Day 4 - Belfast - Home Based Caring

We met at the compound at 8.30am and were introduced to the 'grannies'. These ladies are all around the age of 60/70(?) and work on a voluntary basis.

We all gathered in a circle and introduced ourselves. They seemed interested to hear that I do work supporting marriages. They asked if I would teach them about that later. We then sang (well they sang and we tried to follow!) and Cat bought a word. The singing once again was beautiful.

We split into 3 groups who were all going to do Home Based Care which meant visiting the sick in the area, checking how they were and us praying for them. Cat and I went with 3 grannies and a girl, Feli who had a 2 year old baby on her back. Another girl joined us - Prudence. She was all smiles, very chatty and remembered the last team that had gone out. She spoke excellent English and was able to explain what was happening. Well I say she spoke excellent English but by the end of the week I realised that the African's often said yes when they didn't understand what we were saying.

The first person we visited was a very old lady with a 2 year old child. We sat on a wall outside a rather smart house, whilst she hobbled towards us from what looked like a battered chicken pen. Questions cramed into my head as she approached - did she live in the chicken pen? What was wrong with her? Who lived in the smart house? What was her relation to the child?

Then as she took longer and longer to reach us with every slow painful step, the questions turned to why is no-one helping her? Why are they just sitting there? Should I help her?

Eventually she reached us and talked to us all, with Prudence interpreting for us. The child was her grandchild and I'm told that his very snotty nose was a sign that he had TB. She told us that she had high blood pressure and problems with her legs. She said they had been broken and not fixed properly. The grannies took notes and there was lots of just sitting and chatting with us not really having any idea of what was going on! I felt quite awkward, not really knowing what I was supposed to do. Cat then went to sit with her and asked more questions and we both prayed for her.

A large lady came and joined her. She spoke ok English so we were able to talk to her. Again she said she had blood pressure issues and pains in her legs but she also told us her chest was bad. She bought 2 young children with her and turned out to be the other lady's sister. Whilst chatting about different things she asked me if I liked Papya, I said it was delicious and how lovely it was to see it growing everywhere. We then prayed for her.

We got to the next house and had the same feeling of who are we here to see, where are they, what state will they be in? We stood outside the house for about 15 minutes whilst the grannies shouted at various people (infact they shout at everyone, it's just everyone's way of talking to each other!). After 10 minutes of this, they went into a room in the house - it only had 2 rooms and did some sweeping. I felt quite anxious at this point I hadn't got used to the shouting, then the sweeping that followed made me wonder if they were just trying to make the room more presentable for us. I wondered if actually the person we were visiting was so sick they didn't want to be troubled by extraordinary visitors but eventually we were ushered into the room. It smelt unbearable, really bad and there was a man lying on a bed faced down but trying to lean on a pillow. His legs were so emaciated I don't think he could have walked. He told us he'd had cancer since 1995.

On our last visit, we were ushered into a house where there was furniture gathered around a television which was playing quite loudly although the signal was bad. We sad down and realised that behind us was an old lady sitting on a bench against the wall. Once again we were sat there thinking who are we visiting this time? This lady or someone else? It turned out it was this lady and she was the sister to the ladies we'd visited earlier. Whilst waiting and wondering the TV suddenly loudly announced an upcoming Jamie Oliver programme! Then was more shouting, although this time it was the lady shouting at the grannies. They went off with a long stick and came back clutching 4 enormous papyas. The papyas turned out to be for us. This set off more embarassment on our parts. We had so much food and yet they who had very little were giving us theirs. We prayed for the lady and headed off back to the compound. On our walk back. Analeise (one of the grannies) proudly stopped at the corner shop, bought us all bananas and insisted that Cat & I have chrisps too! We knew we were going back to an enormous packed lunch but here they were again just wanting to treat us.

All our visits were pretty random with lots of standing around and not knowing what we were supposed to do. We just had to get on and pray, thanking the Lord for that person, praying for healing and reminding them how special to God they were.