Today started out at the government TB hospital. They treat drug-resistant TB victims on an
inpatient basis providing daily injections that may or may not work. I hear the success rate is less than 60% and
I’m thankful for all of the people praying that our boy Sanele does not become
a statistic. He’s an aspiring artist, so
we dropped off art supplies to keep him entertained in his hospital room that
he shares with 5 other sick boys (Thanks Deb Knoles!) and food since the
hospital has minimal less than appetizing meals available. He looked gaunt, thin, and very frail. But somehow, his spirits still seem to be
relatively high.
We went to deliver food to our Malindza community sponsored
high schoolers (Thanks FOODOM!). We
reached Sharon’s house and she looked great, happy, and healthy. Then we reached Nomalungelo and Nothando’s
house. Nothando was at her sister’s
funeral and Nomalungelo looked as though she was very ill. Nomalungelo asked to go to the hospital as
she has had trouble breathing and is feeling sick. She looked extremely frail and tired. I’m
hoping the food we delivered does the trick as this family has a lot of
children and always faces severe food scarcity. I really hope nothing major is wrong.
We then delivered food to our twin 2nd graders
and their gogo (she is one of the gogo’s we built a house for in December). They were almost as excited to see us as I
was to see them! I call the gogo our
dancing gogo because I’ve never seen her sitting still. She’s incredible in both strength/hardwork
and love. We hired someone 2 months ago to
dig a pipeline to our school so we could tap into the community water source
(on the rare occasion when it isn’t dry) and he quit working midway through the
digging process and disappeared. The
gogos, with the dancing gogo in the lead, volunteered to pick up their shovels and
finish the job for free so the school kids will have access to water. They never cease to amaze me.
Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with the lead lady at the
Ministry of Education. We found out last
week that the person from the ministry we have been working with for the last
number of years on registering our school (New Hope Primary for orphans) has
been entirely corrupt. He has made
demands over the years and strung us along making promises of registering our
school with the national government – yet, we found out he has done nothing to
promote the school and has not told the headquarter office a word about our
school’s existence. The lead lady is
irate, as are we. Apparently if he had
done his job, we would not have had to play his games and the school would have
been registered years ago. And to think
about all of the goats we slaughtered for his big belly… poor goats. And the hardwork of Maseko, our community
leader, and the teachers over the years to meet his silly demands. And the hardworking gogos who have worked
tirelessly – for free - to clear land, fence land, dig holes, and attend
meetings at his beck and call in the hopes that their orphaned grandchildren
would be able to attend a registered school.
He will be at the meeting tomorrow morning with me, the lead lady, and
Mr. Maseko. God give me grace…
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