Back to reality!

Today was scheduled as a vocational day.  Randy, Sarah and I spent the whole day with two women from the Hermanus Rainbow Trust  and although it was really interesting, it didn’t have anything to do with our respective vocations.  We had a really busy schedule and visited about 10 different sites, some of which were projects of the Rainbow Trust including a couple of pre-schools, a kindergarten, a senior activities center, an after school program and a health clinic.  We also met up with a health nurse and went with her to visit the homes of two of her home-based health care patients.  All of these projects were located in townships, informal settlements and squatters camps where the living conditions are beyond what most Americans can possibly imagine.

One of the most memorable parts of our day was a visit to a patient of the home health nurse, an older woman trying to recover from her third bout of TB.  She was living in a tiny little tin shack that belonged to her daughter who had quit her job to take care of her mother.  There were also two other adult children, two older teenage granddaughters, a two little girls also living in this little shack that was about the size of one of my children’s bedrooms.  We were invited into their home and I was surprised to see how neat and organized it was being kept.  They had been warned that we were coming, so I think that they did their best to tidy up.  They were very proud to welcome us into their home and enjoyed it when I commented how nicely kept it was.  Randy had brought along some necklaces that he have out as little gifts to all the family members, and when they found out that the necklaces came from America they were SO excited.

One of our other stops was the local land fill where people were “mining” for any item of value that could be sold or used.  Dozens of people, including pregnant women and small children, were sifting through mountains of garbage while a bulldozer plowed through the area.  It was really distressing to see this kind of poverty up close.

After we had visited about 5 or 6 of these projects, the dump and the home of the woman with TB, we were taken to another private home of a man who was dying of lung cancer.  When we arrived, I was just totally overwhelmed by everything we had just seen in a matter of a few hours, and I decided I really couldn’t see any more suffering.  My head was reeling and I was trying to process everything that we had seen and heard.  I decided to stay in the car while the rest of the group went in.  I had a good cry and a good conversation with our driver, Johannes, a very nice man who lived in one of these townships.  He told me that he too sometimes cries at the situation he sees all around him.

I’m still trying to get my head around everything that I saw today.  It was just SO much to take in.  One can’t help to be affected by the conditions of the people here, and want to do something to make a difference.  But what?!  I really need to spend some time thinking about what I can reasonably do.  How do I fit this in with also trying to help my own community and raise my own children?  It is a lot to think about.