that bad habit! Practice practice practice!

The next day it was one of the boy's brother's confirmations in Ladysmith, a town about 2 hours away. This boy was also in the Home for many years but as he is over 18yr now he is at college studying to be an electrician and staying with a foster mother. His name is Xolani and I remember him well from last year when I taught him at St Lewis. He is such a sweet and polite boy, so is his brother - the one I mentioned last time who wants to be a paramedic. They are such lovely boys, their father is dead and their mother is an alcoholic who lives in a one room hut. They have been in the Home over 7 years now, and will never be going back to their mother's. The lady who fosters them is really lovely and has a lot of love to give them, but not much money to support them.

We took the bus and 35 boys to go and visit them! It was such a nice surprise for him, we hadn't told them we were going as it was pretty last minute. In a typically african fashion we arrived at 9.30am...the service started at 8am and was over when we arrived! So we collected Colin and followed the Bishop to the next confirmation which was 5min away, in the very same township - it just shows you how many catholics there are here! But we were late for that one too so we had to sit outside the church in a baking hot concrete yard, think it was over 35oC in that spot - I thought I would faint. The service was over 2 hours long by which point we were all feeling sick and tired, literally! But yet again I experienced the unbelievable love and kindness that the Zulu people have for each other. They heard we were a group from a Children's Home so the ladies from the committee went and brought food and juice for the boys and then invited the adults in to have lunch with the Bishop! I actually got to sit next to him and had a really nice chat, he is a very intelligent man and it was such a nice surprise. I had heard a lot about Graham Rose but had never met him before, I felt very proud to sit there and talk to him. He said that he has a nun who is a friend of his from Bristol who works in Cape Town in a centre for AIDS babies, and that if I ever want to get away I should let him know and he will organise a trip down for me! Sounds amazing, I will definitely be taking him up on that offer!

After lunch we all piled back on the bus and drove to Colin's foster house in the township. We had bought 3 cakes and 6 bottles of fizzy drink for him so that we could celebrate with a little party, it was so nice. The township he lives in has no tarmac roads, like all of the townships I've been to, and so we bumped along in our 20year old bus. We pulled up outside their house, a one storey house with a corrugated iron roof and 2 windows - both smashed and their holes covered up with plastic bags. I wasn't shocked at the house because I had seen from photos of visits to the children's homes that that is how they lived. But despite the grim sound of it, the garden was really nicely kept with a mown lawn and flower beds, and inside the house they had nice furniture and a tv. It is strange the differences between the structure of a house which is so basic and then the fact that they have nice possessions inside...and they don't even have a real toilet. I noticed the steel shack at the back of the house so was polite enough not to ask to use the 'bathroom'...luckily I managed to hold it all day - pretty miraculous for me!!

When it came to leaving Colin asked me about the Shakespeare sonnet I had taught him last year and if I could please send him a copy of it with an explanation in easy english so he can understand it. It was so nice to hear he remembered and was still interested in reading literature, he is such a toughtful boy, really intent on learning and improving his education. I have made him a copy and have sent it with a careworker who is visiting Ladysmith tomorrow so hopefully he will deliver it safely to him. I am hoping that when we go to the safari place near Ladysmith we will be able to make a detour to visit Colin and Gerry who will be there for the holidays. We could take them a food parcel of some essential supplies as I know they don't have enough money to really buy suffcient food for that number of people. And as it's christmas I want them to have some nice things to eat too! It will be really fun to show mum and dad the real African side of SA, not just the tourism side which is not a true reflection of how I have been living and the people I am living with.

Okay, that is just about everything I have to update you guys on! I am working hard this week on completing some applications for funding from 3 different trust funds, I want to get them off by Friday so have a lot of boring paperwork to occupy me...but then I can always take a break and go and find some kids to play with. Yesterday I had amazing fun learning to shoot a home-made catapult with some of the boys - I was pretty bad but it was a lot of fun. Then we watched a DVD at their cottage and I ended up leaving at 11pm! You can tell it is winding down now that they are watching dvds instead of doing study, just one more week and they will be off for the summer holidays, and just 9 days until I am off for my holiday with mum and dad!

Much love to you all, happy 1st day of Advent, oh and did you know it is World AIDS day today?? If you want to do something, send some money for St Anthony's reach for a star christmas present project and help make a chlid's christmas one to celebrate :)

love Becky xxxxxxxx

The highs and lows of another week in South Africa

Hello lovely readers...I hope you are all still out there!

Please leave a comment so I know someone is reading this thing!! It’s hard when you are talking to a wall...or rather, ‘posting’ on one.

Well it feels like an age since I wrote on here, lots has been happening, both good and bad...so I have been rushing around. Firstly, the lovely shopping trip I wrote about last time...turned out to be not such a success. The next day, the Sunday, as I was on my way out for the day to a friend’s baby’s baptism, I realised my passport wasn’t in my handbag. I was out for the whole day worrying about it and when I got home at 9pm I turned my house upside down looking for it...unsuccessfully. I went to bed hoping it was just that I was too tired and searched again in the morning. I looked everywhere! All round the Home and in the cars, asked all the children...then I went to town and went to all the shops I had been to. By this point I had run through all my memories of where I had seen my passport and what I had done, playing it over and over again in my head. I knew that I had it on Friday afternoon, and that it was gone by Sunday morning.
Playing over the trip to town on the Saturday I realised that was when it must have gone. I remember that there was a bit of a strange encounter with a man just outside the Kodak shop where I was going to collect my photos. It was quite busy in the mall and this man was standing very close behind me, so close that he stood on the back of my heel, but I remember it was weird because he did it a second time and didn’t apologise. It was odd the way he was so close to me, it wasn’t that busy...I thought he was trying to get round me so I tried to move out his way but he stayed right behind me...he bumped into me twice. I was trying to get out his way and I kind of staggered into the Kodak shop. I checked my bag for my phone and purse and when they were both there I didn’t think about it again. But now I am positive that is what happened...he must have thought he was taking a wallet or money, little did he know that it was a passport which is pretty useless to him but the most essential thing in MY life! So frustrating!

So on Monday I went round all the shops and asked the managers and security guards but no one had found anything. Then I went to the Police station to enquire but nothing had been handed in, so I filed a theft report and got an affidavit. I had spoken to the British embassy and knew that I needed a police report number to register a stolen passport and get a new one. The police station was a bit of an experience...the one in town is probably the tallest building I have seen round here...it is maybe 5 stories high, that is a skyscraper in African terms! Inside it was like a tacky 80’s hotel lobby, lots of fake orangey marble, plastic plants and dodgy prints in chintzy frames on the wall...at slightly wonky angles. I had to join a queue of about 6 people which was leading to this black marble-topped counter, kind of like a bar! It didn’t look like a police station at all...it was like they had just taken over use of a hotel, just removed the room key box from behind the encounter and there you have it! I was called forward to see a man who was about 50, wearing thick plastic rimmed glasses and a black leather jacket. He looked like a crap car salesman, but I guess he was some kind of police officer...He didn’t say anything to me when I approached...and I didn’t know how to start this kind of conversation! So I tried the traditional Zulu greeting of ‘Hello, how are you?’ the reply to which was a blank stare and silence...so...not the way to approach a policeman apparently! Then I just rambled out my story and he gave me a form which was the affidavit, to fill out what happened. I wasn’t even sure if he was understanding my English...so I just went to write down what I had said.

I had to sit on this stool at a low black marble counter with three little kind of cubicles where you could write without anyone looking over your shoulder. It was facing a big mirror sunk into this strange bit of low wall...probably replaced the tropical fish tank that was there back in its days as an African Fawlty Towers.

So I filled it out and waited while the car salesman-police officer wrote out an affidavit with the man next to me. The experience was topped off when the two of them poked their heads round the marble slab to ask for my help in translating the man’s problem from Zulu. They asked me ‘what is a female cow in English?’ I was taken aback as I thought this was some kind of rude comment about me!..when I had recovered from the shock I managed to splutter ‘heifer’ whilst trying not to laugh my head off. Who knows how the car salesman would have reacted to that, considering ‘how are you?’ wasn’t exactly acceptable. I thought I had a problem having lost my passport...but at least it didn’t involve a heifer. Thank God for small mercies eh?

So anyway, I have now sent off to cancel the current passport number and to apply for a new one, I think it will cost about £250 altogether, hundreds of handfuls of my own hair, and about 24hours spent in police stations and home affairs. Hopefully it will take 2 weeks, though I have my doubts considering it takes much longer in the UK and I am on ‘African time’ now...!
After spending the first 3 days of the week depressed and stressed over my passport, the last 3 days have been doubly good to make up for it! The weather was horrendous for 5 days, from Sun to Sat it just wouldn’t stop raining night and day, and was about 8-12degrees, felt freezing though! Especially as I only really have summer clothes with me. Everyone else was wearing tights, boots, coats and scarves and all I have are sandals, summer skirts and cardigans! I had organised a trip for the teenage boys to go away for the weekend, to spend the day in a game reserve seeing the animals, have a braai and go swimming. But at 7am the morning before I got a phone call to say that the river had burst and it was too flooded to go on a game drive or even to walk around. So the man has rescheduled for this Fri instead. I had 24hours to try and salvage the situation and still take the boys away...

I had organised for us to stay the night in the youth centre at a catholic mission up in the mountains called Maria Ratschitz. I rang them and asked if we could come earlier and have our braai there and just let the boys play in the grounds, they said they were happy to have us but that the rains had made the sand road dangerously slippery and that we might find it impassable with a bus!

So I went to bed on Friday very concerned about what the morning would bring, and if it was more rain then our whole weekend would be ruined – and my first attempt at arranging anything here would be a failure. But the weather looked like it was turning for the better and by 10am it was getting hot, the boys were asking if they could still go to the game reserve but I told them that was going to be Friday, and they will miss school so they are even happier!
We piled on the bus and went to town to buy the last bits of food for the trip. We got lots of treats to make a nice braai with steak and wurst and then bought icecream and custard for pudding...absolute luxuries to these boys! When we came off the tarmac road onto the dirt track it was virtually completely dry and we had no trouble travelling the last 15km up to the mission. It was so beautiful when we arrived! It is really green and lush, on a huge site which is all landscaped and really cared for with flowers and trees...such a change from the surroundings outside St. Anthony’s...which is basically a shanty town next to a busy road. The boys jumped straight off the bus and were playing soccer and running round in the sunshine. It looked like we were going to be successful after all!!

Until the crazy old German nun turned up...It was a bit odd because no one came out to greet us and we didn’t really know where to go or even where we were staying. So I went to find someone and came across...you guessed it...a crazy old German nun. She was about 70 and hunched over, she was wearing a dirty white apron and these massive, clompy Dr Martin boots, almost like what a builder wears. When I told her who we were she started getting angry because she said she didn’t know the group had two ladies in it [me and one of the careworkers] and that we were not allowed to stay in the centre with the boys. She said we should have told her – but the person I had been speaking to on the phone knew full well that it was 16 male and 2 female, they just hadn’t passed the message on. So she rushed off to this other cottage and said that me and Tuli must stay there, we followed her round as she paced up and down the cottage opening and locking various doors searching for a key to a second bedroom. She was jabbering away in a thick German accent and me and Tuli smothered our giggles as we watched her bustle around, muttering angrily – but about what, we didn’t know! She wasn’t very happy to see us though, that’s for sure!

In the end we found the sister who had taken our booking and we asked her if it would be ok for me and Tuli to stay with the boys, because otherwise the one male careworker would have to do all the work, and plus, the whole point was that it was a weekend away together. She said it was no problem and that there was even a separate smaller room where Tuli and I could stay alone. So, reassured that it was all fine we took the key and headed down to see our new lodgings.
O dear...’youth centre’ is a phrase which apparently covers a multitude of sins. It sounds so modern and encouraging...my how we were mistaken! We approached a long low cement building with a tin roof and a number of smashed windows. I unlocked the rickety door to find ancient bunk beds with thin and sagging mattresses, no pillows or sheets, dirty floors and very suspicious smelling toilets. The place didn’t look like it had been cleaned in a good few months...and the holes in the windows meant that a good few birds, insects and other things had been the most recent visitors. I could have cried!! I was so sorry that I had brought them to this place, thinking it was going to be a fun trip away – not a nightmare we just had to endure until we could go back home the next day...!

Mlondi and Tuli [the careworkers] tried to hide their disappointment...we all laughed nervously and went to show the boys their place for the night with heavy hearts. Mlondi made light of it by telling the boys before they went in that it was the most luxurious place he had ever seen...the sarcasm seemed to work and we were all soon laughing at just how bad it was. It wasn’t really any worse than camping when you thought about it, and it was a real adventure at least! The boys hardly batted an eyelid at the state of the inside, considering many of their backgrounds I’m sure they had all lived in worse conditions...staggering really. It had running water and electricity at least, much more than lots of homes in SA.

We were all really hungry as it was 3pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast but before we could have any food we had to go out and collect firewood for the braai and the stove. The boys kept winding me up by saying they could see snakes and by trying to throw insects at me or shove them down my back. Most of the time they were really just holding leaves but it was enough to send me running around screaming. The problem was the more I protested the more they chased me! We got back and it was a real team building experience attempting to cook a really nice meal for 20 people only using fire! The kitchen was soon choked with smoke and we were all struggling with very itchy eyes, it was unbearable! We lighted the fire 3 times and then had to give up, we couldn’t boil the water to make Pap [mealie meal which comes from Maize, mixed with water. It is the staple carbohydrate here.] Thankfully I had arranged that the sisters would provide us with supper and when the boys went to collect it they came back with a pot full of pap! So we sat down to a veryyyy late lunch at 7pm, but it was all the more delicious because we had waited so long and all slaved away making it. We ate marinated steak, wurst, pap and this tomato gravy [it makes pap taste really good but without it, it’s pretty tasteless and gross].

Then after dinner we went outside and sang Zulu songs and I attempted to join in the traditional dancing, it was really fun, and all in beautiful surroundings under a starry sky :) We went in at about 10pm and the boys chose a dvd to watch on my laptop, they all agreed on Lion King even though they have seen it before they really like it! It has so much Zulu in it, lots of songs are Zulu, especially if you listen to the stage show. It turns out ‘hakuna mattata’ is Zulu too!! How cool is that!

The next morning we went to church then went to climb the mountain which overlooks the mission. There is a huge white cross which we were going to climb up to, it looked so close from the ground but it was much harder than I expected. It was so hot, maybe 30degrees, and it was ridiculously steep. We were practically on our hands and knees the whole way up!
When we got to the top we had a discussion about the year they have spent at St Anthony’s, reviewing the best bits, the challenges and what they are all thankful for. It was really enlightening to hear them all say what they were grateful to the Home for. Some said they thanked God for bringing them to St Anthony’s so that they had a home for the first time in their life. They were all thankful for the skills they had been taught, cooking, cleaning, washing their clothes – because they now know how to look after themselves. I was surprised to hear so many say they were grateful for being taught good manners, to live someone where people didn’t swear, to be disciplined and taught that stealing is bad. They were all so grateful for this discipline and structure. They obviously have lived completely without the parental guidance I take for granted. Some of them have come for the streets or from child headed families where they have never had a parent teaching them right and wrong. It showed me how much progress they have made and how mature they are, that they are thankful for discipline and being taught morals – most kids would begrudge being told off, I know I would!

I was asked to say a few words and so I told them I was so thankful that they had welcomed me so warmly to St Anthony’s and that they have become my best friends and even my family since I came. Then I tried to motivate them to feel positive about themselves by telling them that they are so strong because they have endured such difficulties in their lives. That they are much stronger than me and they must all dream big because I know they can achieve great things in their lives. The night before I had spoken to Gerry, one of the boys who is going to leave soon as he is 18 now, and I was so moved to hear he wants to be a paramedic! I really want to help him achieve this dream, it is inspiring that he wants to have a job where he saves the lives of other people. I would love to help him get to college so that he can do the course to become a basic paramedic, it only takes 6months but he needs to get a drivers license first.

We climbed back down, which was maybe even harder than going up, and Ben – one of the boys – helped me down, holding my hand all the way as I kept falling! On the way down we saw a scary spider, I’m not sure what it is called yet, I’m searching for it on Google now...but they said it was a poisonous one. It was kind of pinkish colour, with light blue on it too, it wasn’t hairy but they said it was a young one. Pretty scary though!

After having lunch – provided by the sisters – we packed up and reluctantly headed back. They were all sad to leave, they had had such a good time and were really excited and playing on the bus all the way home. It had clearly been a fun weekend for them and they were all hyper and happy, was such a nice feeling to feel like I was the one who had provided them with such a nice weekend. I can’t wait for Friday’s trip to the game reserve, I am sure it is going to be sunny and am really hopeful it will be just as successful as this weekend. I love these boys so so much, I am really going to miss them when I go on holiday and home in January. I will be eager to come back in January to see them all and to enjoy a whole year living and working with them.

The Choir Series 3: Zulu edition!

Hi friends and family...
Hope you are all well, I miss you all a lot! Had my first pangs of homesick last week when I was feeling fluey...but I honestly feel so settled now.

I have become really good friends [I think, I hope!] with quite a lot of the kids now...especially with the teenagers. That's probably because they are better at speaking English! I have homework sessions with them 4 nights a week, and sometimes they turn up on my doorstep unannounced asking for extra help with assignments. The other night I was just trying to have some dinner when there was a tap on my door and a girl wanting help with her science homework...I really had to rack my brain to remember what 'hypothesis', 'independent variable' and 'dependent variable' meant. In the end my GCSE science seemed to come back...which was a bit of luck when 5 more kids turned up, all doing the same piece of homework. I ended up teaching a chemistry lesson in my cottage!! It's really nice that I can be of help to these kids, the other careworkers don't really have the education to be of any assistance. I have really taken my education for granted until now. I have had so much more than people of my own age here, and especially those in older generations who grew up during apartheid.

The other thing that has really brought me closer to the kids is the fact that I have started up a Gospel Choir!! It has really taken off, the children absolutely love it and are always turning up wanting to practice. I have shown them videos I have downloaded from youtube of my choir at York, Revelation, and of other choirs. Their favourite was the one from The Choir BBC show with the boys' school who sang Stand by me/Beautiful Girl, they have seen it literally hundreds of times. Always it finishes and they say 'repeat again auntie Rebecca'!! They struggle with the words so I have made them copies of the lyrics and they practice all the time, you can hear 'dumdum dada dumdum' and 'staaand by meee' all round the Home, any time of day and wherever I am someone seems to be singing it! They bring their own zulu style to the songs and the most fun one is a version of 'amazing grace' I taught them. The boys' part has a really good rhythm to it and it fits their style of dancing. So they are always dancing along as they sing - a million miles from the struggle I had trying to make the choir in York just step from side to side and click their fingers. Now I only have trouble trying to keep them still!!

My cottage has really come alive in the last 2 weeks. Now that I have welcomed the kids into it for choir practice they have come to treat it like their second home. It is really nice because lots of other places in the Home, like the offices and the Principle's house, are kind of off limits. I have adopted an 'open door' policy. It seems whenever I leave my door open it attracts a visitor. So if I ever feel lonely I only have to leave it open and soon one of the kids will turn up, usually asking me to play 'dumdum dada dumdum' for them on the laptop! Today I was overun with about 20 kids coming in and out the house - that's because it's Saturday and they have quite a lot of free time. I had laundry to do so I just left them in the house watching tv, playing with my camera and laptop. I really like just letting them chill out and enjoy the kinds of luxuries that kids in the UK think of as everyday items and activities. For these children, it really is a different world. And they have so much discipline and routine here that when they come to mine I really try not to tell them what to do but just let them choose for themselves. They are so well behaved though, I don't worry about them taking something or damaging anything, they have a lot of respect for other people's possessions.

This evening I had a little video party at my cottage with the teenage boys. I borrowed a DVD player and bought popcorn and fizzy drinks for them. They all came round and 16 of them perched on my sofas, sitting as good as gold as I handed out drinks and food. It was so sweet, it seemed like a brand new experience for them. And yet for me, sitting down on a Saturday night to watch a family film and eat popcorn, is again, a regular activity for me that I have grown up with. It was so nice to give them that experience, I'm sure we will do it again soon. We watched 'Cool Runnings' - it was such a good choice, they LOVED it! Lots of the jokes transcend language barriers so even if they didn't understand most of the dialogue they laughed a lot and understood the general plot. There are lots of jokes which bascially involve people falling out of things/crashing into things - perfect boy humour!

Today I also went on a trip into the town with my friend Sthabile who works in the office and I took one of the boys, his name's Peter and he's 14. The day before Peter had to go to the hospital. The night before he had asked me to accompany him to hospital. It turns out they wanted him to go alone and to catch the bus home on his own, which he had never done before. He was nervous about going alone, that's why he had asked me. The problem was I didn't know when it was going to be...the next morning I was fast asleep when at 6am there was a taptap on my door. It was persistent so I got up and answered the door in my pyjamas..I still had no idea who or what it was. When Peter was standing there waiting for me I felt so bad!! I had to tell him to go without me... So at 9am when I was down in the office I asked if I could have a lift to meet Peter in the hospital and catch the bus back with him. Luckily when I got there he was already out so he just got a lift back with us, we didn't have to brave public transport!

It turns out the reason Peter is in the Home is poverty. He comes from a village in the Drakensberg Mountains and his family are too poor to care for him and his siblings. They had resorted to stealing in order to get money for food. Peter's older brother is in the same prison as Mark because he was caught for theft. Peter would be there too except he was only 12 when he was taught to steal by older kids. The reason he was sick and had to go to hospital was probably because of the water that he has been drinking in his home village. They do not have proper running water so there are a lot of diseases and ongoing health problems that have come from the bad water, including red eyes. It turns out there is another reason for the red eyes - nothing to do with HIV. In January they are planning to make a trip to Peter's home with all the teenage boys and spend a day digging an alotment and planting food for his family. The Home will pay for all the seeds and everything, and hopefully it could provide a lasting solution for Peter's family.

Because of Peter's family position he therefore has no host or foster family coming to look after him in the holidays or at weekends. In the holidays he still goes home to his village and he is given food parcels and weekly visits from the social worker while he is there, to check he is being fed. Lots of the other children have people who come and take them out for weekends, buy them new clothes and spoil them a bit. But Peter has no one like that, he only has the Home and what they can afford to give him. So when I was with Mlondi I suggested that I could take Peter out shopping at the weekend, and maybe buy him something which he needs, be it trainers or trousers or whatever. He said that would be really nice and that Pete was definitely the one I should take out and treat!

So today, the two of us braved riding the 'taxis' for the first time - a mini bus which picks people up when you stick out your finger. They just look like tins on wheels and the drivers drive like lunatics, speeding and overtaking all the time, then suddenly stopping with no warning to drop someone off or pick them up. They are also exclusively ridden by black people, so they were pretty wide-eyed when I turned up this morning! I'm sure they will be talking about me for years to come, the white lady who rode a taxi...! The first shop we headed to was 'Tekkie Town' tekkie means trainers, and we were there for about an hour choosing trainers for me as well as Pete. Really he wanted soccer boots but I had to persuade him that they wouldn't get used enough and that if he got astroturf trainers he could use them as normal shoes too.

Then I also wanted to buy him some new clothes, but being a teenage boy, he has a big thing for sportswear, which doesn't come cheap - even in Africa! I bought him a teeshirt of his soccer team, the Kaizer Chiefs, who play in Johannesburg and some 3/4 length Nike trousers. This was the very first time in his life that he had been taken out shopping and asked to choose what he would like to buy. I must have been on hundreds of clothes shopping trips for myself...makes me sick how much I must have had spent on me over the years. That's why I ended up going a bit over the top and buying him a whole outfit, but he was so so happy, it was worth every penny...and much more besides.

There really is nothing like the feeling you get when you know you have given a child the feeling that they are special. It may seem unfair that I was treating him when I can't afford to treat them all in the same way but that is what makes all the difference to Pete. All the others have more than him, they may have suffered in other ways, but in terms of material things, he is definietly the least well off. Now he has been allowed to catch up a bit! And the important thing is not what he got materially from it, but that special feeling he got, being singled out by me, being asked to come to town - his first time ever! It has given him a chance to experience something new as an individual, rather than as part of a big group of boys. Too often they must get the feeling of being lost in the crowd when they are living in a big group - 16 boys with just one careworker. This was Pete's chance to be singled out from the crowd and given the full attention of someone who cares for him and wants to see him happy. I know for a fact that he will remember this day for a long time to come. And if when he does he remembers how he was made to feel special and loved, then that is something which I believe you can't put a price on.

It really feels true to me today, that...It is in giving, that we receive x

Everyday life in Blaauwbosch...

Hello friends and family :)

I hope you are all well and enjoying the English winter! I am settling into an African summer...quite different from what I'm used to. Not only does it get hot suddenly and then cold again, but they have really strong winds and then sharp downpours that flood the pathways. It is strange being in a place where summer means hot and rainy! The hottest so far has been about 32degrees, and the hottest month is not until January. Sometimes you wake up and it looks cloudy so you dress a bit warmer and then by 9am the cloud has burned off and it's boiling! Then by 3pm a big black cloud appears, the wind is rattling the roof and it pours with rain. Then the next morning, bright sunshine again! I am trying not to be vain about clothes here but sometimes I can't help it, I have to change three times in a day to match the weather!!

Anyway, I'm just trying to paint a better picture of everyday life here. The food is not as bad as I remembered...I have basic ingredients but the only meat I like is the chicken. I tried cooking these sausages and they were so disgusting I had to throw them away. I have eaten other meat cooked by the kitchen but it always has bones and grissle in it. They don't seem to mind! I just want a piece of meat where I don't have to spit bits out or gnaw on a bone!! I will never take boneless chicken breasts for granted ever again...What else, breakfast I have peanut butter toast which is nice. Lunch I either eat what the kitchen has prepared for the staff or just some more toast. I tried making French toast and it was quite nice. But the house smelt like burnt food which was a bit embarassing when visitors turned up. They already think I'm a useless housekeeper because I don't know how to polish the floors! Then dinner, I make either roast chicken or chicken curry. Not very adventurous! It's been 4 weeks and I am already kind of sick of chicken and rice...2 years could take its toll, maybe I will have to branch out.

Now to tell you about African food...lots of it is totally alien to me! They ask me what it is called in English and I have to tell them I have no idea because I've never seen it before. Most of the carbohydrates they eat are totally weird...'pap' which they also call 'stiff porridge' but looks nothing like porridge to me! And some bean mushy stuff [actually quite nice] and they eat mashed pumpkin a lot! The worst thing [which I haven't even tried] is called 'sour milk' in English, I can't remember in Zulu. The name is enough to put me off let alone the smell! It comes out kind of thick and then they mix it with something else so it looks a bit like porridge, gross! The other weird thing I had the other day which was actually nice was a fish chilli! I thought it was beef at first then realised I had been eating fish, quite a surprise! They never waste anything here so often you find the meat they are eating is something which you would never see in England...like they had chicken feet for supper! They were actually gnawing on the claws of chickens, it looked so wrong! They said they eat the heads too! I guess all that stuff ends up in mcChicken nuggets and things like that, but here everything is in it's original shape, no hiding what it is! 'Processing' things is definitely not something which really happens in Africa, I've noticed that a lot. It's especially evident when you see the cow being brought in on the back of a truck, tied up and slaughtered, then served on the BBQ [braai] later that day. Freshest meat I've ever had!

What else can I tell you about my life...my house is very comfortable, not really any different to living in England. I have sofas, tv, fridge freezer, microwave, toaster, hot shower...the only thing which is hard work round the house is doing laundry. You have to scrub it all by hand and I always make my knuckles bleed by the end of a load! They you have to rinse it and hang it out. There is a rinsing machine which I can use sometimes, its basically a barrel which fills with water and spins round...pretty oldschool!! O and the toilet paper is really crap! And my electricity is always shutting off because it's too weak round here. So the fridge is turned off most the time, o dear. You have bars on the windows and doors here, and big fences with spikes on top surrounding the Home. That is normal here, houses always have security fences round them, no little picket fences or low walls like in England. At first I found it intimidating but it makes me feel safe now.

The township which I live in is called Blaauwbosch Catholic Mission...you won't find it on a map or on google because it doesn't officially exist. They have been trying to get it under the durastiction of one of two local councils, Madadeni and Osizweni, but neither one will accept responsibility for it. So apart from the Home and the Church which have built their own sanitation, none of the hundreds of homes here have running water or sewage systems. They have to collect water from taps to wash and cook, and they have outdoor hole-in-the-ground loos which are corrugated steel cubicle things that they have fashioned themselves. They do however have electricity...I don't know how or when this came in. It seems crazy to have electricity but no running water! The people living here are desperately poor. About 80% are unemployed and a similar number are HIV positive. The two often go together as they can't hold down a job because they are sick.

I had quite a scary enounter on the way back from church on Sunday which was held at the primary school, a 15min walk into the heart of the township. A crazy old man who was in his garden started talking to me, he was kind of shouting then I realised he was speaking English and was saying don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you! So I stopped and shook his hand and said hello to be polite but he wouldn't let go of my hand. He was kind of talking nonsense, half zulu half english, then he became more coherent and said he wanted my advice. He said he was addicted to drugs and wanted to know what he should do to stop. He kept repeating the question so I tried to make up an answer! I just said that it's a very hard thing to do but he must try to gradually take less and less because you cannot cut off easily in one go. But he must try and get medical help...I don't even know what the drugs were. The thought going through my mind was that they might actually be drugs for HIV which he needs to take. Often they have very anti-drug taking taboo, to do with their cultural opinions and they sometimes choose to stop taking the drugs which they need for HIV in favor of using traditional herbal healers. I was worried that he might be talking about his HIV drugs which ofcourse I want to encourage him to take! It was a very weird encounter...he let me go and said I must go with a smile on my face to eat my lunch! He was crazy but not a bad man...just very sick I think.

I've been thinking a lot about the children in the Home and wondering if they are sick. Details of the HIV status of all the children is completely private to ensure they are not treated differently or discriminated against. Sadly attitudes are still very misunderstood and families even disown family members who have the virus. My attitude is so opposite in that, I also want to treat them differently, because I want to love them MORE and spoil them! And give them more attention and love, and it is because I pity them. I know it's not a nice feeling to think that others pity you, you want to feel like a 'normal' person. But I just want them to have the best, most love-filled life they can. Maybe they will only live to be a young adult...it doesn't really bare thinking about. It is just so sad. As well as the drug treatment they should be undergoing HIV counselling here too I think...I have heard it mentioned, I'm just not sure what it involves or who conducts it. But the idea is to help them come to terms with their illness and realise that they can have a life past being diagnosed. But the resilience of these children is just stunning. If I knew I had HIV I would just curl up and wait to die...I couldn't carry on like they do. But if they are born with the disease...they have never known any different. We must just make sure they don't see that reaction of tragic pity in the way they are treated or spoken too, they must be given hope for their future, because they only have one chance at their future, they only have this one life...

Anecdotes and thoughts on my third week in Africa

Hello friends and family,

so again it has been a week since my last entry! It shows that I am settling in to a busy way of life...Sunday is my one day of the week when I can do stuff that I want to do. Mid-week is just a bit too hectic so the weekend is the time to get online and collect my thoughts on what I have experienced.

This week saw the start of my job as a Fundraiser for the Home, so far, one 25 page application down...only a few hundred more to go I should think! I have applied to the FirstRand Foundation which is a collection of 4 of the biggest banks in SA into a charitable fund which awards grants to NPO's [non profit organisations]. I emailed it off on the 30th, the deadline was the 31st! So hopefully they picked it up in the office in time on the Friday afternoon for it to qualify for consideration.

There is a lot of work to do here which we need funding for...the main thing being a new block which needs building. Currently the Home can take 100 children, but that means 50 boys and 50 girls. At the moment we have 89 children including 37 boys and 52 girls. The problem is...that we have too many girls in the 2 dormitories for aged 4-12 yrs girls. They are really cramped with 15 girls in one room! That room should really only have about 10 girls.

So they want to build a new cottage for the staff quarters so that those rooms can be made into children's rooms. That cottage will cost about R496,000 which is £49,000. The other big project we are looking to get under way is for an administration block and hall. At the moment there is no one room big enough to hold all the children and staff together. We had a mass on Saturday with just the staff and children and maybe 40 other people, and they had to hire a marquee and put it up outside. They have to hire a marquee maybe 15-20 times a year. If they had their own hall they could hold more functions and events, have indoor events when the weather is bad, and also rent the hall out to the local community to generate extra income. Also, this building would have the offices in so the current offices could be turned into another cottage for children. The two extra cottages inside the Home would accomodate approx. 40 more children! And the cost of building this hall is R1,600,000 which is £160, 000.

So I have a lot of work to do to fundraise this money! They have had the plans drawn up for over a year now and nothing has happened so hopefully we can get the ball rolling so building can start in early 2010.

Other than that, my week has included only 3hours of teaching at the school [that's just how my timetable works, I have 4 busy days at school this coming week] and just general playing with the children. They are getting more used to me now which is nice, and even the boys are becoming braver and talking to me. I just had two of the boys from Zanzibar who are 13yrs come round and visit, they are so curious to see inside the house because I have hundreds of photos on the wall which they can see through my window! So they came in and looked at them all, and I was explaining who all my family and friends are. I also let them go on my laptop so they could look through all the photos I have taken of them over the past few weeks. It's just really nice for them to be able to come in here and see how I am living and know that they are welcome in here too, its not a place which is out of bounds to them! I am hoping that next week the boys will be able to come round for a dvd night in my house! They have a dvd player which they can bring and plug in, and I could buy crisps and popcorn and stuff, make it like a cinema night :)

Yesterday we had a really nice celebration here to remember the founder of St Anthony's, Fr. Tate. He died 40years a go this year. It was really special because we had a lady come back who was the first child that Fr Tate adopted! He was left with 2 orphans when their mother died and there was no other family to care for them, they went and lived with him in his presbetry, their names were Nancy and Ernest. From there they were adopted by Dr and Mrs Khoza who ended up with 22 orphans! So it was a really nice day with food, dancing and zulu singing and lots of Old Atonians visiting again.

Today I got up and went to Church as always at 8am, it was a special service where the children went in their school uniforms and each of them received a blessing from the priest, in preparation for the start of exams. Some of them have already written some exams, others are starting in the next couple of weeks. I love mass here, it is all in Zulu but the singing is amazing, they all sing in harmony all the time and I am gradually picking up some of the songs. The one thing I struggle with every week, and causes quite a stir amongst the children, is my dancing!! Yes dancing, in church...it is compulsory and I can't do it!!! They all do this special sway from side to side and I just can't make my hips do it! And then you have to do some turns, and I keep bumping the kids with my bum by turning at the wrong time...it is so embarassing! After mass one of the girls said, we really need to teach you the zulu step. And I could see that these men in the row oppositte were laughing at me, I went bright red!!

After church I had arranged to go with the teenage boys' careworker, Mlondi, to visit one of the boys who used to be at St Anthony's but has ended up in prison. He was my favourite child when I was here last year! I was so shocked to hear that he had gone to prison. His name is MARK, he is 20yrs old now, he originally comes from Durban where he lived with his mother and sisters until his mother died when he was about 15yrs, then he went into an orphanage in Durban. He got moved out here, I think it was because he was too old, when he was about 18yr. When I came last year he was in my grade10 class and was the star pupil. Because he is coloured [mixed race] his first language was English so he obviously was a better english speaker than the other children. But he was also so keen to learn, and was really intellectual. One night he came round for extra help with his Shakespeare work that I had started with them, I hadn't even set any homework! We ended up having a really good discussion about the political history of SA and he told me that he wanted to study philosophy at university. So you can imagine, he was a really clever young man with big ambitions and a mind focused on learning as much as possible, and really wanting to move up in the world. When I left I told him I would come back, he just looked at me and said, 'people like you always say that, but you never do!' He really meant it, he looked hurt, like he had been let down by people making empty promises before. So when I shook his hand and said 'I promise I will come back' I really meant it, there was no way I was going to break it.

That was why I was so sad when I found he was not here when I returned! I absolutely had to go and visit him and show him I had kept my promise, and that I still support him and believe in him even though he made a mistake. I should probably tell you what he did...Like I said he was from Durban and had trouble growing up with a single parent family, I think he was involved in trouble on the streets. When his mum died he started stealing to help the family live, this was why they ended up in care. So when he came to St Anthony's he already had created a habit of stealing, it becomes like an addiction, when they see an opportunity to take something, they really can't resist.

MARK has a 2yr sentence in Ekuseni Prison - for young offenders aged 12-24yrs I think. It is about 30min drive from St Anthony's. You come out the town from the North and drive through some beautiful countryside, surprisingly it can be quite green and lush and there are some dairy farms out there. On the horizon you can see the hills that this area is famous for, flat topped hills just like Table Mountain, but not on that scale. There are not many houses for about 10k then you turn off the road to Ekuseni Prison...which is Zulu for 'in the morning'.

On the journey I had been trying to imagine what it would be like. I had heard it referred to as a 'young offenders' institute so was shocked to see it called a 'Prison' on the sign. I began to fear that it was more serious an institute than I imagine of a young offenders in UK. My fears were increased by the sight of the guard office, behind two rows of 20ft high steel fencing, the inner fence which it turns out is electrified. We had to go in, show our IDs, leave our cell phones behind, then be searched and go through a metal detector. The guards went to fetch Mark from the actual prison building which is separate from the area where visitors can meet. We could see him walking across the big open courtyard in his burgandy red prison uniform, that shocked me too. The sight of him actually in prison dress, with standard issue plimsoles and everything. One thing I didn't see any sign of were handcuffs, which was a bit of a relief I suppose...We were allowed to sit with Mark outside in the shade, not inside at tables like I imagined from TV, and definitely not through glass with a telephone! So that was good too, I could actually give him a hug!

He was predictably, very surprised to see me there, but good surprised! He didn't think I would be coming back, and one thing which did actually make him light up was when he realised that I will be here for 2years so he will get out before I go back. Maybe even after serving 1yr of his sentence he will go on probabtion. In many ways he was still the smiling, chatty young man I remembered, but he was definitely very troubled. He kept talking about the problems he was having within the prison, with the other prisoners forming what he called Gangs, and the tension with the guards. Apparently he has been getting trouble because, he says, he is one of only two 'coloureds' out of the 700 prisoners. It's been hard for me to understand but there does seem to be almost as strong a divide between coloureds and blacks, as there is between blacks and whites. Mark said that he has been accused of making chair legs into weapons by sharpening them, but he said it wasn't him, just someone decided to turn him in for it because he is different, so can be a scape goat for them. Apparently the whole 'drama' as he called it, started on Friday when he was accused, and they had just been questioning and beating him for it, just before we got there. It is illegal for the guards to beat them but he said they all do anyway. He was really anxious and talked about it alot, he was worried about what they would do to him when he got back. One good thing that came out of my visit was that he said the fact that a white lady had visited him might make the guards lay off him a bit. They would be wondering who I was, and he said he would lie that I was his lawyer, and that my husband is a magistrate!! I think he is right that my visit did have an impact and hopefully it will be a protective one for him.

Apart from telling me about his troubles in the prison, we did manage to talk a bit about his future and I tried to encourage him to continue with his studies. He is going to start an engineering qualification which will teach him how to do things like fixing a boiler, so when he leaves he will be able to get an assistant's job. Hopefully he can also find a way of getting back to school so he can finish grade 12 and matriculate [graduate from high school]. If he can do that then he will have the option of later being able to go onto further education, but he really needs to graduate from secondary school to have a hope of being something successful. The problem is that when he gets let out he doesn't have a home to go to, and St Anthony's won't be taking him back again. I just don't know where on earth he is going to be able to get accomodation from! Now that he has a criminal record he's not going to be able to find a foster home, and besides, he will be 21yrs when he leaves. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I say 'we' because I really feel like I have a duty to do my best to help this boy. If he was still in the Home I would be helping him through his last year of studies, just because he made a mistake and ended up somewhere else doesn't mean that I will just forget about him. He really does have no one. And I couldn't live with myself just cutting off all contact with him. I already think about him so to do nothing would be ignoring my conscience. Hopefully we can take things slowly and I will visit him every fortnight, maybe taking him some books and studying with him...just to keep his mind focused on the academic goals he used to have. He could be so much more than an engineering assistant, he should go into teaching or even social work. The best social workers are those who have been through the systems as a child and now what kind of support they needed when they were in that position.

I left him with a letter I had written last night, where I had tried to put into words everything I wanted to say to him, just incase it didn't come out right face to face. I'm really glad I did and I hope that letter will be the start of a friendship between us which will have a positive impact for Mark. This first meeting has left me quite shaken and again emotionally drained...but then all this I know is simply a reaction to what I see him suffering, and so what he is experiencing must be so many hundred times worse. Hopefully the little I can do and the support I can offer will be the start of a new future for him.
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