Oshoek

You know one of the things about coming on a journey like this is that we all feel different things at different times. Life takes us different paths and sometimes we look and wonder- why does that touch them and not me? or why does this touch me but not them. The fruit salad team that we are brings such an amazing dynamic as people learn to be together, work together and appreciate each others strengths.

Previously we visited the communities of Share and learned of new hope, amazing careworkers, feeding programmes and lives which are starting to be transformed. It was hard but it was great to see such signs of life. This last two days however we went to a new area up near the Swaziland border. Here the poverty is literally devastating.We were invited to accompany the amazing careworkers who every day walk difficult trails to ramshackle sheds to support destitute families. Joe and I went to one such place.Surrounded by old carparts where they do occasional panel beating sat an old woman in the dirt.Gogo S greeted us laughing, trying to work out who we were with her half-blind eyes. Here there was utter destitution.  The place was filthy and the lady was sat in the dirt covered in dirt. They have no work...no food...and no papers. As Swazi refugees they have no documents and so cannot get grants or do work. Because they have no papers and the children don't have birth certificates it's hard to get into school....and there is no money for uniform without which they cannot go. If the kids do get into school they cannot metriculate - once more reinforcing the cycle of low aspiration, no qualifications, no work and no papers. We asked the Gogo if we could fetch water for her and in this very cold afternoon we wheeled wheelbarrows of dirty containers across a couple of fields to a water pump. The way was rocky and hard to negotiate and then the pump had to be worked with considerable effort to fill the dirty containers. We wheeled them back, watching kids who didn't even have wheelbarrows balance water on their heads in huge buckets...to a filthy home with no light or running water

The gogo apologised for having nothing to offer us...but they literally have nothing. I sobbed all the way back to base to see people living with nothing...less than nothing...