He's My Brother

Well after 9 months of waiting I finally arrived at Rehoboth last Friday. Everything still feels a little surreal but I’m here where I know I’m supposed to be and I can’t wait to see what’s in store during the next 6 months.
I’ve had a hectic week feeling my way around the village, organising some sort of schedule and of course attempting to learn the names of the 37 children and all the house mothers and other support staff. In the mornings I’ll be involved in co-ordinating baby crèche (0-3yrs) and the big crèche (3-6yrs). Then in the afternoon I’ll be doing lots of things ranging from working in the clinic sorting out all the many medicines that the children need, swimming with them, doing homework with the ones who go to school, music and dance lessons and of course sorting the storeroom where the many many donations of clothes, toys and other things need to be sorted and shelved. Any other time I have free I spent playing, reading and generally having fun with all the children. It’s gonna be a busy 6 months!!!

Rob and I have been made to feel so unbelievable welcome. I feel so privileged and blessed to be among such loving and caring people. The children are just amazing- each so beautiful and special in their own little way. I’ve seen a lot of pictures of the children when they arrived at the village. They all looked so miserable and unloved. Most of them were very ill too for obvious reasons. To see them now and witness just how much the love and care of Jesus and his followers can transform a child into a happy, smiley, relatively healthy individual is very humbling indeed.

As you can see from the pictures below the children themselves are so loving towards one another- it’s hard to stop the tears from falling when I look at the pictures below.

In the last week blood test results have revealed that actually 3 of the little ones are HIV negative and hopefully in the next few months they will be reunited with family. These three children’s biological mothers are actually HIV positive so it really is a miracle that these children are negative. God is amazing!!!
The volunteer accommodation that we are living in is beautiful. My room is lovely and cosy. I’ve stuck lots of pictures of u all on my walls already to make it feel like home and I’m in the process of printing out photos of all the children to help me learn their names faster! Our living room and kitchen is really homely and the view from the building is beautiful! The whole village is set on the side of a massive hill so you have to walk up and down hills all day long- good way to get back into shape! At the bottom of the hill near our accommodation is a wee reservoir so at night the sound from the hundreds of frogs is almost deafening. I’m having to quickly get used to all the many many many different bugs- moths, flying beetles, flying ants, crickets, shongololos (not sure if that’s how u spell it- suffice to say they are really big long black centipede) and so many other things that are just horrid to look at. As most of you are aware I’m not a fan of creepy crawlies so I’m having to change my ways fast as there’s no way to avoid them there are so many about- especially at night! I’ve already got a few mossie bites- actually less than I expected as usually mossies love me (or my skin rather!).

The weather so far has not been the best. We’ve had quite a few horrendous thunder storms with fantastic lightning but torrential rain. We lost power from about 8.30pm til 11.00am the next day. I’m quickly learning that with being in such a remote and poor area it takes a lot lot longer for things to get into motion and for vital things like the power to get up and running again after storms knock it out. The difference between the area around Rehoboth and Joburg is staggering. It’s like we’ve stepped into a different world. Here almost everyone is black. Most people live in tiny little concrete shacks- very few actually have electricity. There are very few cars about except from taxi’s who ferry people about (usually there about 25 people crammed into a 8 seater car and the drivers are complete maniacs!). There are people walking next to the roads day and night. Most of them seem to be wandering aimlessly- not knowing or caring where they are actually going to end up. This last week really has been a wakeup call to the struggle these people face day in day out and I’m worrying about the fact that my hair won’t stay straight. I visited the local government hospital today and was appaled by the conditions. The wards were filthy, everything seemed so unorganised. the state of the TB ward was just unbelievable. No wonder so many people in Africa are dying not just of AIDS- TB remains a huge killer as well. The childrens ward wasn’t much better- kids with open TB who were supposed to be in quarantine were wandering around mixing with the other children who were clearly already rather ill. It really was unbelievable especially considering I was assured that this was one of the better hospitals in KwaZulu Natal- apparently the hospital received lots of funding to build new, more up to date wards however these wards haven’t opened as of yet as there are no staff to run them. Today really opened my eyes to how tremendously lucky we are to have free medical care which is of far greater standard. It seems to me that the KwaZulu Natal (nicknamed the AIDS region of South Africa as 40% of the people living here have HIV/AIDS) region whilst being so famous for its high rate of HIV/AIDS is in reality a region that the people of South Africa and indeed the rest of the world would much rather ignore…