The Fires

Massive veld (bush) fires combined with fierce wind that take out massive numbers of homes, an amazing and encouraging church and community response, funerals, orphan advocacy, working with government hectic… It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. In a recent conversation with my Dad, he quoted me a Chinese curse – that your life may always be interesting. Perhaps these Chinese had never been to Africa, where there’s rarely a dull moment!

A week and a half ago Friday, here in the Winterton area, in the middle of a dry winter, we had record winds. These are called the “August Winds” and typically bring in “September Rains.” The dry winter is also a time of burning – the farmers burning fire breaks to protect their farms, houses, and assets from uncontrolled fires. The Zulus burning their grazing land to increase and speed the green pastures for their cattle. The wandering skevenga (loosely defined ‘troublemaker’) walking around lighting the long, dry winter grass on fire to stay warm or watch the neighbors run around to put it out. On 27 July, however, just days before the nationwide annual August burn-ban, a stray spark from a farmer’s fire break was carried by the wind and did a HUGE amount of damage. (I was trying to send pictures, but it isn’t working currently. I’ll paste them on my blogsite soon.)

According to a local paper, over 80 families lost their homes (or huts, mostly thatched, within their homesteads), and over 400 people were affected as an out of gale-force winds blew a large fire across the Winterton area. The fire was indiscriminate, wiping out the houses of white, black and Indian alike. The fire took out the newly thatched house of two amazing doctors as the local public hospital (Emmaus) – they lost everything they owned. Three other families of farmers also lost their homes, as well as some of the hospitality industry (Villamora is now gutted, for those of you who’ve been here and know where it is) were wiped to the ground. People were lucky to escape unharmed, though a seven-month-old baby was killed and her mother still suffering in critical condition from massive burns to her face and the much of the rest of her body. Yet the bulk of the destruction was caused when the fire raged through the densely populated Khethani township just outside Winterton’s city center. Long before the fire, this was an area with massive social problems and little community spirit: filled with a random collection of people from all over, illegal immigrants from neighboring Lesotho and significant lack of community cohesion.

And yet, the church and community response was amazing encouraging – a positive step toward bridging the gap between black and white, rich and poor. As soon as the fire hit and swept through, leaving behind it a trail of smoldering destruction, the community responded with amazing generosity. While foreign volunteers (my friends Sofi, Cameron, and Andy at the fore) rushed in to pull people out of the path of the fire, the local church rallied together to gather donations, provide emergency housing, a soup kitchen, and do inventories of all the people lost in the hectic, as well as all those who lost all they owned. The generosity of the Winterton and neighboring communities was amazing. The doctor friends mentioned above have an 18 month old adopted baby girl who has never had so many clothes in her life; and all who lost their homes (mostly kitchens as they typically are thatched) have just received a full kitchen set, as well as school uniforms to get them back on their feet and their kids back in school. I’m living in my friend Sofi’s volunteer accommodation, and babysat for her two year old daughter almost non-stop through the first 48 hours of the fire as she was, and continues to be on the front lines of getting people assisted. She’s been amazing, but could use your prayers for rest and recovery now!

Otherwise, the Thembalethu project continues to grow and expand. We’ve been meeting up to three times a month with all the home-based-care volunteers; monthly meetings to check in with them and collect data about their patients, trainings and other referral-orientation type meetings with them to help them link up with resources in their community and beyond. Just today we had a Winterton pastor come in with a chaplain friend of his to do a training in trauma counseling. It ended up being a trauma/grief counseling session instead, as the carers haven’t ever had many chances to be debriefed about the many deaths of their patients that they experience in the course of their volunteer work. We hope to continue with this process, and planning spaces for them to debrief with each other about the burdens they carry seeing so many people they’ve tried to help die every month. But slowly, we’re making a difference. Sometimes it’s so few people that are surviving amidst all the calls I get to tell me about a patient who has just died. People are dying in such high numbers here, it’s hard to imagine the HIV/AIDS situation could get much worse as it’s expected to. The training was to me a very good reminder of how important it is to allow myself to grieve, to share with others the sadness, anger, frustration, guilt, and pain that I feel. This is hard, and I’d appreciate your continued prayers for me, for Xoli (with whom I’m working), and for the HBC volunteers.

But there are still beacons of hope in this sea of HIV/AIDS. I got a phone call this afternoon from Sibusisu, a HBC patient that we helped back in June to get on ARV treatment. At the time he was so sick he couldn’t walk, and had the symptoms (runny stomach and vomiting) that are the final stages for many patients. But he called me to tell me that he is very well, and has a three week contract to work on a farm about two hours from here. He told me his two young daughters are staying with his mother while he’s away (his wife passed away in February), and he promised to get them tested as well for HIV. It brings me to tears full of gratitude to know that he’s alive today because of your support. His name means blessing in Zulu, and he is a blessing to me, and blessed himself to have this new lease on life. Thank God that he’s doing well. Please pray that he’ll continue to get stronger as the ARVs continue to suppress the virus in his body, giving his immune system a chance to pick back up to normal levels.

Otherwise, we’ve been busy meeting with the Nkosi (the tribal chief), the local mayor, the social workers, the Department of Health (whose lack of planning pressurizes us to all but frantically fulfill their requests), and other NGOs. We are planning our first stab at an Amangwe-wide HIV testing and counseling drive for two days at the start of September with counselors from the Estcourt Hospital. The idea is that people are afraid to get tested by the staff at the local clinic for their lack of confidentiality, and counselors from outside the area help increase the confidentiality in an area where stigma remains rampant. We’ve also started to give out some food parcels to orphans in extremely vulnerable situations – living entirely alone, or going weeks without any food, while trying to link them to Microfinance for Youth for business opportunities and to government orphan assistance. There’s a local NGO that is starting a PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS) program through the Department of Health that will employ five community volunteers to try to decrease the transmission rates to children, and try to keep the mothers alive. Although we may lose some of our best HBC volunteers to this partnering program, I will be happy to see them employed, and hopeful that many other lives will be saved through their work. I know of more than five mothers of young babies that have died in the past three months – all without an advocate and fellow HIV+ person to help them through the process. We’re checking to see if the babies have gotten the virus from their mothers – these infant tests take a long time to return. Please pray for these children.

Also please pray for the children and families affected by the uncertainty and perhaps pending closing of the local orphanage. Pray that the social workers will have wisdom to know how to do best for these kids and that their families (it appears most of them have a loving extended family) would welcome the children back with open arms. Pray that they would be expedited through the system to get the foster care assistance they need.