Cast of Characters

I've already introduced you to some of the marvelous people I met in South Africa, like Pastor and Mrs. Mawela. Here's another person I want you to know.

A few years ago, Dick Nystrom, an American pastor ordained in the Evangelical Covenant church (historically an offshoot of the Swedish branch of the Lutheran church) felt the need to do something different with his ministry. (Here's a little article about their call.) He looked into getting a mission call, but in the end decided to make it simple and get a Peace Corp assignment. The Peace Corp assigned Dick and his wife, Pam, to the Maluti Adventist Hospital in Lesotho.

Well, it didn't take long for Dick and Pam to prove their worth. Dick did everything from maintenance to building to fund-raising to assisting in hospital administration. By the time the year was over, the folks at Maluti asked him to come back for another year!

I liked Dick instantly: he's a Midwesterner like me, he's thoughtful and practical, he speaks his mind, but he is above all a very compassionate person.

The hard part is that Dick is living on very little right now. In fact, his denomination is paying his insurance so he can continue working at the Adventist hospital. I think that's extraordinarily generous of them. I wish someone would find a way to keep Dick on there at Maluti indefinitely, because he is a key person for this time to help move the hospital forward. Unfortunately, Pam can't be with him until October, because she's had some health problems.

So please pray for Dick and Pam. I have no doubt God sent them to our hospital.

Music

I've already shared with you (and will share more) of the marvelous music we heard in South Africa. As one of our hosts said, "Africans sing when they're happy, and we sing when we're sad, and we sing at all points in between."

At the Dwarsloop church I saw a few hymnals lying about, so I opened one. I don't know what language they sang in, though one would assume it is the Tsongan language, since that's the group we were with.


What especially intrigued me was the way music is noted. It took me a little while to figure this out, but I eventually did. I wonder if you can figure it out, too? If you do, add a comment, below.

You know the hymn, "The Cleansing Wave"—an old gospel hymn that we used to sing at baptisms. Here's the first phrase of it.


Hint: The Sound of Music.

Setsoto Design Weaving Center

On Wednesday we stopped at the Setsoto Weaving Center in Lesotho. It was quite fascinating to see these women work, how swiftly and efficiently. But the highlight was the spinner, and how much she enjoyed seeing herself on the video.



The rosa banksia lutea under the title slide was right out in front of the center, and it was loaded with flowers.

Home again!

Finally back home! After 24+ hours of travel by bus and plane, about 18 hours in the same seat, Jo'burg to Washington (with a stop in Dakkar) I am now in the Columbus Airport waiting for my ride. Thanks to all of you who followed the blog and especially for the comments.

The blog is not finished! I have a lot of great stuff to gather up and tell you and show you. So stick around!

Maluti Adventist Hospital

Today I visited one of the most remarkable ministries I've ever seen: the Maluti Adventist Hospital and all of its satellite ministries.

The Maluti Adventist Hospital has been around for over 50 years, and is the best hospital in the country of Lesotho, and I've never heard of it! In the meantime, they've become the top place for eye surgery, gynecology, treatment of HIV/AIDS; they operate clinics all over the country, and have even ventured into agriculture. Lesotho government ministers come to Maluti in preference to any other hospital in the country.

First, Lesotho. Lesotho is a landlocked country in the Republic of South Africa. (See map in earlier post). It is a mountainous region, of high elevation. Compared to other parts of Africa, it is lightly populated: about 2 million people in the whole country, compared to 3.2 million in the city of Soweto alone! It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen: high elevation, cool, geographically reminiscent of the American west. The people are unendingly friendly and warm.

The flaw: HIV/AIDS was not addressed promptly here (like all of southern Africa), and estimates range as high as 43% of the population is infected. And climbing, because traditional African men have no interest in the measures they must take to protect themselves from HIV, and the women are unempowered to protect themselves.

Maluti Hospital is the light in this gloom. It has 40 beds, a big out-patient service, a nursing school, as well as an excellent SDA elementary school. The bad news is that as needs become more intense, Maluti is on thin ice, financially and otherwise. That's why Hope for Humanity is here, and why I've come along.

I said the climate is cool. Well, actually cold. Last winter snow fell at these high elevations. School was cancelled. But you can't cancel hospital care. The maternity ward has no heat, and the women were having babies in shivering temperatures.


The kindergarten is held in an abandoned machine shed. It is the most pathetic school for 40 little kids I've ever seen. They literally open a big sliding door for trucks and buses to get into school! They take naps on the greasy concrete floors. The 7-8 grade classroom is an old shipping container, with a door and a couple of windows cut out with an acetylene torch.

Later in the day, we went to one of the extension clinics far out in the mountains, in the village of Sebetia. Prettier and prettier became the landscape as we climbed higher into the mountains. The village is tiny, but waiting for us was a long row of women who are volunteer HIV/AIDS counselors: they hike miles into the mountains to try to tell those with HIV that there is treatment available to them. Another group also wanted to meet us: they raise gardens to give food to orphans of the AIDS crisis. I was very touched by their work.
I am exhausted tonight, so will pull this account to a close for right now. I have one more day in South Africa, and will fly home on Thursday.

Kruger Park

Over the past three days we've traversed Kruger Park in our coach, at least once each day. This morning I went out with the group again, and spotted this marvelous scene. Just had to share it with you.



There were 45 elephants in this group, marching single file. Why am I thinking of a Disney movie?

What animals you get to see depends on sheer luck. There are a lot of animals in the park, though, and it almost seems like they congregate near the roads. The "big five" animals people come to Kruger to see are elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard—and we saw them all! I thought I'd miss seeing a leopard, but about a quarter mile from the park exit, we suddenly saw one right beside the road. It crossed behind the bus at a slow walk, and sat down in a thicket on the other side of the road. That is one enormous pussycat!

Neither of the lion groups we saw were very clear. One group was distant, and could only be seen through binoculars. Then today we saw another lion family not far from the road, in the shade of a small tree, just rolling around, hanging out and playing, like kittiens. There was rather a lot of brush and grass, though, so we didn't see them well.

Our list (excluding some amazing birds): mongoose, baboon, crocodile, lion, leopard, buffalo, hippo, rhino, zebra, impala, wildebeest, waterbuck, giraffe, kudu, nyala, elephant, hyena, warthog, bushbuck, steenbok.

The vegetation of the park, at this time of year, is just plain ugly. I can't think of a better word. This is the end of winter, the dry season, and the landscape looks blasted. In fact, in some part of the park, they burn the veldt so the grass comes back better and stronger. Ironically, the dryness is what makes it a good animal-sighting season. In a month or two after the rains, there will be so much foliage that the animals won't be visible.

Tomorrow we are going to Suweto, to the Nelson Mandela museum; then on down to the Adventist Hospital in Lesotho. I don't know if I'll be able to update this until I get home, because there is no internet connection available to us in Lesotho.

Papa Mawela

I was fascinated by Pastor Mawela's stories of how he started a church and an HIV/AIDS center in his retirement community South Africa.

But rather than my telling it, I'll let him.

Part 1


Part 2

Ntwanano

We heard this young woman recite at Sabbath School today, and were so impressed with her poise and confidence. Her name is Ntwanano, and she's 16 years old.

Please remember that this is a place of grinding poverty. Which makes her accomplishments all the more impressive.

She told us that her dream is to go to medical school and become a gynecologist.

Skukuza

I don’t have internet access here, so today I’m literally “phoning it in”: one of our leaders has a cell phone connection that will allow me to post a text message via a friend in the United States, but no pictures.

On Friday, our group entered the Kruger National Park in our coach. Kruger is a vast section of the low veldt in northeastern South Africa, set aside to protect South Africa’s wild animals. The number and accessibility of them is astonishing. In not many miles of driving, and staying only on the main road (you are prohibited, of course, from leaving your vehicle between the fenced oases) we saw impala, wildebeest, hippos, rhinos, many giraffes and elephants, buffalo, monkeys and baboons, zebras, hyenas, lions, and a few less well-known herbivores whose names I don’t remember. (A few from our group went out for another short trip, and saw a leopard.) Several of our group members are avid bird watchers, and one, Larry Blackmer, is equipped with the most amazing huge telephoto lens on his camera, that can focus on distant critters and bring them in close, and doesn’t even have to be set on a tripod to do it! I saved myself the trouble of taking mediocre pictures of animals with my tiny camera, on the promise that Larry would share his with the rest of us. (Larry also kindly shared his binoculars with me, for which I am very grateful.)

This morning we went to the Dwarsloop Seventh-day Adventist Church. One of our group members, Ray Hartwell of the Pennsylvania conference, preached a marvelous sermon, followed by a baptism in an outdoor baptistry. This is the church that was started by Pastor and Mrs. Mawela, after their Nhlengelo Center for the care of HIV/AIDS patients opened the doors for them in the town. There were quite a number of people there, including the caregivers, many of whom are not Seventh-day Adventists, but who are deeply committed to the Mawela’s ministry. The Nhlengelo Center has become almost a church itself, and for good reason: these people of various faiths are doing the work of Jesus together.

When I get back to Johannesburg, I will share a video with you that tells the fascinating story of how the Mawelas began this work. These people have character and leadership, and miracles happen where they are.

Tomorrow we return to Johannesburg in preparation for one more trip, this time to the Adventist Hospital to the Kingdom of Lesotho, where over 40% of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS.

Kruger National Park

Tomorrow we're going into the game park, to see the animals. Lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards, ostriches, hyenas, giraffes, impalas, zebras, wildebeast--all the African animals.

I'm still not sure whether I'll have any internet access for the next couple of days.

On Sunday, we go to an Adventist hospital in the nation of Lesotho, a landlocked country entirely within the Republic of South Africa. It has an official AIDS rate of 34% of the population, though public health officials estimate it at over 40%. It is hard to imagine.

Mpisane Public School

This is Mpisane School.

Mpisane School has 420 students.

They are served by 12 teachers.

What were we complaining about at our school, again?

And another

The woman in the middle is Elsie. She is the mother of three small children.

Elsie has breast cancer. There is no discussion of treatment. When asked, the caregivers simply say, "She will die." "What about her husband?" I asked. "She has a man, but I don't know where he is." "What will happen when she dies?" "There's a 'granny' who will care for her," Audrey said, "but that can't last for long."

While were there, Zelena and Audrey bathed the emerging sores on her right breast, and put some salve on it. That's all they can do.

I asked Elsie (through a translator) "How do you feel when your caregivers come?" "So happy!" she said. She laughed softly. "They come to see me, and I'm happy."

Another story

Today I visited Themba Ngwenya's house.Themba is 12 years old. He has six brothers and sisters. We picked Themba up at school so he could show us his house. No one else was home.

About two months ago, Themba's father murdered his mother with a knife. No one knows why, for sure. What they do know is that shortly afterwards, Themba went looking for his dad. He found him. He had hanged himself from a tree near the house.

This family has no relatives. Social workers moved the seven children into a neighborhood where they thought the neighbors would be tolerant, and possibly helpful. The "parent" of the family is the 16 year old sister, although everyone works.

The astonishing thing is that these children are surviving. The house, such as it is, is relatively clean. They're getting some government help. But the biggest help are the Nhlengelo caregivers. "We visit them. We help them with transportation and solving problems with the government. We give them hugs," said Zelema. There's not much else they can do. The caregivers themselves aren't rich. But as you see here, Zelena loves Themba, and vice versa.

Themba is simply stunned. He doesn't meet your eyes, but he does answer questions. There is no response to a hug. But I am so impressed that this family is getting by.

The danger, helped by the Nhlengelo caregivers, is that they will be taken advantage of. The girls are especially vulnerable.

Just one story—more tomorrow

A group of us went to visit what is euphemistically called a child-headed home near Nhlengelo. Here's the story—and its not unusual.

Both parents of this family of 8 children died of aids just a few years ago. The children had a granny and a few other relatives nearby, but so many had HIV/AIDS, and all were so desperately poor, that no one would (or could) take them in. They moved as squatters into a shack with no door.

Here's another common part of the story: a man moved in with them, saying he would protect them. These were all children, none older than 14. He did not protect them, of course. He raped one of the girls, leaving her pregnant.

When the Mawelas found them, they were barely surviving. This family, though, had one thing going for it: the parents had government ID's. Mrs. Mawela went with them to the government office, and helped them qualify for a small house and a tiny food stipend.

Today they live in this tiny two room house. Several of the siblings have left (I didn't ask…) but with two extra children, there are seven in the house. Without Nhlengelo, this picture could be much, much worse.

I talked with Farence, the young man in the picture, and his sister Joyce (the one who was raped) at their house. They are lovely young people, struggling every day just to find food. Farence is in the tenth grade, and is the head of the home. He is thoughtful and polite—the kind of young person every parent would love his or her child to grow up to be. He studies hard, hoping he will someday qualify to go to college.

I hope he succeeds.

Nhlengelo

Today I had one of the most powerful experiences of my life. I met a crowd of angels.

The story in brief:

In 1999, Pastor and Mrs. Mawela retired in Darsloop, in the far northeastern portion of South Africa. At the time, Paul Mawela's health was bad, but he had wanted to start a church in his retirement, and so he held a series of meetings. But hardly anyone came. All the other pastors in the town scheduled "revivals" for the same time! He began to hear that some other pastors were telling their congregants that Seventh-day Adventists were devil worshippers! (That sounds silly to us, but it is a measure of the ignorance and superstition in Africa that it is still a potent accusation here.)

Not getting anywhere with evangelism, he and his wife, Martha, wondered what to do next. He noticed that there were a lot of funerals in the area. When he looked more closely, he discovered that most of the funerals were for young people.

All Africans know about HIV/AIDS. There are roughly 42 million infected people in the world, and fully half of those, 21 million, are in the southern third of the African continent. He had retired in a particularly hard-struck community.

So Pastor Mawela went to the pastor of the local apostolic church, and told him his concerns. This was the first Christian pastor who was willing to talk to him. The other pastor realized two things: Pastor Mawela had identified a problem churches needed to address, and he also realized that Pastor Mawela was a true Christian man who he could trust. He gathered all the local Christian pastors, and together they determined to do something.

They started out with just a phone and an office. I'll skip the intermediate steps, and tell you that today Nhlengelo (the word means "fighting together against an enemy") is an interfaith ministry that employs 60 volunteer caregivers who go to the homes of people who are dying and minister to them. They visit the multitude of child-headed homes, where orphans live alone. They feed 70 children at the main center, and another 700 orphans at a local school. Here's a picture of some of the orphans who came for a meal while we were there.

In short, this is one of the most Christian activities I've ever seen Seventh-day Adventists do.

I must correct myself: Seventh-day Adventists were the impetus behind it, but it is an interfaith effort carried out by hundreds of marvelous Christian people. I'm more proud of that than I would be if our people were doing it all alone!

I wish you could meet the Mawelas. There is a power about them. It does not come from being right but from doing right. The other angels are the caregivers, who walk miles every day to minister to dying people. (And for these caregivers, volunteering is a real sacrifice; most of them live in poverty, too.)

And by the way, Pastor Mawela did start a church, and the town was so thrilled with the Nhlengelo center that the chief gave them the land!

If I can figure out how to edit my videos, I'll post them.

The Route

I feel a bit lost if, when I'm traveling, I can't see where I am on a map. Here's a map of the route our group is traveling through South Africa. We began our trip in Johannesburg, and have traveled up to Hazy View. We'll be returning to visit Suweto and Lesotho. In each place there is an HIV/AIDS ministry that Hope for Humanity supports, and that you can be part of, too.

The Veldt

Yesterday was a travel day. We drove from Johannesburg to the Umbhaba Lodge, near Hazy View, on the edge of the Kruger National Park. I am seated in a cabana at the edge of pond, where early in the morning Nile crocodiles and hippos sometimes appear, just a few feet away from the room where I’m staying. We are here to visit nearby Bushbuckridge, where people come to a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and his wife to die of HIV/AIDS in the Nhlengelo hospice. More on that later.

It is a measure of the contrast in this country that while we visitors sleep in beautifully appointed rooms and eat in a fancy restaurant, a few miles down the road are impoverished people waiting to die, and having no one to turn to.

The heroes of this story are Pastor Paul and Martha Mawela (in the middle) known to their community as Papa and Mama. They are the good, Godly people who have devoted their lives to caring for those who have no hope. We'll be visiting their hospice on Wednesday

Lambano

This evening I visited the Lambano home for children with HIV/AIDS. The leader of this organization, Lyn Coote, is deeply dedicated to rescuing children who no one else wants; she has several homes, and is in the process of putting up a hospice. They are beautiful children, and with the ARV medicines, some may have the chance to live relatively good lives.

As we entered the main home, a little boy named Giftie came up to me and lifted his arms to be held. He's probably 2-3, though with their health problems, they're often smaller than their age. Lyn said to me aside, "His mommy died last night, in the shanty town down the street." (Giftie is the little boy in the blue pajamas.)

The most startling thing Lyn told me is that there is little effort to educate people about AIDS, and little participation either from government or the culture generally in trying to stop the spread of it. Most of the money to run these programs comes from outside the country, because the wealthy South Africans think of it as a black problem. This is creating more and more resistant strains of the virus. I had to ask her, "What hope is there for Africa?" Only that Jesus will come!

The hospice is quite nice, but still needs about $100,000 to complete. This is Lyn standing in front of it.

Kwathema Adventist Church

Our field trip today was worshiping with the Kwathema Seventh-day Adventist Church, about a half hour from Johannesburg. Kwathema is one of the so-called townships that were set up in apartheid times to isolate the African people from the whites. (The one most people have heard of is Suweto.) Many became crime-ridden cesspools, though some are now thriving. While many black South Africans live in small homes in neat neighborhoods, a common sight along the road are shanty towns, put up by the poorest of the poor, often refugees from even poorer parts of Africa, like Zimbabwe.

The church is certainly thriving. This church was led by young people! Throughout the service there were teens and young adults who were enthusiastically involved in everything that was going on—especially the music. The highlight of the day was the singing! I've never heard such beautiful a capella vocal music—I was enthralled by it the entire time.

Yeah, they have a lot more fun in worship than we do.

Cry, the Beloved Country

My seatmate Daryl noticed I’ve been reading Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country on the plane. It’s undoubtedly the most important book ever written about apartheid, and that was way back in the late 1940’s. In the introduction, Paton tells about the clashes between black Africa and the Dutch settlers, and later the English (who started the Boer war over the gold found in the center of the country). Paton says, “The black people became truly a part of the white man’s mind,” and led him to spend the next century trying to keep the races apart. The only way to control the fear of engulfment (white people have never been more than 15% of the population) was to draw a clear line between the races, a separation that, like rising water behind a leaking dike, could not hold. Daryl told me that when he was a child, the separation was so thorough that he rarely saw a black person in Johannesburg, other than servants and laborers. I asked Daryl if his parents and grandparents realized that black rule was inevitable. He said, “No, I think they thought life would go on like that forever.” It was a huge shock, he said, when black people began to move in next door to them.

Should you wish to read South African literature about the peculiar and long-lasting social problems of South Africa, Cry, the Beloved Country is your first choice. It is over half a century old, but still speaks. Nadine Gordimer (July’s People is the most famous) also wrote many books about the tensions in this oddly anachronistic colonial country, and more recently, J.M. Coetzee. All three are Nobel Prize winners.

A Small World—for a Few

Remember, though, that the world is small for only a few of us; from the rest, we are very distant. For every Chinese engineer whose visa is arranged by the Microsoft monarchy, there are 1,000,000 Chinese living in poverty and to whom most opportunities are closed. Here's the dark side of the Chinese miracle: the goods made in China, so inexpensive to us, are unaffordable to the people who make them.

In a few days, our team will be visiting HIV/AIDS patients in South Africa, where, in some countries, a fourth of the population is infected. When I first was a pastor in the San Francisco bay area about 20 years ago, I met several Seventh-day Adventist gay men who died soon after I met them. It has been years since we’ve seen that in the United States, thanks to effective drug therapy. But the world is not small enough to get those drugs for millions of Africans, apparently.

So to the argument that this is a small world—a flat, globalized world—indeed it is in many things of little importance: pop music, movies, fashions, sports. In those things that really matter (health, money, leisure time, education), a fraction of us are on one side of this flattened world, and the rest on the other.

Somewhere Over the Atlantic

Modern travel still amazes me; I can’t take it for granted, as I think frequent travelers do. I got up this morning on one side of the world, and after 18 hours packed with strangers in this sealed tin cigar, I will be on the other side. The only thing better would be to transport like on Star Trek.

My seatmate is Daryl, a South African living in Seattle, on his way home to see his family. He tells me that in his department of T-Mobile engineers there are only two Americans. The rest are Indian, Pakistani, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Australian, several from European countries, both east and west, and Africans. That's a good illustration of how this machine I’m sitting in with all these strangers is changing the face of the world—making it smaller and flatter.

The Reason Why

In this blog I'll be telling you about the work of Hope for Humanity in South Africa and Lesotho. A bit of background:

HIV/AIDS has had a devastating impact in South Africa, where more than 5.3 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Hope for Humanity has a unique partnership with a community based organization known as "Nhlengelo," and the blog will document the visit with those leading out in the work there.

Lesotho is the country with the second highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS among adults, estimated at 25% in 2003, and certainly higher than that among much of the population. Maluti Adventist Hospital is on the frontline of response to this devastating pandemic, and the blog will take a look at the challenges and commitments that the staff there has made in the fight to save the people of Lesotho.