annie in swaziland

Bendix family, Christmas Eve:

This was by far the best Christmas Eve of my 30 years on Earth.  We spent the day with our incredible New Hope teacher Miss Mahlalela.  We asked her to identify our neediest students who would not have Christmas dinner tomorrow unless we delivered an emergency meal pack of rice, beans, canned fish, oil, and chicken soup mix (Thanks FOODOM/Mitali!!).  We started with a grandmother who had 8 children including one of our soon to be 2^nd graders.  She said that the children were asking about Christmas and she had been avoiding the topic as they’ve had no food for a number of days now.  Then, we headed to one of our pre-schooler’s homesteads whose mother and sister died in a car accident (she’s being raised now by a very young aunt).  This little girl is a sass-a-frass with a personality 100 times the size of her tiny body… she spends every day bugging Miss Mahlalela asking when we are returning.  Miss Mahlalela said that the girl doesn’t yet understand days or time so when she tells her we are returning in 3 months, the girl comes to school the next day wondering if it’s been 3 months yet. 

One of the next families included a father whose brothers and sisters died leaving him with all of his nieces and nephews to raise - including his own son who is our soon to be 2^nd grader.  When we arrived at this particular homestead I started inquiring about where the older boys and girl were attending school.  He said that they went to Mafutseni Nazarene Primary School last year but were kicked out since he couldn’t pay the fees (he was in debt to the school only $75 USD in total).  We told him that we would get to the bottom of it.  I sped off to the Nazarene school ready to wreck some major white girl havoc only to meet a VERY nice principal.  He said that without the school fees, this struggling primary school would no longer exist due to insufficient funds from the government (same story nationwide in these rural areas).  The problem is, we cannot provide education for these kids as our school is not fully built for the older age groups yet, so we gave him a list of 5 orphans who are siblings to our New Hope students and told him that we would cover any fees that ever arose…and to never chase them from school again.  He agreed and thanked us as he wishes he could let all of the orphans attend school for free and still have enough money to pay teachers, provide a nutritious school lunch, AND a quality education – but it just isn’t possible. 

When the food packs were all delivered, we went to show Will and Jamie the new house we built for Sisimo’s family.  When we arrived, we only found little Tenele and Lindo on a grass mat under a tree staring off into space.  They were alone and had no idea where anyone else was.  Peyton, who played Santa Claus today, whipped out brand new coloring books and crayons for the girls who were thrilled to receive them!  We then went to Nomalungelo and Nothando’s house to introduce Will and Jamie to the girls they’ve helped sponsor through their IndieGoGo fundraising campaign.  We played cards, hide and seek, and kickball.  It was 96 degrees with no cloud cover.  We are now zapped of all energy we once had.  But, we can go to sleep tonight with smiles knowing that our New Hope Primary kids will eat a big feast tomorrow on Christmas Day.