Mandhla's House Part 2

I don't have a picture showing the results of another day of working on the house, but I can tell you it's looking pretty good. We got the wooden boards on for the roof and started wrapping the sides with wire because that's what's going to hold up the mud to make the walls. I didn't actually do any work on the house because I went out with the group of people that did home visits, but those that stayed working on the house did a wonderful job.

We visited about 5 or 6 houses, each with at least one person that's HIV positive. The first woman can barely walk and she told us that she finds joy in the simple thing in life, but hanging up clothes after she has done laundry is difficult because she has to sit while she's doing it. The man we visited after that has TB and HIV. He doesn't really like to tell people about it because he knows it's his own fault that he's sick. Pendi says that he takes his medication and then gets a lot better, but then he goes back to his unhealthy habits and gets really sick again so he's caught in a destructive cycle. When we visited him he looked so thin his arms looked like pure bone and he told us about all the injections he has to take.

After that we visited a married couple that are the grandparents of one of the girls from the youth group. They are the most loving older couple I've seen in Haniville and they were so sweet to us. After that we passed by the house of one of the Gogos that works with us in the garden. She was so happy to see us and gave us all hugs, but then she told us she's really sad that we're only going to be there for one more week.

One of the next houses we visited was the house of a man that is HIV positive and he is in a wheelchair because he had a stroke a couple of years ago that left the right side of his body paralyzed. He could barely talk to us, but he was thankful that we came to visit him. He says he doesn't get any visitors, so it brought him a lot of joy to talk to us and to see us. We sang with him because he enjoys music and he tried singing along and clapped with the one arm he can move.

We also visited Henri, who I met when I drove around with Peni and Neils during clinicals. Henri is in a wheelchair and he doesn't talk anymore. It's not that he can't talk, he just chooses not to respond to anyone. Pendi says she saw him walking yesterday and he's physically better, but he's still unresponsive and didn't even look up at us, he just sat there completely still as we tried talking to him.

The last house we went to was Pendi's house and we met her daughter there. Pendi's house is one of the nicest I've seen in Haniville and her bed is full of stuffed animals.

After Pendi's house we took a taxi back up to Walk in the Light and I sat at lunch thinking about all we had seen. It's hard to digest it all and to make sense of it. The people we visited vary in ages and were both male and female. Every house was different and some were nicer than others, but they were all low-income houses. The families were all different because some lived with spouses, others with children, and others with relatives outside of their nuclear family. All the people we saw are affected with HIV because they are either HIV positive or they have a family member that has it or has died from it. All the patients, besides Henri who was unresponsive, were happy to see us and their families welcomed us openly into their home.

When we talked to the Gogos after the home visits they told us that they were very happy with us because we didn't make any funny faces when we saw their houses and we were always smiling at them. They also enjoyed that we sang songs at every house we went to and prayed for them. We were like the God squad.

After lunch we had the youth group meeting and there was a point when I realized it was our last youth group meeting with them and I wanted to cry. I can't believe our time at Haniville is almost over. We took pictures of them all because we have a guy named John in our group that's a photography major and has professional camera equipment and he offered to give them all professional pictures for free. Everyone came dressed in their best outfit and they were so excited for it. They had so much fun taking pictures with everyone and with a lot of different poses. They're all naturals in front of the camera.

It's the same with the children we see very day. As soon as they see a camera they want us to take a picture of them and they yell out, "shoot me!" I have to remind myself that "shoot me" means "take a picture of me" because sometimes I hear it and I just laugh.

While we were waiting for the youth to arrive there were a ton of kids hanging out at the playground that past APU students have built at Walk in the Light. One of the girls is about 3 years old and she likes to be carried by everyone. She wasn't wearing a shirt or shoes, but she had pink pants on and her hair is was short. She's the most adorable girl I've seen and as soon as she saw me walking towards her she put her arms out for me to pick her up. She laid her head on my shoulder for a while and I walked around with her. She was scared of some spiders hanging from a tree and I would joke with her and get closer to the tree until she started screaming. After getting tired of walking I sat down with her on my lap and, since she's only 3 and doesn't speak English yet, I said the only Zulu words I could remember, "ageko ofana noJesu", "there's no one like Jesus". As soon as she heard that she started singing the song and I sang along with her. Music is such a great way to break the language barrier.

I still don't know what that girl's name is and I don't have a picture, but I know I'll always remember her and I'll probably see her this next week so I can get a picture of her then. I also got some pictures of the youth whose names I do remember because I've been able to have good conversations with them. It's sad that I'll probably never see them again unless I come back to South Africa some day. I don't know if that will happen, but I really hope it does. The more I've gotten to know the people here, the more I've felt loved by them and the more God has shown me how to love others.

It's getting cold out because winter is coming and we were at a water park all day yesterday so I tried my best to not do anything that's going to get me sick. I don't want to miss out on my last week of service sites.