Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Wednesday, June 17 - Lusaka - Bambino Day Care and Soccer Field

Today we head into the Lusaka Squatter Camp in Mamelodi East, where the poorest of the poor in this township live. Our destination is the Bambino Preschool and Day Care run by the Berakah (pronounced Barah) Educational Foundation, which not only cares for the youngest AIDS orphaned and vulnerable children onsite, the organization also provides home-based care, support for school-aged children and basic adult education and training.

Riding through the township we are witness to car and busloads of people leaving for work for the day, kids walking to school, and the makeshift shops like we saw on Monday. But, something catches my eye that I will never forget. It is an orange piece of paper taped to a pole; an advertisement flyer with take-one phone number tear tabs across the bottom. Across the top in capital letters it reads: ABORTIONS. Incredulous, I thought I must have misread it. My lingering doubt sadly disappears as we pass one after another of the same flyer taped to poles and tacked on fence posts. Life is fragile at every stage in this township; from conception to AIDS orphans, from child-led households to lives taken by disease. My mind goes numb with sadness.

Typical barbed wire fence seen everywhere in the township.
Gates – again, just like at the S.O.S. Children’s Village, and they have barbed-wire. As we approach the Bambino Day Care, the gate is opened, we safely enter and park. Theft is so rampant through the township that those who can afford to protect their property build fences topped with barbed wire. They are barriers that separate. They are everywhere, and they loudly announce the problem without saying a word. As we exit the van, we are greeted by lovely Sophie who is so welcoming and eager to tell us about ‘her’ daycare center. A faint smell of dead chicken lingers in the air as she begins to speak.

Each day, she and a few other women care for 120 children from homes with working parents from 6am to 6pm. After school another 145-150 kids with learning disabilities, some of them HIV/AIDS orphans come for help. As I look around, I wonder where they all go, or sit, or stand for that matter. The entire area we entered (school, plus parking lot) is no larger than a UDF (or 7-11 if you’re from Michigan.) We gather around the back of a pickup truck, which for some reason is parked here taking up even more of the scarce space. Five feet and directly behind us is a small hut where two women sit intently working on beading projects. To the right, beyond our van are two more small buildings meeting to form an ‘L’, creating a tiny courtyard which serves as another ‘learning center’. In front of us, behind Sophie, is the Bambino Day Care ‘center’ housed in a medium-sized tent one would see at a festival, or at least the remnants of one. The top has numerous large holes, the sides haphazardly held in place by skewed poles. The holes in the top aren’t even holes really, but openings to the sky above because the ceiling of the tent actually consists of flaps of fabric still attached to the sides.

Day Care Center tent
Sophie shares her story of stress with us when last week the rain poured in and turned the floor of the entire center into mud. The tent and few buildings of the daycare center are situated on a medium-sized lot of uneven, sloping dirt.

The biggest need at the center is, of course, money. Sophie also tells us they also desperately need puzzles, CD players and manipulatives—blocks or large beads for stringing. The beginnings of a new school building are erected across the street, however; just one brick wall stands complete because funding has run out.
As some of our group go in to sit and play with the preschoolers, I am introduced to Nati DeKock. Nati and her husband are both ministers from nearby Hartfield Christian Church in Pretoria, and have a huge heart for the children of Barkah and the people in the surrounding Lusaka area (of Mamelodi East). She and her husband are passionate about serving the people of Mamelodi. Their church’s Kholofelong Ministry http://www.kholofelong.co.za/index.htm provides in-home nurse visits to those living with chronic disease or in poverty and are partners with the Barkah Center. Their Abba ministries find abandoned and HIV babies, provide health services for them and place them in foster homes. I am also thrilled to learn that they offer abortion alternatives and information to women with unwanted pregnancies. Tina will, I’m sure, forge a strong partnership here, as her heart has always longed to help the AIDS orphaned and vulnerable children.
Nati then shares an unthinkable, incomprehensible story with me and Tina. Kholofelong Ministries has volunteers called OVCs, numbering about 150. One or two at a time, these people go through the small communities of Mamelodi searching for abandoned babies. Tragically, and often, many babies are left to be cared for by one adult; someone who takes the task upon herself, or a grandmother caring for a grandchild, and willing to take in more. It is difficult if not impossible for one woman to feed, clothe, care for and monitor such large numbers of small children; sometimes groups of 10, 12 or 15 at a time. Without the necessary resources, these women resort to desperate measures. Babies and young children are gathered and locked in small shacks. These children rarely see the light of day, have no exercise, are malnourished, and by the time they are discovered by an OVC, they often have scabies and lice. Some are AIDS babies, some have diseases. This is a common occurrence in Mamelodi. The OVCs rescue the children, get them proper medical care, provide temporary shelter and ultimately help place them in foster homes. Again, I am just numb with sadness. Nati tears up as she tells the story.

On the Bambino Day Care property, in one of the smaller buildings, is the ‘nursery’, which cares for the wee little ones each day. I peek my head inside and am privileged to see 12 little angel babies sleeping side by side by side on a couple of ‘mattresses’ on the dirt floor. In the States, we would call them cushions. The sight is so precious, and I’m dying to take a picture, but my heart just can’t ask permission. Such an intrusion to me would make them seem more like a display or spectacle, rather than the precious little individual souls that they are. Next door, two more women are learning beading. Their craft will soon help support themselves and their children.

Finally, I get to go in the tent and sit with the children who are sitting at plastic Fisher-Price like tables with chairs.I am thrilled to see Matthew attentively sitting with a girl who is building a block tower for him.

Matthew meets a new friend who just adored him.An open chair with a table of three girls beckons me. I sit next to a spunky girl named Ouetu (pronounced ew-a-to), which in French means ‘where are you? This name fits her well, as she seems to be one that would run fast and far if she were given the chance.

Spunky little Ouetu
Mark Campbell, one of the soccer dads and the pharmacist/medic for our group, is also sitting at the table engrossed in building a block structure with one of the other girls. Immediately Ouetu starts to call me ‘mommy’, and shows me how she can stack blocks of the same color together. She playfully pushes my head away and tells me not to look each time she builds a different colored stack. Proudly she counts them for me when I’m ‘allowed’ to look. She also shows them to Mark and calls him daddy. When I take a picture of her, instead of quietly smiling like most of the children, she makes a funny smiley face and quickly tilts her head from side to side.

This little fireball is the first one to pop up and run over to David Kisor who just brought out his keyboard. All the kids gather around him checking it out. In true David fashion, he calmly gets them to settle down and sit down and then begins his magic. Just as he did at the S.O.S. Children’s Village, he teaches the lyrics with great animation and hand gestures.
The kids are mesmerized.

Singing 'I Can Do It'




The children learning hand movements.








David leading the kids in singing 'I've Got Two Hands'


We end with the hokey-pokey and the kids think it is just great fun. Sad their time with David is over and to see him go, they follow him out of the tent as far as they can before being summoned back in. David is just thrilled to be ministering to these kids in such an intimate way; empowering them with thoughts of self-confidence, trust and interdependence.


During my education at the day care center and in the tent, the boys and men of the group have been very busy building a soccer field. A dirt field, about the size of a regulation soccer field and kitty corner from the Bambino Day Care, is filled with large rocks and debris. Our team has been busy at work digging out the impurities by hand. Through divine intervention, Frikkie, while out on an errand, just happens by a guy in a backhoe. You just don’t see that in Mamelodi. Frikkie pleads his cause and requests that the driver ask his boss if we can rent the backhoe for the day. It quickly became clear that clearing and leveling the field solely with manpower wasn’t going to happen in an afternoon, a day or perhaps even a week. The owner not only agrees to help out, he wants to do it free of charge. ! ! In a matter of 45 minutes, the skillful operator has scooped up the rubble and smoothed out every bump and hole on the field. We all stand and watch in awe and gratitude.


Soccer field excavation


With goalposts on either end, the field is ready for inauguration. A group of children walking home from school, some whom had been watching, and a boy who hung out with us eating our bread and drinking our water, all joined together to make a team. Donning pennies and ready to take on our soccer guys with a new ball, there was a spirited competition on the field. Moses, our resident Mamelodi guide for the week, who was quickly becoming a friend, also took part in the game. I’m not sure who won, but I am sure that the impact of building the field and playing on it this day will be long lasting. Bridge to Cross plans to install a fence and then sod the field in the near future. (If they sodded it first, I was informed, the sod would walk off during the night.)

Soccer field dedication
After the game, we gathered the children in a circle in the center of the field, and formed a circle around them. Dave Woeste told the children that we built this field for them and dedicating it to them. Pausing after each sentence, Moses steps in to translate in the children’s native language. The ebb and flow of the two languages breaking the quiet around us was beautiful, especially when Dave closed with prayer. To hear his words, and know that the children were then hearing the same words in their beautiful language was incredible. It was one of those moments where everything is so intense and comes into clear focus while the world around you stops.



Shortly after, our convoy prepares to head out. We are delayed by Dave Woeste – talker extraordinaire – (sorry Dave), Marnus and Derek (township resident soccer coach) who are talking to a young man who had just approached them. Within ten minutes, Bridge to Cross had a new volunteer soccer coach for that side of the township and someone to watch over the new field. God is amazing and he was definitely on the field this day.



Our tired, but thoroughly satisfied group returned to or chalets at Eco Seasons golf course. On our way, we stopped at a mall for a quick shopping experience. I purchased the Pretoria News and The Citizen (South Africa’s national newspaper). During the interview the day prior, the reporter from The Citizen gave every indication that he would write about the Bridge to Cross Youth Day Celebration. Nothing. However, we did garner about 3 column inches of press in the Pretoria News. In any event, relationships with some press members were established that we can hopefully leverage in the future.



While Tina and I made dinner back at the chalet, along with diligent onion and vegetable chopping help from Mark Campbell, the boys and Jennifer learned how to make duct tape wallets under the tutelage of David Kisor. Who knew the musician was also an artiste? With a newspaper template as the base of the design (which I later found out was a David Kisor original) duct tape was then painstakingly and lovingly applied to make a standard size billfold complete with a place for cash and a separate slot for credit cards. Matthew’s turned out especially nice. David extolled the benefits as being environmentally friendly and indestructible. The conversation piece value alone was worth the effort. Too bad I didn’t have my cash in a designer duct tape wallet at the Confederation Cup game on Monday. Surely, a thief would have revered it with respect and left it alone.



Tina wowed everyone with a South African dish called Babooti. It was a wonderful curry-seasoned beef dish with a delicious cheesy topping. Tina has a fondness for curry, which we were the beneficiaries of many time in the States. She makes a mean chicken curry dish. Curry and other strong spices are a favorite among South Africans. Thank you Tina!

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