Alexandra Township

“Our gran is beautiful.” So are the children of Alexandra township. Thursday I accompanied a team from Rosebank Union Church to Alexandra, a crowded slum with an estimated 34,000 shacks about 20 minutes from my home.

I read stories in two crèches. (The French word for ‘crib’ is used here to designate a day care center or nursery school.) Susan Binion and Kathy Haasdyk’s Our Gran was a big hit. (See my review in the previous entry.) Unlike my afterschool programs in Tembisa, these children knew virtually no English. I read the book in English and showed the pictures. Their teachers read the Zulu version and elaborated with enthusiasm. I told, more than read, Pamela Duncan Edwards’ Roar! A Noisy Counting Book because I knew the clever poetry would be lost in the translation. The children counted fleeing animals in English and roared enthusiastically along with the little lion cub who scares all the animals off although he is only looking for someone to play with.

The team from Rosebank includes three young women who are HIV positive and keep an eye out for those in the community who need help. They visit during the week and assess needs. When the nurse comes on Thursday they are ready to direct her to the most critical needs. From their own experience of recovering health because of ARVs (anti-retrovirals) they can be a great encouragement.

The first home we visited the patient had died that morning. She was so afraid that someone would find out she had HIV that she refused to be tested and get help. We stopped to pray in the home of the neighbor who had told us about this woman and found she had a 22-day-old grandbaby. Both the granny and the baby’s mother are HIV+, but determined to live healthy and productive lives with medications. Everything possible has been done to protect the child, but it will be another six weeks before testing will show whether this precious little girl has the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in her blood or not.

Our guides directed us up a narrow alley, through a courtyard to a 9’x9’ shack nearly obstructing the way to more houses beyond. In this tin cube lived a grandmother with her severely handicapped grandson and his 10-year-old sister who, according to neighbors, does all the housework. We left a blanket and a stuffed toy as well as a food parcel, and the team made plans to research day care for the handicapped in the area and look for a push chair (stroller) so the child can get outside. Given the way the Lord has brought what is needed at exactly the right time in the past, I thoroughly expect someone to show up at the church this week to donate a push chair.

In the novel I am currently working on, my character Mboti, who lost his job when his HIV status became known, does the kind of work these young women do. He is intended to be a model of living positively with HIV. I went along for the home visits as well as to the crèches in order to research my character, but in the process I grew in my respect for the incredible work these women are doing and the tremendous difference that churches, partnering with local communities, can make.