Penny Thompson Article
Sadly the funder ran short of money and ASM have been left short of around £19,000. They have no choice but to complete the project from their own limited funds. If you would like to help, please send your support to Africa School of Missions care of this magazine.
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the South African region of Masoyi, just south of the border with Mozambique,
the story and the statistics are appalling. The Masoysi region is home to
250,000 black Africans, 75% unemployment has led to extreme poverty and
32% of the population are HIV positive. Masoyi's main township Phola covers
a strip of land just 6 x 9km, with one tar road and a warren of dusty pitted
tracks feeding the thousands of ramshackle homes of its 150,000 inhabitants,
an estimated 32,000 of whom are HIV positive. A dire situation, but not without a ray of hope due entirely to the work of a local bible college, the Africa School of Missions, an international college training modern missionaries in both theology and vital field work, including nursing. ASM has developed projects in the region which not only offer real life training grounds, but also provide the care and hope the Masoyi people desperately need.
One project, Masoyi Home Based Care, managed by George and Caroline Snyman seeks not only to equip students in the care of aids victims, but also to help the community to care for itself. The project offers training to local Christian women who although already caring for the sick did not understand the nature of the sickness. These community volunteers receive training at ASM in basic nursing skills, hygiene and nutrition. Once trained, each volunteer will undertake 40-60 patient visits per month, all on foot, often carrying heavy food parcels.
Until recently there has been little if any education as to the risk posed by HIV in this region and it remains dogged by stigma and secrecy. But for many, especially women, aids is an inevitability. As one volunteer told me, 'If I refuse to sleep with my husband he will leave, I will have no money to feed my children. If I agree to sleep with him I sign my own death certificate, but I cannot let my children starve'. With no welfare benefits, and the high instance of rape for women alone and vulnerable, thousands of women have no choice. What makes these volunteers such excellent carers is their own proximity to the disease, many of the older women having nursed their own children through to death, and the younger ones deeply aware they are giving care they themselves may one day need.
Each day George, Caroline and a team from ASM including a locally a trained social worker meet with and offer additional support to the volunteers. Bringing supplies of vitamins, pain relief, food parcels, blankets and additional medical skills they walk with the volunteers to visit their patients.
The project has developed as needs arise. Concern regarding a lack of more specialised and palliative care gave rise to the funding and building of a medical clinic adjacent to ASM. This offers an excellent daily clinic as well as a highly experienced district field nurse to visit those too sick to travel. The resulting improvement in general health, especially for children, and the improvement in available palliative care has been remarkable.
The effects of this devastating disease are far reaching. In normal conditions of African society ageing parents would be cared for by their adult children, but the tables are now turned. Mothers struggle to nurse their daughters through the agonies of Aids to inevitable death, collecting orphaned grandchildren along the way. The care given by the project extends to all those affected. Time and time again I watched nurse Denise demonstrate to mothers how to crush bulky pills making a syrup, easier for their daughters to swallow. Or she just sat: encouraging, hugging, praying, mourning their loss.
Until the Masoyi team stepped in, the community lived in fear of hundreds of wild and abandoned orphans driven by hunger to steal whatever food and clothing they could find. Now with the help of 'Garden Grannies', vegetable gardens have been developed in the community, where the orphans are taught to provide for themselves. In return for their attendance they are given regular health care and fresh vegetables to add to their food parcels. Many still live alone but are monitored by the eagle eye of Ma Florence, the project's orphan co-ordinator, and her volunteers who watch over more than 800 orphans. In an effort to avoid more children living alone the team now identifies those children most at risk before they become orphans. Ma Florence visits their sick mother and together they identify a female relative willing to move in and help care for them all. If there is no relative, a 'granny' will be chosen from the many hundreds living alone and vulnerable in the community. With the mother's blessing the new granny moves in and stays on after her death. A third option has developed by way of newly built orphan homes with house parents recruited from the local church. Amazingly a fully equipped home for 5 or 6 orphans costs as little as £2000.
It would be prudent at this point to remind ourselves that this project, with all its hallmarks of successful development, such as might be managed by a well funded, fully experienced aid agency, is operated from a bible college by experienced local staff, students and volunteers. It is remarkable in that their purpose is simply 'to serve'.
The risk to all involved is considerable yet daily they operate in a way that one might expect of Jesus himself, with servant hearts full of compassion and without a thought for themselves. Their emotion as people suffer, and with every new death, is real. The love of God and the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ shines out in their desire to serve those who are sick and dying, in the most appalling circumstances. With no support, counselling or time out for these carers they can only be sustained and protected by God in response to the simple desire of their hearts - to make a difference in that one person's life at that one moment in time.
Although shocked and appalled at the devastating conditions in which this community lives and dies, working with this team was a strangely joy filled experience. Wherever they walked, they took with them a strong hope for the future. A clear message that this community is not cast aside by man or, more importantly, by God. The sporadic availability of drugs, the anti retroviral debate, the lack of education or any official strategy to combat aids as well as an acute shortage of funds all stand in the way of a stable future. But in spite of this the Masoyi Home Based Care project shines like a beacon, a living demonstration of 'salt and light' in a suffering world. A world in which these people who serve the suffering masses have the real and only answer for the future.