all that is pure and wholesome in this place cries out in grief for just one little girl

Siphokazi Nini was just 7 years old. Last Sunday, she was abducted from the garden of her guardian in Kwanokuthula by her step-father. She was raped and brutally murdered then dumped in a stream behind St. Monica's Anglican church where a service was in progress, a church where we have attended services often over the last few years. The man was hunted down by members of the community and was himself brutally murdered with knives and clubs. We had just left when this news was phoned through to us.
Tomorrow, all the schoolchildren of Kwanokuthula and the greater Plettenberg Bay area will join a march through the streets to honour Siphokazi and to cry out with their young voices for change. The people of the Masizame Project which was caring for this child are in deep shock. We also are in shock.

Early this morning as I sat with the silence and the lightest of rain, and my eyes looked out to the sea, the peace of the day and the violence of Siphokazi's death numbed my spirit. For a time I felt suspended between impossible emotions. I could do no other than be a witness to this terrifying picture of life's extremes. If I could have spoken, the words would have meant nothing, explained nothing, and achieved nothing. They would have seemed like vapour.

Tonight we will eat in a favourite restaurant in Paternoster. In the morning, we will walk on the empty beach. We will have lunch somewhere. Masizame will pick up the shattered pieces. It will open its doors each and every day. It will do the best it can. And so this life goes on.

a year on

It is just under a year since we were last here in Cape Town. Some things have changed. A vast flock of pelicans, who were to be found on the water adjacent to the 310 to Stellenbosch, are no longer to be seen there. From the air, these majestic flying machines, can see for miles. They probably spotted somewhere different, somewhere better.

In the city, there are fewer vulnerable and homeless kids on the streets. In the year of the World Cup, the authorities cleared them out. Like the pelicans we have no idea where they have gone. The police are more visible. Great, no doubt, for tourists and business visitors. But, wait. Jim and Sue Brosnan, who arrived here today commented on how empty the streets were and how little tourist footfall was evident on Long Street and Greenmarket Square.

Out in Dunoon not much has changed. Some of the blue, plastic toilet cubicles have been replaced by gleaming, silver, metal ones instead. But it is still a grim place. Mary Dell, who visited with us in the Dales a few weeks ago, still plods on against impossible odds. Two days ago, their office was burgled. They took computers, a copier, back-up hard drive, router and stationary.

They also took their entire store of school uniforms.

Meanwhile, the St. Kizito office in Gugulethu was burgled and ransacked two weeks ago. The thieves also took all their school uniforms. Marian, who spent 6 weeks with us earlier in the year, said she cried at work for the very first time.

The men's groups in the Cape Flat's communities are thriving. That little butterfly certainly had mighty wings and there is great optimism for the future. This also represents a very significant change. So often in the past, such hopeful movements have foundered after only a short while. The handful who launched the first group in Lansdown have grown in stature and strength. And they have shown real leadership.

The poor and the dispossessed, like the pelicans on the 310, also want somewhere different, somewhere better. Unlike the pelicans, they cannot fly high enough to see where the better places are and how they might get there. It is an altogether slower and more difficult journey for them. But as we have often said in this blog, nothing is impossible. Mary amd Marian and the men of Landsdown will keep going.

filling the basket for the children

Cape Kids

The Cape Kids community account was set up to raise funds for children’s projects based in Cape Town. Michael and Karen Stewart began work there in 2008 concentrating on the poorer projects in the poorer neighbourhoods, working with abandoned and orphaned children. One of the projects, St.Kizito, has a presence in many of the townships, while two of them serve the township of Dunoon, a desperately poor, violent and dangerous district on the west coast just to the north of the City. Dunoon has a high murder rate and the physical and sexual abuse of women and children is rife.

Michael and Karen have spent over two years working with the projects, getting to know how they function, coming to understand their goals, as well as providing help from their own professional backgrounds in nursing, psychology, social work and management. During the six months of each year they spend there they have also come to understand the financial needs of the projects. At the beginning of April this year, they will be hosting Marian Hendricks from St.Kizito who will be here to help with fund-raising.

At the “after-school” project in Dunoon, children from the age of 4 or five up to the age of 18 are afforded protection from abuse by the men-folk in their family and community at a time when their mothers are out at work. This is a time when they are most at risk. To feed them all – around 200 of them - with a sandwich and a drink, food bought cheaply from the local supermarket, costs around £20. It was inspired by Mary Dell, a Canadian from Vancouver, who gave up a wealthy life style to encourage the poor to go to school. www.boostafrica.com

The nearby Zusakhe project, founded by a Xhosa woman, Patricia Fekema on a plot of waste ground previously used by local men for taking drugs and abusing young girls, provides schooling and food for aids orphans as well as hand-made uniforms for boys and girls attending local schools. Starting with one empty container, she has established a community centre, a quadrangle bordered by six more containers and a prefabricated classroom.

A distinguishing feature of the projects is that local people play a key role in their management and development. In the case of St.Kizito, it is the poor helping the poor. It is not uncommon for a desperately poor family to take in an orphaned child. Usually this means adding another mouth to feed to an already over-stretched family living in an over-crowded shack.

A typical shack has no running water and no toilet with a carpet or linoleum laid over rough ground. They leak when it rains and they run the risk of burning down because cooking is done in such a cramped environment; often a single fire in a shack will destroy many of the others. On the morning that Michael and Karen left, a dozen of these fragile dwellings were destroyed.

Despite these challenges, families live out their lives with hope and optimism. But like the poor everywhere they survive from day to day. The funds we raise will go to where they are needed – to protect, feed and clothe the children, to projects that are making a difference.

To make a donation please contact us on: stewart.m.f@gmail.com or karenexley40@aol.com

putting people together

Appletreewick village hall is a long way from the township of Dunoon. Nestling under Simon's Seat in beautiful Wharfedale it is about as northern european as can be. On Wednesday January 5th, the community of Skyreholme, Appletreewick, Burnsall and Hartlington gathered to raise funds for Cape Kids, a charity that supports kids projects in the sprawling cape flats below the iconic Table Mountain. Fittingly, the smiling children of Dunoon and Gugulethu gazed down on the gathering from their projected images on the wall above. They will have liked what they saw.

They are worlds apart, but on Wednesday they were, in a special way, brought together.

Twelve people put their heart and soul and their cooking skills into making the evening such a wonderful success: John and Pamela, Judy and Alastair, Robert and Sally, Lynne and Jim, John and Angela, Karen. They raised £2,400 pounds in all, every penny of which will go to the children. Thanks too to everyone who turned up and made the evening such a lot of fun. There was some food left over at the end, so on Thursday night it went to homeless people in Leeds. Well done to Katie!

This is the beginning of a year devoted to gathering resources for Cape Kids. In April, we host Marian Hendricks from the St.Kizito Movement at Banquet House as we share with more people the work and the challenges in the poorer communities of the Cape.

life on the street

As our time here approaches the end of the month and the moment of departure, the diary becomes ever more full as ends are tied up and each encounter has that feel of a goodbye about it. We have dived deeper, it seems to me. While Cape Town, in all its weird and wonderful manifestations, retains something of its mystery for us, we have become more intimate with its contrasting and contradictory layers of life.

For example, there is a layer on the street which is peopled by those with nowhere else to live. I went there with Julius from the Institute. He is a street worker and his job is to befriend the homeless youth and invite them to come to the projects where they can learn a trade, be fed and loved. Some of them live under the N2 and the N1, sleeping on grassy embankments or against safety barriers. You can see them – if you look – as you transit along Oswald Pirow Street. I realised that, as I walked around with Julius that I was intruding on their living room, or their bedroom or even their toilet. I saw them undress and carefully wash as they kept an eye on their belongings. I realised that up to this moment they had been invisible to me. I had so often taken the ramp onto the motorway without a glance to the right or to the left. I had simply never noticed them. We spoke to a small group in the corner of a wasteland. They were sharing a joint of cannabis. One of them said “it takes away the fear in my heart”, another that “it dulled the terrors of the night”. When the police move them on they confiscate their blankets. The nights are cold in Cape Town. Some of them are as young as ten.

There are places dotted around the city where they can eat. We drew up to an elegantly named, “The Dining Rooms” on Canterbury where they can get a meal for 5 cents. That’s less than a penny. Men and women of all ages turn up to join the line outside, some waiting idly on the sloping bank opposite. Some of the younger ones danced and flirted with each other. The whole scene is overlooked from the balconies of expensive apartments and the city traffic continues its remorseless ant-like shuffle in a parallel world.

Julius was familiar with all their haunts. I was surprised at how many there were, a corner of a petrol station car-park here, an unlit alley-way there, each with its own “family”. They look out for each other, feel safe with each other. The sad fact is the street is safer than whatever home they once lived in. At the end of a day with Julius, we were made welcome in their “new home” and not one person had asked for money or made us feel unsafe.

And you know what; it really makes me think about myself and my situation.

suffer the little children

Sally Weatherall from Appletreewick visited Dunoon with us. Below are her impressions.

"Children are children where ever you are in the world.

I was apprehensive about my visit to DuNoon. Michael said that it was nothing like Kwanokuthula in Plettenberg Bay, a Township I have visited on many previous occasions and he was right. On turning right from the main road into DuNoon, it is a sight which will remain in my memory for ever. I could see a school, and in the distance a large building which was the one we were heading for, the Sports Hall. There were lines, almost like Avenues of shacks, there were blue Portaloo’s, there were people, children, a few dogs here and there, but more than anything there was dust.

We were meeting Mary, a Canadian lady who gives her time and energy supporting the children of DuNoon in many different ways, and every Tuesday and Thursday she runs an after school ‘club’. One of the primary purposes of the club is to provide a ‘Safe House’ where the children can go until their female carers, be it their Mothers, Aunts, or Grandmothers return from work. They are safe from their male relatives, who sadly can often subject them to sexual and physical abuse.

We were there in good time, so spent a little time putting toys on the floor for the younger children, games, such as snakes and ladders, jigsaws etc., on tables for the older children, and checking that the food, bags of jam and peanut butter sandwiches were ready for the break, and that bottles of orange juice were prepared.

Henry, a 22 year old refugee from Zimbabwe helps whenever possible, and today he was writing the names and ages of the children as they entered the Hall. I asked him if he minded me sitting next to him, this for me was a way of meeting the children.

I was overwhelmed by emotion as they stood in front of him, some of them only 2 years of age, so many children. I thought of my family at home, they have everything, food, clothes, shoes, a home. I thought of my Grandchildren who have a warm bed in winter, and lovely homes with so many toys to play with. Then I thought of the words that Charlotte would have said, ‘Mum Get a Grip”. So I took several deep breaths, and began talk to them as they sometimes struggled to spell their names to Henry who coming from Zimbabwe speaks a different language, although all these children appeared to have some understanding of English, even the youngest.

They all smiled, and believe me, their smiles are so special. They played, just as any child plays, they argued, they pulled each others arms if they wanted something the other child had. They are just like any child, perhaps the only difference is that these children lack so many of the things that our children and we as parents take for granted

What can we do? There are so many DuNoons in the world, but if just one child’s day can be made a little better then it has to be worthwhile."

Thank you, Sally.

our friends in Mozambique and the life they have

Two years ago Karen and I visited the city of Durban. In transit we met a missionary by the name of Eugene. We became friends and have been in touch with him and his wife, Tina, ever since. Below is their latest newsletter. I include it here, partly to honour them, but also to give you a picture of the life they have. They gave up a very comfortable existence in Cape Town to live amongst the poorest of the poor. Those who can pray, pray for them and those who can wish, wish for them.

“The feeling, at times, is that my life in the mission field is like the man who could be called, “The silent, invisible juggler.” We had a S.A. team arriving to work on the appalling electrical system in our home and they had scarcely arrived when the leadership of the local church came to ask for help in a situation that was nothing less than a nightmare. While attempting to appear calm on the outside, we juggled furiously on the inside, to resolve this.

We send a few selected student families (Husband, wife and child) to a long-term Bible training school in Beira. These young families live and study there on a full-time basis for a period of three years, after which they are placed as full-time church workers in Moz. On the day they were due to graduate one of the young wives collapsed and died in the bathroom. The family were obviously tremendously distraught and wanted to bring their daughter’s body back to Zambezia province for burial. The costs of doing this were absolutely prohibitive (equivalent to about 3 years’ salary for a Mozambican) and so they approached us for help. We gave them what we could but the costs kept on spiralling up as the governor’s office became involved, post-mortem procedures had to be paid for and to really crown the crisis, the refrigeration unit of the mortuary ceased working and the body was simply allowed to lie on a slab for three days in Mozambican summer temperatures of 38 degrees!!! We finally got Joanna’s body back to Quelimane a full five days after her death.

We strive so hard to avoid creating a “dependency culture” mentality among the locals, and yet at times such as this, the question remains, “What else could one do?” The juggler juggles on – time, resources, people, finances and wisdom flow through his nervous, clumsy fingers, guided only by a supernatural power, not by his fragile abilities.

On a much lighter note, the team from S.A. were awesome. The pic on the right shows three men in a body of water. The scary part, not shown, is that the body of water is actually the crocodile infested Zambezi River. Judging by the abandoned joy on their faces and the happy immersion in chest-deep water, they appear ignorant of the fact that many Mozambicans have become the main meal of the day for the local crocodile population in the very spot they chose for their midday bathe.

This same carefree joy came to permeate our home and we have been revitalised, refreshed and more motivated than we have been in years. Victor, João, Vincent and “Matches” – Thanks guys, not only for the huge job you did in making our home liveable and free from “death by electrocution”, but especially for the fellowship and the fun we had together. Your sense of humour and fresh comments were like a cool shower on a 42 deg. day.

We live in a brutal environment; life here seems to be heavily focussed on simply having the strength to make it from sunrise to sunset. Our view from the apartment is filled with ugliness, and you guys brought in the fragrance of His Spirit. It all helps to make it bearable and provides strength to carry on. Thank you.

Our living space has also been remarkably transformed – we have new ceiling fans in the lounge, working plug points in the kitchen, an automatic veranda light with a day/night sensor so that we no longer have to struggle up a darkened staircase in order to reach our front door. The icing on the cake was an automatic float-switch for the header tank, so, no more stumbling naked from the shower, body covered in flaking, tacky soap, hands groping for the switch that turns on the pump. Ah! Such is life, to appreciate the wonders of electricity, automated air-cooled living and freedom from the technological perils that once stalked our humble abode.

We have been working hard toward the creation of that mystical state called “a weekend OFF!!!” and are proud to announce our third successful weekend off for 2010. Well, in reality, perhaps it wasn’t an entire weekend, it was in fact just a day, and it never happened over a Saturday or a Sunday. Springing forth from the fellowship of the nuts came the fruit of their labours. The team finished before the appointed time and so on their final day with us we decided to take everybody for a short drive up the coast and go to the beach at Zalala, about an hour’s drive north of Quelimane. For all the guys out there who drive Toyotas, I thought that I would sneak in this one quick pic as a small bit of unsolicited advertising. As the old advert goes, “There are many, many vehicles that will take you off-road in Africa, but only Toyota brings you back!!!”

Another Nissan/Mitsubishi/Land Rover/..etc safely rescued from the burning clutches of the shifting sands. I am mature enough now, not to leap forth from the driving seat and place another notch in black koki pen on the front fender. We did have a great time at the beach though and the guys were quick to forgive me for leading their lesser vehicle into sandy danger. Finished up with a superb meal of local, freshly caught Rock Cod with traditional Mozambican prawns. Since the shower and toilet facilities at the beach were broken, the guys decided that we could still freshen up after our swim and long walk with a communal spray of deodorant. The can, much depleted was left standing on the table.”

Back to the usual blog territory next week.