Inchanga Investigations

Yesterday morning Mike (from Lionsraw) and I went down to Cato Ridge and bought some bread, oranges, apples, biscuits and juice and headed to Inchanga Primary School to meet the orphans there. They came down to the playground to meet us, summoned from their various lessons, curious to see these white people who had come to visit them!

I'd taken a photo of them all along with me and they found themselves on it and wrote their names on it and then I gave each of them a little cross on which I'd written - 'Jesus Loves You!' and 'UJesu Nkosi' (Jesus is Lord), they loved them and eagerly wrote their names on them. I reminded them that Jesus does love each and every one of them and they must remember that whenever they look at this cross. It's a Catholic school so the children already knew this, but they liked their gifts as well.

The teachers distributed the food and it was well received. Then they selected 2 children who lived near the school and we walked down to their house to see what kind of living conditions they were finding themselves in. As it turns out, the children selected were the very ones I had identified from the photo as ones I wanted to find out more about.

The 6 year old twins, brother and sister, S and N, live right near the main road with their mother and 2 older brothers. It would appear that they are not complete orphans, but these 2 are both fairly sick and as the mother only has work for one day a week, they are still struggling. The little boy has been fairly ill recently and his brother told me that he had not been himself for a few days. When we first met him he looked sullen and miserable. However, after about 10 minutes of chatting to him (albeit in broken Zulu) and after taking photos of him and a bit of filming too, he suddenly warmed up and by the end he was smiling, laughing and hugging.

Their house is made of wattle and daub (the same as the Elizabethans used to make houses with) and the sunshine streams in through the holes in the corrugated roof. Great when it's sunny, rubbish when it rains! The 2 kids sleep in the same bed in the corner of their mother's room.

Someone came along and built new toilets for all the houses in that little area, but they omitted to dig the right pit underneath it and consequently the toilet is unusable and used just for storage. Instead, the kids and ALL the families in the area use a tiny shack of a toilet right next to the road that is crumbling and offers little privacy. I don't even want to consider how many bugs and bacteria lurk in there, not good for little children with compromised immune systems.

Back at the school it was lunch time and the kids in the playground eagerly gathered to be in photos or on film. I wanted to pray for S, as he's been ill, but it was impossible to get him on his own as kids just gathered wherever I went, so I got the kids standing round us to pray too and explained in Zulu, but prayed in English. What a privilege to pray with these children - they are so precious!

Oh, and some good(ish) news. The 2 children who died are not from our 40 children. Still sad that they passed away, but we are happy that it wasn't one of ours just yet!

Well, I'm off to enjoy what's left of the sunshine for today - it's still blue skies and warm but there's a vicious wind blowing! You can't have it all ;-)