Do you ever feel like your very best isn’t anywhere near
good enough? That was me today. During our free clinic hosted at our New Hope
Primary School, we learned of a mentally challenged girl who is commonly
victimized by boys/men in the community which has resulted in three
pregnancies. Two of her children (5 and
6 years old) go to our New Hope Primary School and one is only 19 months
old. Her grandmother – who took care of
her and her little ones – died last year, so she has been staying with a
cousin. It is unfortunately beyond my
abilities to actually stop the rapes as there is rumored to be multiple unknown
perpetrators, so the best I could do is provide funding for her IUD to prevent
further unwanted pregnancies. We later
delivered food to her home (Thanks Mitali/FOODOM!). She is a sweet girl and you would never know
from speaking to her children just how hard their lives are. My heart ached for this very young girl who
had no idea of the atrocities performed against her and the resulting challenges
she faces raising three little children on her own.
We saw patient after patient with similar heart wrenching
stories. Our local volunteer nurse was
afraid that not many people would show up as we only invited our 60 students
and their caretakers – that was definitely not the problem. Word got around! The majority of the issues today were
infectious skin conditions, stomach worms, and diarrhea. Some HIV-positive mothers brought their
HIV-positive infants and all of their past medical records – both successfully
taking ARV (anti-retroviral treatment) – seemingly just to receive a pat on the
back for focusing on their health. We
were happy to give them that! Others
came in with their small children who were suffering from chronic
diarrhea. The nurse gave them oral rehydration
solutions and deworming pills. The
community people came from near and far and will continue to do so monthly as
we have enlisted our local nurse to keep providing free care at our school once
a month. Thank you Sube for the
medication and Hospital Sisters Outreach for the medical supplies that is
making this possible!
The children were all dewormed today. The teachers gave the Albendazole I provided
to them this morning before we arrived.
They told the children that the tablets were from me, so they got
excited thinking they were sweets! Little did they know…
We also delivered brand new school trousers, socks, and
school shoes to the children and hung the “Paint for a Purpose” mural done by
Heather Smith & her bachelorette party in our 3rd grade
classroom. It was a long busy day that
was made infinitely better by having one of our pride and joys, Lungelo, there
with us to help. Lungelo is one of our
orphans we have been sponsoring for 8 years, is now in University (Thanks
Inbodens!!), and who has always been most helpful. He said he wants to learn at the University
to enable him to give back and sponsor other young children from his community
in the future. He is constantly helping
us in eLangeni to deliver food to child-headed homes or plant fruit trees at
our schools. Today he said he wanted to
go to Malindza with us and he helped at the clinic as well as at the
child-headed homes. I am so proud of him
and so thrilled to see that our program is working. I dream of the day that Give Hope, Fight
Poverty will no longer be needed. The
day that all of the children nationwide, like Lungelo, are given the tools they
need to help themselves – and each other – thrive. That would absolutely be my dream come
true.
We need your help!! If you’d like to help our orphans: http://www.ifightpoverty.org/donate.html
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