This
letter was written to me by Jeanette Colbert who is spending
a year in South Africa as a volunteer for Seeds of Light. Please
read as it will give you a deep sense of why South Africa calls
me. I
am writing to you from the magnificent landscape of South Africa.
I live on a nature reserve in the Blyde River Canyon in the northern
province of Limpopo. In a rural area, I am about a 30-minute drive
to the nearest town of Hoedspruit and about 30 minutes from a northern
gate of Krueger National Park. I am staying at Leslie and Brad's
beautiful home, built in true African style of thatched roofs and
rondavels for bedrooms. Loads of butterflies flutter around the
garden and banana trees. Zebras, Wildebeests, Bushbuck, Kudu, pesky
Baboon families, monkeys, Bushbabies, Impalas, and Duiker, roam
the reserve. There has even been an occasional leopard sighted.
A host of various birds nestle in the trees, singing their distinctive
song. Snakes, such as the Black Mamba, Puff Ader, and Rock Python
slither around, waiting for some unsuspecting person to walk by.
A scorpion is intricately spinning its web and the locusts buzz
in the back ground. As I take a morning walk, I feel grateful to be here. I walk out the gate of the reserve and am always greeted by a warm hello and handshake from Joseph or Precious. Precious, a young black man from the Shangaan tribe is patiently teaching me a few words in Shangaan. Joseph, also a Shangaan, has a beaming smile as he waves and studies his lessons to become an electrician. Seeds of Light is paying for him to take a correspondence course to learn the trade of an electrician. There are several tribes living in Limpopo and surrounding provinces. The Sotho, Shangaan, Swazi, Zulu and Xhosa are just a few. Sello, a young Sotho in his 20's speaks Sotho, Shangaan, English and some Zulu. Sello lives in the former homeland, Acornhoek, and has a young baby. He works in the reserve as a gardner and has dreams of becoming an engineer or electrician. His winning smile, kindness, intelligence, and integrity emanate from him. An open bed truck travels down the road, packed to the brim with workers being driven to the crossroad, to catch a bus to their home. An outstretched arm from the middle of the packed truck bed waves, and I know that it's Sello as I wave back. Since I arrived here in early March, I have been busy acclimating myself. Leslie and Brad were here when I came and I enjoyed spending time with both of them. We seemed to be very busy! I have been learning about the culture, driving, (on the left side of the road and steering wheel on the right side of the car) and watching out for cows, goats, people, potholes and very slow moving vehicles. I have been sorting out where I will be staying when I go to the projects, as some of them are as far as 2 1/2 - 3 hours away. I have also participated in two retreats. One retreat was a Seeds of Light retreat, coordinated by Victoria More. Fourteen people came over from the USA for nearly three weeks and soaked up the magic of South Africa. The other was a silent meditation retreat for South Africans. While South Africa is a country emerging from years of the destruction, violence, and atrocities of Apartheid, there is an emerging consciousness here that is full of heart and soul. South Africa is a first world culture through third and fourth world poverty and destitution. Driving through the vast rural bush areas lead me by kilometers and kilometers (we use the metric system) of villages filled with poverty, hunger, sickness, hope, love, and courage. I had been working with Leslie and Victoria learning more about the Seeds of Light Program, before they both went back to the USA. I am now fully moving forward with the projects of Seeds of Light, and I am excited to be doing that. We have several projects we are working with and we are also shifting some of our focus to more of an African tribal approach of 'Ubuntu', meaning shared and community oriented. This will enhance our orphan sponsorship program, as we look at the bigger picture of the whole project - of benefiting and sharing in collaboration with the whole community of each project. A very rural project, Thembalethu, has a home based care for people infected with HIV/AIDS where care workers go out to several villages it serves, many times on foot, to assist the people in their homes that are dying, as well as assist orphan headed households. Children as young as 10 or 11 are now the head of the household where they care for their younger siblings as their parents have died and there are no other relatives to care for them. Care workers go out to teach the head of the household how to cook, provide food and clothing, and how to care for their younger siblings. I will be going out and spending a few days at Thembalethu next week and adding some of these new orphan headed households to our orphan sponsorship program. On a recent trip to Thembalethu with the Seeds of Light retreat, I was in one of the villages visiting some homes where a woman was dying in each. A very thin woman sitting in a chair outside by her small mud and thatch hut, talked in her tribal language about how she will be leaving three children, her husband had disappeared, but she thought he might be sick also, and she hadn't eaten for two days. The care worker with us said she would come back with a bag of food. We had several apples and some chocolate that we left her right then. She smiled gratefully. What I noticed as I looked around at the surroundings of this woman, was the beautiful view of mountains in the background, the very tiny mud hut with a bed and no door, no running water or electricity, no bathroom, but also the spunk and sense of humor this woman had, even though it was apparent that she was very weak, thin and dying. What an honor it was to witness that. A week ago, Tom, a volunteer from Johannesburg for the South African Seeds of Light program, Mishack and I, drove to Mishack's village, Malakulule, to talk to his father about a bore-hole (well) that Seeds of Light is funding for his village to have water to grow crops year round. The tribe in this village is Shangaan. We drove quite a distance on back dirt roads through the village. Huts made of mud and thatch abounded. Some were of brick, but about the size of one small bedroom, which may be housing more than one family. Hands waved as we drove by. Heads were being washed in outside tubs by another. Hair was being braided as the sunlight streamed on their faces. Children with a cart and donkeys were delivering wood to families to keep the fires going outside to be warm, and to cook by. Children pushing wheel barrels with large plastic containers walked past to fill up the containers with water to take to their hut to have water for the family. After meeting with Tom, Mishack and his dad regarding the borehole project, we know we will need several more meetings to ensure the project becomes fruitful. First, getting the village chief involved, so this becomes a community project to benefit many people in the village and having a geologist out and finding where there is water on the land are just some of the first steps. Next
week, I will be going out to another project for a few days, Amazing
Grace Children's Center. Grace Machaba, is a very inspiring woman
who has been HIV positive for 15 years. Grace has around 70 orphans
at her center, in Malalane, some HIV positive. I will be updating
our records on the children, spending time with them and gathering
other information. I
met the principal, Daphne, of Funjwa primary school in Acornhoek
and recently visited there for the second time. There is over 920
K through 4th grade children in Funjwa Primary, with an average
of 50-60 per classroom. Daphne welcomed me and took me around to
many of the classrooms. Most do not have desks, or tables and chairs.
A few had very old desks with the desktops broken off and only
a longish seat with three children squished to a seat. Most all
others sit on the cement floor. Pencils are broken into thirds
to stretch out to the kids. No play equipment is outside for recess.
Many kids do not have food for lunch, as there may be none from
home and there is no government money to provide one. There is
a room with a sign in the front that says, 'computer laboratory'.
I peeked inside and there is nothing except a shelf around the
sides. Daphne told me it is her dream to have computers in that
room, even if it is just one, to introduce the kids to what a computer
is. I
was told that many of the children at this school have been orphaned
due to AIDS. They are not living in orphanages, but maybe are living
with an uncle, but the uncle leaves the area for the week to work
if he is lucky to have a job, and the child is left home alone.
Sometimes a neighbor will check in on the child. The World Health Organization is having a conference on AIDS at the lodge at the Blyde Reserve beginning on Monday the 14th. It's a small conference of about 18 people. There will be people represented from several countries all over the world. I am looking forward to networking with them the next few days. The
problem with AIDS in South Africa is huge. In the area of Acornhoek
within Limpopo province, about one in four people are infected
with HIV/AIDS. In the area of Mpumalanga province where most of
our projects are, the infection rate is about one in three. The
problem of AIDS has many faces - poverty, malnutrition, lack of
water to grow crops, work migration, inequalities..... Many of
these people are sick and dying because they don't have a reason
to live. Having a reason to live rather than focusing on the dying
gives them hope. Having hope gives them a reason to live. I look
forward to learning much more as the days, weeks and months pass. I am grateful to be here and am grateful to Leslie for providing me this opportunity. Every day, I ask spirit to help me get out of my own way so that I can see and receive the gifts that are here for me. I am sending this email to many people I know. I would love to hear back from you and let me know how you are and what you are doing. I may not be able to answer you with a long personal email, but please know if I don't, I appreciate hearing from you. I will send out periodic updates. If you would like to donate to Seeds of Light, please contact Patti Blair at the Seeds of Light office at: 888-989-3552 ext. 6, or info@seedsoflight.org Fambagate
(go well) and paddle forward!
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