Married and Changes!

Reflections on a Time of Change

What a joy it is to think back over all that’s happened in the past few months. So many exciting developments! Visiting friends and family back in the USA, planning a wedding that turned out beautifully, moving as a married woman into a mission community in a new Zulu tribal area, passing the Thembalethu leadership to Xoli who has grown greatly in her new role, having a Zulu wedding reception (check out our Zulu wedding picture!), celebrating again with other South African friends, setting up a new house, getting used to married life, continuing HBC work, adding a new community, a new organization. There have been a lot of changes!

I was just reminded how different the Pacific Northwest is from Tugela Ferry, where I’ve landed in married life. Back at my dad’s house in Enumclaw, inspired to save energy, I tried valiantly on the hottest of summer days to dry my clothes on the clothes line. After more than half a day, a good portion of the clothes remained damp. Today, with strong winds and hot, dry weather before spring rains set in was a different story altogether. Within ten (maybe even five??) minutes of removing my clothes from the washing machine, and hanging them on the washing line, they were dry. Not a trace of dampness. This is why tumble dryers are almost obsolete in these parts. The sun, heat and low humidity contribute to the most conducive climate for drying clothes on the line.

Married life with Eugene has gotten off to a good start. We were so blessed to have many US friends and family around us as we made our vows and celebration. Thanks to those who were able to join us, for the huge blessing that you’ve been in our lives, for your contributions to our new life together! Time on the beach both in Washington, and then on South Africa’s east coast gave us time to settle into our new roles and life together as a married couple. Such a lovely time!

Welcome to Tugela Ferry

We arrived back at our new home in Tugela Ferry in late August, almost ready to get back to work. Philanjalo, the organization Eugene’s been working with for the past four years houses us in one of its ParkHomes, that is a three bedroom doublewide modular home. Yes, I live in a double wide! As of yesterday, we are a now linked to, although from the farthest extremity, the Church of Scotland Hospital (COSH). There’s a large hospital community of nurses, doctors, and their families, which is amazingly international (in large part from Philanjalo’s research element), so although the only change was putting a gate where a fence once stood, it feels like we have a bigger neighborhood now.

Although before getting married, I’d spent a good deal of time visiting here, I’d never appreciated the view of the vast community gardens between our home and the Tugela River. Because I moved into Eugene’s house at the very end of the dry season, the lush gardens from our bedroom and living room windows were an unexpected oasis, a delight to my eyes. I love to watch the local ladies out in their gardens, weeding, watering from the community irrigation trenches and tending their fields. It’s a beautiful sight to watch as the dry brown earth comes to life again!! As I was outside today gardening myself, I found I’ve adopted their bending at the waist technique for reaching down. My poor lower back!

And yet, life in Tugela is no big shock for me. Although people here tend to be more traditional than I’m used to in the Berg (more round thatched ‘rondavel’ houses, more topless women, purple capes on women’s backs, more skirts, less pants, etc), one Zulu area is not so different from another. Getting to know first Philanjalo (they have a large, successful HBC program), and then Eugene, I’ve spent increasing amounts of time here in ‘The Ferry’ over the past few years.

HBC2– Thembalethu carries on, Philanjalo added

Being situated about two hours drive from my former digs in the Central Drakensberg, my role with Thembalethu has shifted to being more of one of support, administration and oversight. Xoli has taken over the day to day management of our now-fully registered NGO, Thembalethu Care Organization. (Hallelujah – that was a LONG process, but we made it through!!) Lord willing Xoli will soon get her driver’s license (test date 14 October – please pray!), allowing her to better help the HBC, getting around to support sick patients and the OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) that we are assisting. I continue to look for ways and opportunities to build up her skills and confidence in managing Thembalethu so that she can do an even better job assisting the HBC volunteers and community at large.

I really enjoy staying involved with Thembalethu two days a week, driving the two hour trip as needed to support Xoli and the project. (I am grateful for all my friends there who put me up for the times I stay the night in Winterton.) When not required physically in the Berg, I stay by my computer at home in Tugela Ferry doing other admin support work. The other three days a week, I’ve been hired part-time by Philanjalo (that’s right, hired, and am promised a meager South African salary) to coordinate their large home-based care program. Philanjalo is a South African Christian NGO that is doing similar AIDS work, but on a MUCH larger scale. Instead of Thembalethu’s 35 HBC volunteers working in a small area within a municipality, Philanjalo is working with 170 HBC volunteers working within an entire municipality called Msinga. Philanjalo also has a Care Centre (previously know as hospice though with ARVs available, its very high recovery rate makes it more a respite centre), a pediatric Care Centre, does various HIV/AIDS/TB related research projects with top US medical universities, and some food and other assistance to local OVC.

I’m still finding my place, my work within the Philanjalo organization, but so far rejoicing at seeing the tremendous impact that good doctors have on the area. Tugela Ferry’s Church of Scotland Hospital is known throughout the area, the province, the nation, and even the world. Locally, it is primarily known for excellent Christian doctors who have committed their lives to serving here. Seeing first hand the ripple effects that passionate, dedicated management of TB and HIV/AIDS has on the community is very exciting for me after struggling with the inefficiencies and apathy rampant throughout other areas of the system. It’s amazing the effect that a few committed men and women, when centered on the hope and love of God, can have on a community!!

Impacts on Supporters

It never ceases to blow my mind how God provides. For four and a half years now I’ve been able to do work in the Amangwe/Loskop community through your generous donations. Thank you!! I’m so grateful to God and to all of you for the support that you’ve give me, how you’ve entrusted me to share love and hope with people in need here. Bless you!

So, what do all these changes, and promises of a part-time salary (don’t know yet when it’ll come through) mean to you as supporters? Primarily, having a paid part-time job, it’ll be able to free up a good deal of my previous financial needs. Instead of needing approximately $20,000 annually for a salary, I need to raise much less for myself. This provides an opportunity to use some of those funds to cover the expenses for the work I’ll be doing with Thembalethu (formerly funded primarily from South Africa, but I’m trying to free up and stretch their Rand). I figure I need $8,000 for my salary working with Thembalethu two days a week, and $7,000 to fund the work expenses I’ll accrue in the course of doing ministry (primarily fuel, phone calls and airfare), totaling about $15,000 a year. The later UPC calls Personal Ministry expenses, and from now I will separate them from my salary so the tax man won’t take as much.

ANNUAL NEED DETAIL
$8,000 Annually Part-time work with Thembalethu, two days a week
$7,000 Annually Personal Ministry Expenses for Thembalethu: my transport once a week to assist Xoli, as well as office expenses in doing the admin and organization, and an annual flight to the USA
$15,000 Annually TOTAL

All these funds can continue going through UPC in the same way, although the name on my account has however changed from Betsy Elfers to Betsy Meyer. If you would like to continue your monthly support for the coming year, please let me know so I can do a bit of planning. Thank you so much for your support! I will be in Loskop doing home visits on Thursday, and I look forward to reconnecting with the HBC volunteers and the work they’re doing there to support the sick and orphaned. I’ll send out a new update about how they’re doing, the people they’re assisting sooner now that life has settled down more.

Zulu Wedding Reception

Need a Car. Got a car?

Hi folks!

I recently landed back in the Pacific Northwest’s summer. It’s LOVELY to be here, and even better to have a lovely summer wedding ahead of me!

While I arrived thinking that I had a car to borrow, it unfortunately fell through at the last minute. Now I have six more weeks here, in the midst of wedding planning and catching up with many of you. If any of you have a car I could borrow, or know of someone who does, please let me know. It would make my life A LOT easier if I had a more convenient, reliable way of getting around. Just thought I’d send my feelers out to you all…

Meanwhile, things back in South Africa continue along. All is going very well, from messages from the board of directors and Xoli, who’s now assumed the primary management role of Thembalethu. God has been so good to us over the past months (and years!). Let me give you an idea of the tremendous ways in which God has provided of late:

o We got our initial seed money, one year of funding (that we’ve stretched to 1.5 or so) from the Winterton Methodist Church. Additional donations have come in from UPC and other friends back in the USA. But that funding was looking to run dry by August/September. But that was then…

o Now we are the charity of choice for a golf day fundraiser which, due to the economic downturn, won’t bring in as much money as in the past years, but will give us a good boost to continue for months to come. The big day for that is August 22nd. We’re so grateful for these 8 guys who organize the event that in the past has raised as much as $19,000 for the selected charity. New funds to help the HBC care for the sick and orphaned in Amangwe/Loskop. Please keep this in your prayers as it will provide for our operating budget for the coming months.

o I also found out a little over a week ago that we received a grant from UPC that we applied for back in May. This will allow us to expand our work in an exciting new way – to help the sickest access anti-retroviral treatment when the stage of their HIV/AIDS and the government bureaucracy wouldn’t otherwise allow them a chance at living. Instead of requiring 5 weeks to expansion to the work we’ve already been doing

o About a year and a half ago, I was poised to return to the USA. Sad to leave South Africa behind, but excited to spend time reuniting with friends and family, and optimistic about the bigger pool of ‘fish’ available in a much larger metropolitan area than the rural area I’ve been living in South Africa. But that all changed last September when Eugene and I turned our friendship into dating. I’m grateful to have found such a wonderful, fun and godly man to spend the rest of my life with!

As for now, I’m back in the Pacific Northwest planning a wedding and starting to catch up with people. I’m working on a date or two for an informational night to share what I’ve been up to and the latest from Thembalethu Care Organization, the NGO we’ve just gotten registered. (Another big praise report!) I’ll send out those dates as they get finalized, which hopefully shouldn’t be much longer.

I hope to be able to catch up with you while I’m around the northwest. Send me a line if you’ll be free in the next couple of weeks and would like to catch up!

Blessings and hugs,



Betsy

__________________________

Betsy Elfers

Thembalethu Care Organization
Amangwe Tribal Area (Loskop)
KZN South Africa

PO Box 195
Tugela Ferry, KZN
3010
South Africa
Cell: +27 83 510 5562

** NOTE ADDRESS AND PHONE CHANGE **

Life: Water, Power and LOVE!

I thought for a change I’d send you an update on a more personal note, and as my friend Tim found the tales of my living situations to be so interesting, I thought I’d write a little about that for a change. At the bottom you’ll see the biggest news of all… so don’t miss the “Life in LOVE!” section at the bottom!

On a brief Thembalethu note… Training, training, training! Yesterday was the final day of a long string of them, it’s nice to have a rest from the meetings, coordination, catering, etc. We’ve just finished multiple trainings over the past couple weeks: 3 days on Tuberculosis, 3 days on Counseling and ARV Adherence training, and a 2.5 day foundational course called Learning to Listen by Christian Listeners. They all went very well, and although they ended up being a bit bunched together, the HBC attended in great numbers and the courses were each a great success!


Life and Water
Today’s another day without water. I learned years ago in Ecuador how essential water is to accomplish the most basic daily tasks. How easily I had previously taken it for granted, never having gone without in surburban and rural America. I remember hearing how amazing it is how adaptable humans are. Being without water isn’t a big emergency for me anymore like it used to be. The great thing is that Sofi, next door, has a bit Jojo water tank full of water that fills up our water storage containers when ours run out. Today, it sounds like either a pipe has burst or the pipes have clogged up with mud.

You see, we and two other farms as well as a small Zulu farm village get our water from an underground stream up the hill from here. Not only is our water system very hand-done, a botch-job as Sofi would call it – 1km of low pressure plastic pipes dug about a foot under the surface, running from the dam they built to catch mountain stream water and take it down the hill to our farm, Cosmos Farm. High pressures from the stream cause them to burst, or in the dry winters (coming soon), wandering cows (of which there are MANY in the land of the Zulus) step on the pipe and burst it, smelling the water inside. And the time-share development up the hill, and their dumping of topsoil has filled our water source with LOTS of sediment. Making it brown and chunky on the best of days. I’m so grateful for our little countertop filter!

So, now it’s a waiting game. Waiting to see if this great fix-it guy over in the village will sort it out before we need to, as we’re at the end of the line.

[The next day]…It’s another day, and the water’s back on! Many thanks to Derek and his quick-acting Mr. Fix-It helpfulness! Oh, how I appreciate a nice hot shower in the morning! Not to be compared with a sponge-bath over a large round basin, what the Zulus call to “geza ngendish.”

Being at Cosmos with a nice-working gas geyser (hot water heater) is certainly simpler than my last year’s water-heating situation. I was living on a farm named Meadowsweet Herb Farm just down the road, which still had an earlier form of water heater that is affectionately known as a ‘donkey.’ I suppose it got its name from its stubbornness, and I learned to understand with use. A donkey is a primitive homemade water-heating system whereby, in this case, a large metal drum is turned on its side, mounted in a cement/brick structure, and a fire is lit underneath to warm the water. The donkey at Meadowsweet required a lot of work to get the fire started, a lot of wood to keep it going, a lot of time with a roaring fire (at least 3 hours), and only gave a couple of hours of hot water as an end result. Coming back from a long day at work, or a day hike in the Berg and wanting a warm-up or clean-off shower took a lot of coordination and patience to say the least!


Life and Power
This past year at Cosmos Farm is the most rustic of my living situations so far in South Africa. But even this is nothing in comparison to many of my Zulu neighbors, which is why I appreciate the basicness of it all – it makes me feel less removed from the people I work with and serve.

Here at Cosmos Farm, I live in a three bedroom volunteer house with a large communal kitchen/living space. I’m the most permanent resident here, and as I write this it’s the first stretch in the past seven months that I have the place to myself. Slindile (18, orphaned, with two young kids) stayed here with me for almost six months, and then we’ve had various volunteers, interns and visitors also staying here. My good friend and landlord, Sofi Ntshalintshali-Cogley is about 100 yards away, so I get frequent visits from her two young kids Doong (officially it’s Lungelo), aged 6 and Miya, almost 3, and we often share meals and life together. It’s been such a blessing being able to live in community and having their friendship and family!

The volunteer house has a long-drop toilet (think outhouse) which we recently moved outside, accessed by a door in the bathroom. It has greatly improved the general house smell since then… wouldn’t recommend an indoor outhouse! Yet the bees have moved in, thinking it a good home, and flies and mosquitos love to breed in the depths. Naja, in the scheme of things these are just small adventures in Africa. The house runs off solar with natural gas for the stove, fridge and water heaters. The two solar panels on top of the house charge during the day and we can keep high-efficiency lights burning until late at night, and still have a little power left to charge our laptops. We monitor the battery life by beeps of the regulator.

One beep: means you’re starting to use the battery’s power (maybe something like 10% used),
Then it beeps three times: (which I guess is 30% battery drained) sometimes it does this a couple of times, depending on what we unplug along the way, it can move to
Five beeps: the regulator is telling you the battery is almost gone (it’s hard on the battery if it goes dry). At that point, you stop everything for a moment to switch off all non-essential power. If the charge was low (lots of electricity out for charging a laptop or a cloudy day), it can quickly move into
Seven-plus beeps: At this point, you get up QUICKLY and look for the closest matches and candles as the electricity will be going out within the next 60 seconds or so.

I’ve like to think I’ve mastered the system by now – I can say for sure that with a good system up (ours isn’t in the best state at the moment, unfortunately), it is definitely VERY feasible to live off solar power. It’s cool to use the power of the sun, to not be affected by the frequent South Africa nationwide energy shortages. (Nationwide people have “load sharing” two hours a day three days a week where their electricity is turned off completely. While it isn’t in nearly the crisis stage it was a couple months ago, it continues to disrupt a lot of people’s daily transactions and business operations, and the sale of generators has boomed since it started.)


Life in LOVE!
The big news is that I’m engaged to be married! I’ve known this great Afrikaans South African guy named Eugene Meyer for almost three years now, and have been dating him for almost 8 months now. (I’ve attached a couple pics.) Eugene is a strong Christian leader originally from Cape Town who is committed to serving God’s servants around the world. He is currently working for a Christian NGO named Philanjalo that also supports Home-Based Caregivers (300 to our 35), has an HIV/AIDS Care Centre for adults, and another one for children, does residential and community-based orphan care, and does HIV/AIDS and TB research with various US universities (Yale, Harvard, Brown, Albert Einstein). Eugene has been working with Philanjalo, through the Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry (1 ¾ hour drive from here) for four years and is now their financial and office manager.

The natural next-question is what this means for me. Well, first off, we’re in the midst of planning an August wedding in Tacoma, Washington. After that, the plans are for me to move in with Eugene in the sprawling Zulu metropolis (hahaha ;) of Tugela Ferry. (I’ve attached a picture of the hospital – the company house he’s in is just behind the complex, just against their back fence.) My plan from the start of Thembalethu was to get it to a place where it wasn’t dependent on my daily presence to continue and thrive. Being just under two hours away from Amangwe/Winterton, I’ll be able to support Xoli as she takes on the primary management responsibilities, by working back in the Berg two days a week, taking on fundraising and administrative roles. It’s such important work and as a board member and co-founder I’m committed to seeing the work go on! Xoli’s been such a Godsend to Thembalethu and the community and is already a great asset, and is in fact already gracefully leading most relationships with the Caregivers, patients and orphans. With the rest of my time, there are multiple opportunities already presenting themselves for me to continue serving HIV/AIDS infected and affected adults and children in the Tugela Ferry area. I envision that the next couple of years will be spent between Tugela Ferry and Amangwe/Loskop/Drakensberg, with the possibility of returning to the Seattle area sometime in the future.

As for Thembalethu, our funding with the Winterton Methodist church (and some generous contributions from UPC) will be running dry about September this year. Yet, a church member and friend has helped signed us up to be the charity of choice for a Golf Day in Durban that her brother is planning for late August. They normally raise about R100,000 to R120,000 ($13,500 to $16,000) for the charity, which would go a long way to allowing Thembalethu’s work to continue. Please join us in praying that this funding opportunity will come through!

Love to you all!

Betsy

Life in the Field

The story of precious eight year old Sbonelo (his name has been changed) is one demonstrating the challenges and successes experienced by Home-Based Care volunteers.

We went on our first home visit with Sbongile to see her patient Sbonelo was June 2007. At that point, we found his mother a shining example for others: HIV positive, but healthy and on ARVs for over a year, with a healthy week-old baby. She had taken nevarapine to prevent transmission of her disease to her baby girl.

Sbonelo, in grade 2, and also HIV+ wasn’t doing as well – his hair was badly thinning and he had bad oral thrush and sores as well as a light fever. They had started him in the process for ARV treatment, but had run short of funds to continue. We gave money for transport to the clinic, and told Sbonelo’s mother and gogo (grandmother) to urgently fetch his CD4 results, the indicator of his immune system strength and requirement for initiation of ARV treatment. As we had suspected, his results indicated that he needed to start treatment, so we wrote a referral letter to the ARV clinic at the hospital explaining that the mother had already taken the required ARV adherence training, and so her son, Sbonelo could start ARVs straight away. (Without some intervention, seemingly simple cases like this can face difficulty and delay at the hospital and/or clinic.)

With the CD4 results and our referral letter in hand, more transport money assistance in their pocket, Sbonelo and his mother left for Estcourt Hospital where Sbonelo received his first dose of ARV treatment that he’s been taking ever since. His smile brightened our day when we visited the other day: he’s doing VERY well on his treatment, the oral sores gone and shine back in his eyes.

But that’s where the good news of our last visit (March 2008) stopped. Sbonelo’s mother had abandoned him and his baby sister (now 9 months) to their gogo’s care while she went off to get married to a neighbor guy. Even worse, she didn’t just leave her children behind, but also her ARVs. This treatment for her HIV is a sensitive one, whereby a meagre 5% default rate can lead to drug resistance. The mother’s defaulting on her ARVs is a serious matter, as is the fact that Sbonelo was left to manage his own ARV treatment, without his gogo knowing how to give him his triple-drug cocktail. Xoli went through the pills with him, gogo listening on, and were impressed how much an eight year old child could remember about his pills. But unfortunately, that wasn’t good enough, for he wasn’t taking all the pills, all six different types, 100% correctly. To make matters worse, Sbonelo’s mother had left with her cell phone, the only way they had of checking the time to ensure he took the pills on time. In addition to taking the correct pills in the correct way, ARVs require 12 hour intervals in between each dose, making careful adherence much more crucial.

We closed up the visit by giving the gogo a referral letter and money to get ARV adherence at the clinic for two days in the following two weeks. We also gave a phone call to Sbonelo’s mother inquiring about her ARVs, about the wellbeing of Sbonelo and her 9 month old, and referring her to the local VCT counsellor to help her work through all the issues surrounding her HIV status. Two days later, Sbongile, Sbonelo’s HBC volunteer brought them a small clock we bought to help with their adherence. Things for Sbonelo’s health are looking up, and we have referred Sbonelo’s mother to an excellent VCT counsellor to ‘empower her’ about the importance of making her health, and her treatment adherence.

General Thembalethu Updates

• Registration as an NPO: We are just weeks away from formal approval as a Non-Profit Organization in South Africa. Our documents have been sent off to the appropriate government office, and we will soon be officially “Thembalethu Care Organization,” Lord willing!
• Drop-In Centre Plans Underway: Exciting new plans are underway to coordinate an Amangwe community drop-in centre in collaboration with a local business man, Thembalethu and a recently re-emerged local organization. The precise details of the drop-in centre are still being ironed out, but initial discussions include implementing the following: a feeding scheme for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) and other indigent people as well as satellite feeding schemes in more remote areas; Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) for HIV, and potentially a municipal clinic.
• Maize Meal Distributed from Winterton Farmers to Emangweni (Loskop) Orphans: Thanks to a surplus of mealie meal donated to the local inter-church organization Matthew 25, we started this month distributing big bags of mealie meal to orphan-headed households and extremely vulnerable children. We gave out fourteen bags of mealie to fourteen families, the worst cases we have found, as there are SO many orphans in the Amangwe community that are in great need. As funds are available, we will supplement this with beans, fruit, soya mince, and other staples. We are working towards improvements in social welfare’s service delivery as well as developments in the drop-in centre mentioned above to bring broader assistance to these kids in need.
• Nurse Volunteer Helping Out: We now have a volunteer nurse from Winterton Methodist (Jenny Braithwaite) who comes out with us every couple of weeks on home visits to patients. It’s a great help to have her nursing expertise, experience and way with people as we reach out to sick patients in their homes. Thanks, Jenny!
• Regular HBC Home Visits: We are just one HBC short of completing our goal of monitoring each and every one of our home-based care volunteers, many of these new carers over the past couple months. Monitoring includes meeting their patients and checking their work with them. In doing so, I can’t help but be wonderfully encouraged by all the love, care and hours that they put into assisting their sick neighbors.
• New Forms to Track HBC Patients Better: We have just completed simplifying our patient intake and monitoring forms, as well as training the HBC in them. The tracking forms help us keep track of our over 100 patients, enabling us to monitor their health status and activism, as well as being able to submit reports to the local Clinic. Because the average grade completed by our HBC was grade 7, we exchanged text for pictures, and streamlined the patient data that we really wanted to collect. We have collected the first round of forms, but have yet to get full feedback about the changes we made; at the time of training there was a lot of positive sentiment.