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.

Church soundclip

Day 3 - Church

We went to Gladys' church in Belfast today. An amazing experience.

The church was a small shack about twice the size of our playroom, built with slats of wood from packing crates with a tin roof on top. We filed into the back of the church and sat on benches.

There were about 40 people including children. The men sat front left, the children sat front right and the women sat at the back.

There was a lot of talking with Hallelujah at the end and whenever the person at the front said Hallelujah, everyone waved and said Amen. However, the Hallelujahs came at the end of every sentence so we were kept on our toes!

Then the singing started. What seemed a random lady or girl would start singing and then everyone else would join in, usually answering whatever she was singing. I learnt later in the week that if you have a good voice you are a leader and will be expected to start singing. The singing blew us away. They sing such amazing harmonies.



Our favourite song went:
Oh, oh, oh, oh my God is goodo, Oh, oh, oh, oh my God is goodo,
Everything is double, double Lord, is double, double Lord.



The leader of the church who looked about 18 came over and shook all our hands and told us how welcome we were and asked us to sing a song. We were NOT prepared for this!!! We'd heard they might randomly ask one of us to preach but NOT sing! So what to sing? Don't ask me why we ended up singing this but we ended up singing Phatfish's Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. Er hem ok to start with but we forgot the words half way through and trailed off into a dead end as we forgot that it didn't really have an ending. The congregation all looked at us blankly as if they'd heard nothing like it before, well, lets face it they hadn't! And as for our singing!!! We were pretty strong singers but it was SOOOO bland compared with their beautiful harmonies. It was all we could do to hold the tune together let alone harmonize!! You'll be so sad that I don't have a sound clip of us singing!

In attempt to pre-empt them, Mark thought he'd share what we would have said if they asked us to preach. He did a sterling job and we then all shuffled back to our seats grateful that the ordeal was over. The guy in charge politely thanked us and requested that the first person bought the Word.

What followed was a series of people standing up reading from the Bible and then repeating what it said in their own words. It was all so simple and yet effective. Most humbling was the passage on giving. The lady speaking, re-emphasised the importance of giving descretely so that we weren't proud or boastful. What on earth could these people have to give each other?

The guy at the front then announced that Pastor Mike and Pastor Paul would bring the word. We're all nodding politely and then realised he ment Mark & Pete from our group. H E L P ! ! ! (I couldn't help feeling releaved to be a girl at that moment, they didn't seem to need to pick on us!). Pete also did a fantastic job sharing from Ephesians. I did realise though thought that actually it wasn't a pressurised thing, all they wanted was to listen to the Bible and hear someone emphasis what it meant to them.

The offering came next. We all filed up to the fronts to put offering in different plates based on what areas we wanted to give to - building fund, youth etc. Then a different guy got up the front and asked us not to laugh at his poor English but he had something important he wanted to say to us. He said that they loved us but more than that they adored us. He wanted to a word which meant more than love to express how grateful they were to us for coming to support their community.

It was so humbling, we had interupted their service and yet they just went on and on about how blessed they were that we were there.

They are so spiritually rich. They accept God, beleive ferverantly in him. Shout and sing words of praise. Whenever they prayed they ALL prayed at the same time out loud. This was normal. We are so bound up in our doubts, feelings and self-centredness. I totally envied them at that point.

At the end people came over and shock our hands, thanking us for coming. They were so courteous and welcoming. It was such an honour.

I found it really emotional. Why would these people think we were so special. We can't change their situation and yet they're not asking us to. They don't sit worrying for themselves. They worry for people poorer than them. We sit at home with our hangups, worrying about EVERYTHING. They just accept life and all that it throws at them.

Day 2 - Safari!

Up at 4.30am to head off to Kruger before the gates open at 6am. We then spent the day driving around hoping to see the Big 5: Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Buffalo and Rhinoceros. They are called The Big 5 because they are the most difficult animals to hunt on foot. Hannah also blinded me with the fact that Hippos have killed more humans than any other animals which is somewhat surprising!

Anyway we saw Hippos too! It was an amazing day, although a little bizarre. Quite often you'd drive for up to an hour and then you'd come across lots of cars and think right animals ahead. It really was at times like driving around a giant Longleat safari park.

The best bit was the Leopard who we only spotted because of his tail dangling down from the tree. He then got up had a stretch and settled back down again on his branch. It's a hard life being a big cat.

We were also really excited with the Rinos as we didn't think we would see them and then came upon them by chance. There was a mum feeding her baby and the other's just walked in front of our cars like they had no cares in the world.


Some people will do crazy things to get a good shot. Never mind the fact that the Rinos were all around us and we'd only just passed the leopard half a mile back!

Day 1 - Part 5 - African Time and Uno

It being our first day out in Africa, we weren't aware that we needed to adjust our timing to suit African time. The guys at the Hands Village laughed at our reluctance to go to bed before 10pm. And when we asked them tentatively if they would be able to open the gate to the compound at 5.30am the next morning, they said sure they'd waking up that time anyway. It would seem African time starts at dawn so that much of the work can be done before the heat of the day and then people settle down to sleep between 8-9pm.



Ignoring all this we embarked on yet another challenging part of our trip - who could survive Jump In Uno? My oh my how competitive some people are!!!

Day 1 - Part 4 - George's story

After Lula, we visited K2 which was another step on down the line from Lula. The chap who showed us round told us to follow him as he follows Jesus which I thought was really lovely. They had substantial buildings and were planning groups for children to mentor them and train them with skills. Another problem that Africa is dealing with is that people don't stay in community to help the vulnerable. As soon as they get the oportunity of education or a job they move to more affluent areas. The vulnerable are then left to fend for themselves.

We then went back to the Hands village and met George. George founded Hands@work. He told us something of his story and although we knew he'd told the story many times before you could see him reliving the pain of what he'd seen.

Please watch some of his story here

Day 1 - Part 3 - Lula

Lula

The meeting finished and we got in the car and headed out to Lula. This is about 10 minutes from where we were staying and is an example of what we hope to achieve long term in Belfast. It was a crèche which consisted of 2 buildings – one for preschoolers and one for toddlers. The children that attend the crèche are mostly from child headed households (ie children that have been orphaned and are now caring for their younger siblings). The children can leave their siblings at the crèche so that they can attend school. Once school is done they go to the crèche get a meal and often their school clothes will be washed for them. This means the whole family has access to at least 1 meal per day. We were told that most of the children there had HIV or TB.

As we arrived we found about 30 children all lined up in a row having lunch. Lunch looked like rice and grated beetroot. Quite nice, I thought! It was kind of awkward they were all sat there staring and we didn’t know the language. So what to do? Gradually they all finished their lunch, went off to wash their bowls and play. Still what to do? Did they want us to barge into their games? They were staring at us, we were staring at them.

My confidence deserted me. So I wondered around the site and eventually came across two boys taking it in turns to swing on the one unbroken swing of a fantastic climbing frame. So I pushed them. They shrieked at me and I wasn’t sure if it was a happy noise or ‘get off’ noise. So I persevered. Then offered them my sunglasses to try on. They thought this was just the most amazing thing. Pete from our team came over and next thing they were jumping up and wanting to be held.

These were no small boys. Probably at least aged 5 or 6. Arms aching I sat down and that was it. It was a competition as to how many children could sit on our laps at one time. They just wanted cuddles and to touch us. They were fascinated with our hair; they pulled down Pete’s T-shirt and screamed with laughter. The girls looked down my top with interest, perhaps they were looking for hair too??!!! They argued over who would wear our sunglasses. We had such a great time cuddling and playing with these children who just loved every minute of it.