Not a family untouched

During a recent home visit with home-based caregivers, we spent some time overlooking this small valley with houses and homesteads in every direction, almost as far as the eye can see. Over the past couple of months, it's become clearer to me that every homestead has a story, and almost every one of these stories is interwoven with HIV/AIDS tragedy. The more that I go on home visits, supporting the home-based caregivers, the more I come to understand the reality of AIDS - not a family remains untouched. They've all lost an uncle or an aunt, a mother or a father, a child, a cousin or even a grandparent to the disease.

As I stood on the ridge that day, overlooking the various clusters of homes, I asked about the stories of each family. "That single isolated mud hut over there, who lives there? And that one house left standing with all the other buildings in various stages of decay, who is living there?" Everywhere around, AIDS and poverty go hand in hand.

• The one house with a single mom and her three pre-teen kids without any income, the family extra vulnerable to the threat of infection and problems accessing treatment. I just met one such family, a lovely mother named Lindiwe who left two girls behind: a 20 year old and her 14 year old sister. Lindiwe fought a losing battle against HIV, tuberculosis and meningitis. The July public strikes caught her at a time when she was in desperate need of attention for the meningitis that eventually killed her before she could start the life-saving ARVs. With their mother's death, the girls were left without any income at all. We've been able to help Lindiwe's two girls access government child grant for the older one's small baby, and are working with the social workers to access child support for the younger daughter from her absent but employed father.
  
• The gogo whose adult children have all died, and is left caring for seven orphaned children on less than $100 a month, who is too frail to repair the crumbling buildings all around her. Working with the 19 year old who is prepared to take on the care of her younger siblings, we've linked them up to government crisis food provision while we push for their foster care grant to be processed. Their three months of food provision are about to run out, so we will be simultaneously providing them with additional food parcels while putting pressure on the social workers to process their case.
  
• A orphan-headed household run by an 19 year old girl with her 17 year old sister, and 7 and 4 year old nieces - left behind by two generations of parents and elder siblings. The recent rains are running through their second-hand tin roof, threatening to erode away two different walls of their house. They are already vulnerable in their situation, the 17 year old often running away with boys in a habit of finding a way to provide for herself, making her situation and her vulnerability to HIV all the more real. We are making the necessary repairs to the roof to keep the house up during this season. We have referred their case to the social worker's for the three month food assistance, and pushing the case through to get the orphan grant.
  

It's been a couple months of intense ups and downs. Realizations of the degree of need in the community, the discovery of numerous orphan-headed households who we have managed to link up to government assistance, to find out that the government's timeline for temporary assistance (three months of food parcels) isn't up to par to with the realities of their service delivery. Finding orphaned young people or widows staying alone and isolated without anyone to help them when HIV, TB, and side effects bind them to their sick bed. And yet seeing the amazing generosity and ubuntu of the community in bringing them food, fetching water from the community pump for them, bringing them firewood, washing them, and being their health advocate. Xoli and I were recently doing an inventory of all of the patients under the care of the Thembalethu Project. We have 70 patients being looked after by 30 home-based care volunteers, a huge testimony to their generosity, love and service to their neighbors in need. And yet, we have lost 26 patients over the past six months, most to a debilitating HIV related disease that could have been prevented if they had faced their HIV status earlier. And yet the number of people assisted with transport funds, immune-boosting porridge, moral support, and tender palliative care continues to increase, and those who access ARVs in time also is improving.

Last month we had a hugely successful VCT drive, bringing in HIV counselors from Estcourt Hospital to the tribal court to test and counsel willing members of the Amangwe public. Over the two days of VCT (voluntary counseling and testing), 83 people were tested for HIV including a large number of our Home-Based Caregivers. We are working with the hospital counselors to plan another HIV testing drive in the next couple of months, combating the 'small town' confidentiality breaches that suppress people's desire to get tested in the local clinic.

At our last monthly HBC support meeting last Monday, we also gave out veggie seeds (spinich, carrots, pumpkin, onions and beetroot) to all the home-based caregivers for their family veggie gardens and to share the excess with their patients and vulnerable children in their neighborhood. When on Thursday I was doing home visits with some of them, in their enthusiasm most had already planted their seeds. With the hugely positive reception, I've bought some more seeds to give to orphan headed households, and very vulnerable patients.

I feel so honored to have your support and prayers to be involved in all of these people's lives, to bring support to the HBC ladies in caring for the vulnerable in their communities. May God bless you for making this work possible!

Also check out the new prayer requests in the right column.