Through Botswana

The road was through Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa, to get back to White River. This photo is in the flat planes of Botswana, all road ahead and behind for hours.

Papa Sal!

Papa Sal, the Swiss born Ausy architect with Hands@Work at the Victoria falls. Not your typical desk jockey, builds like a wizard.

Driving back to S.A.

The drive from the Congo to South Africa was an awesome experience. It took us 3 days from Zambia with the Hands@Work 4X4. Sal and Robyn were great to live with on the road as we camped outside and had lots of nice veggies from local markets. Made a stop at Victoria Falls.

Oynk

Cleaning a pig pen with Mathew in the farm in Zambia, that has become a camp for orphans.

Roofing!

Putting roof trusses on a building in Zambia. The home based care team there has mad an overnight camp for orphaned kids. The kids needing the most attention from the orphan schools come to the camp for a week for fun, games, and life lessons.

Kyte Flying Contest

We just decided to ask all the kids to make kytes and bring them to school. They make them out of sticks, plastic bags, and strands of the plastic bags that contain corn meal.

School for Orphans

Children in the school getting their graded drawings. The challenge is for each church in an area to open a school for orphans, that they own and run. The organisation would provide food and teacher fees, and 25% of construction costs if the church wishes to build a structure. This is so that the church itself feels ownership for the school, rather than being knocked off balance and feeling overwhelmed if the organization leaves the area one day.

Benches for School

We decided to make benches for the school, using it as an opportunity to teach the youth life skills. They can sell benches to provide for school fees and have enough to eat.

Likasi Youth

Went to watch one of the youth play soccer. His older brother is sitting to the left. They are a family of nine children. Their father has died of aids, and their mother is HIV+, although she has managed to find ARV drugs and has improved. Their youngest sister contracted HIV from their mom through her pregnancy, and she is not doing so well due to her age and the side effects of the drugs. Their mom sells bread to make a living, and is only able to send the second oldest, the one who also plays soccer, to school. The oldest boy, Gillom, wants to be a nurse, yet has been out of school for years.

Youth Program

A youth program with orphans in their teens. A place to have fun, make friends, shair difficulties of life, and learn life skills training such as sewing or wood working that can provide money for many of them to get back into school.

Packing Food

The white powder looks so suspicious! Corn meal is an essential part of the diet in Africa. We get together each month with the volunteers to pack food for the patients and orphans. They also get oil, beans, nuts, and sometimes dried fish.

Food Distribution

Distributing food to patients and orphans each month is proving difficult because of increase in prices. A bag of corn meal in the Congo is three times more expensive than neighboring Zambia, because of shipping and corruption in customs. Moving towards local sustainable food generation is an ultimate goal for the organization.

Communal Water Tap

People walk far distances to get water from communal taps. Although it is still advised to boil the water, it proves impractical to do so with the majority of families being an average of 10 people. During my whole time there, I only saw children and women getting water, never once did I see a man carrying a heavy water jars.

Saer Community, Likasi

A typical mining/railroad building town. Dense, void of social services, and saturated with HIV/AIDS.

Likasi

The town of Likasi, a mining town in the south of DRC, where we were reaching into it's four neighboring communities. The town center itself is a striking mix of old Belgian architecture and African culture. The people spoke Swahili and French. Like many growing towns, the rich are getting richer, and the poor more desperate. Although it was very safe here, more so than South Africa. I walked around at night without a worry. Because of the war, security is actually more of a presence.

Living in DRC

No complaints about my room, which was better than the one in South Africa. We lived in an old Belgian house that probably used to be inhabited by a rich mine manager. But maintenance is a huge problem. The pipes leak and make little lakes in the dilapidated roads, and electricity and water was always a problem. All in all, much better than I expected. And bucket baths are pretty nice.

Congo DRC

The first impression of the Congo was the kilometers of trucks with goods parked on the side of the road. Pastor Jacob who drove me there, said that they camp on the side of the road for 2-3 weeks because corrupt customs people make the border tight in order to get bribes. All these men camping away from home for weeks has increased prostitution, and hence HIV/AIDS.

The Congo reminded me a lot of my home country of Iran. Both countries struggle with exploited resources: one in terms of minerals, the other oil...as well as political instability due to war, one being the civil war in the DRC, and the other the gulf war...and also religious hypocrisy, one Christian, and the other Muslim.

Masoyi Family

Okay, Masoyi is a community that is about a 5 hour drive East of Joberg. It is a huge community that is built on the hills of the area. Years ago many many people were driven there and forced to live on these hills void of infrastructure. It was a way to keep the black population away from the whites which happened to have massive amounts of land (surprise), and hired the blacks from Masoyi as cheap labor. The people of Masoyi have been doing the provinces back breaking work for generations. From mines to construction, apartheid’s propaganda that blacks were not fully human forced this settlement to grow as South Africa’s economy needed more…slaves. It is now an urban settlement in the middle of an agricultural area. People live jammed together, with no services or proper housing infrastructure. The only communal nodes are taverns. That, together with a lack of police presence, 70% unemployment, Aids, poverty, and desperation, is a seemingly hopeless situation in which potential and preciousness of human life and determination dwells. That is why an NGO was started by George Snyman, together with his wife Caroline and their friend Ma Florence from the community. They began to give home based care to people dying of aids. They walked miles with food parcels and medicine, many times not having enough food for their own families. Ma Florence was telling a group of us volunteers this with tears in her eyes as she talked about the birth pains of this organization called Hands @ Work. 3 of us volunteers, as well as a new HR employee for Hands@Work, was told that we would be staying in the community of Masoyi for five days and four nights. We currently live on the campus of ASM (Africa School of Missions) as they had offered the organization free accommodation from the outset. Although somewhat disappointing at first because the campus is isolated from the community which is close by, the reality of South Africa quickly sets in. The campus is surrounded with electrical wires, access being provided through gates, keys, and passwords for a reason. Soon you understand South Africa’s reputation of the world’s most criminally active country. ASM has had many break ins, some instigated by the security guards that were meant to protect the premises. The Masoyi community’s two newly installed debit machines were recently blown up, in an attempt to steal money. Despite the crime, Hands@Work is beginning to remove it’s offices from ASM and to incorporate themselves into the close by and all black community.
We all got into the back of the “buckie” (Pick up truck) with three changes of clothes and minimal toiletries, and were on our way into the community. Each of us was going to stay with one child headed household (houses managed by children/youth because their parents have died from HIV/AIDS). The buckie dropped several others off and finally pulled up to a house with a fence that was flopping over towards the street, this was my new place. There was a dirt yard with a tree in the corner. Two structures were on the site, one was concrete block, the other was made of wood slats with tarp fastened on its exterior. Three brothers, their younger sister, and 9 year old orphaned cousin lived in the two structures. The concrete block house contained the t.v., dining table, and the beds for the two oldest boys. The second shack contained the kitchen, with two bedrooms, one for the youngest sister and their nine year old cousin, the other for the youngest boy of the family. The stay with our families was one of the greatest privileges I’ve been given in life. These youth opened their homes to me and accepted me into their lives. Stepping into their reality was heartwarming as well as devastating, They are still kids. They socialize, neighboring kids come over, they laugh, chat, sing songs, watch lots of t.v. on their small black and white (American soap operas everyday). Yet growing up quickly is a pressure they have faced since their parents died. They cook and clean (house looks impeccable, regardless of the little they possess), wash and iron their clothes, help each other with homework, plant and harvest maze in the small yard that they have, repair their house, and try to repair their own damaged souls and bodies as years of neglect, sometimes abuse, and often sickness build up. The family also fill their large water jars which they carry in a wheelbarrow. They walk a large distance to a communal tap that is only open on Saturdays, waiting in line for hours, sometimes from 4 in the morning. If the drunk guy responsible for the tap decides to shut it off, they do not have water for that week. Infrastructure is painfully absent in this populated settlement. If I left my empty water bottle somewhere at the end of the night, I would find it in the freezer full of water the next morning. I had forgotten to wash my socks one day, and found it hanging on the line to dry behind the house. They would make sure that I washed my hands first in the bucket prior to eating. They would poor me more water for my bucket bath, and boil more of it so that it would be warmest. I did not hear them complain once about their situation, unless it was brought up in a joking manner in order to be laughed about. Their challenges in life are great, but what breaks my heart the most is the love that they display in the face of their circumstances. There are many horrible circumstances here. The oldest brother Titus showed me his English to SiSwati dictionary one day. It was in bad condition, and only started at the letter “D”. You can find out a lot about a person from the things that they underline. It was amazing what was circled in this book. Some words were hope, faith, marriage, grace, pray, faith, poverty. When I got to “O” the word orphan happened to be circled, and the page across from it was filled with scratches, that whole page was filled with scratches. Seeing those scratches that come from frustration, pain, and suffering, made the kids’ painful reality sink in a little more. I go to visit my family every Friday. Last Friday I was surprised to see the youngest sister Sbomgile holding her child. The child was not with us when I was staying with the family, he was being taken care of by the grandmother who had gone to Johannesburg. Sbomgile is 16, and has a two year old child named Sbusisu. I still have not haven’t been able to ask about how the child came about and where the father is, in fear of what the response could be. I asked some of the youth what their dream jobs were. Titus the oldest wants to be an investor, one of their friends Carroll said that she wanted to have a radio program. Sbomgile, holding her child Sbusisu, said her dream was “to be a daughter…I want to be a daughter.” We go out on home based care with a nurse to take care of patients on some days. We entered the house of a frail mother and her young daughter who were suffering from tuberculosis brought on by aids. After our nurse Emily talked to them in SwaSi, the mother went on to say how much she wished that she had enough health so she could sweep someone’s yard for money. That is when the daughter broke down into violent crying. After comforting her, Emily asked the girl what her favorite song was. The daughter whispered the name in her weak voice, and the African volunteers began to sing the SiSwati song. Most of Each person has their favorite song, regardless of weather they have Aids, or are orphaned. The worse weapon we can give Aids is letting it turn people into statistics. They are not numbers in a PowerPoint to be presented at the next UN Aids conference. They are not digits on Excel files to be crossed off once the funds from Bill Gates come in. Each person is unique, and craves meaningful relationships. It’s a great privilege to be here and share in people’s lives.

Everything was in harmony. The rocks, vegetation, animals, waterfalls, everything. After starting the decent into the canyon, we heard baboons verbalizing themselves from many directions at many distances. I don’t know if you’ve heard a baboon scream, but I think it’s worth googling. It’s this blood curdling shout that makes you think you’ve
violated everything that a baboon holds dear. At one point we were about to cross a brook at the bottom of a canyon, when we saw about 40 baboons, big and small, grandpas and little babies, on the ground and in the trees. The kids would come and look at us curiously, then run back to their moms. There was so much tension and curiosity from both sides. They were eating figs. We were so different, us group of people and this community of baboons. We have brains that question existence and look for answers, we have libraries and parliaments, noble peace prizes and airplanes, theme parks and drive troughs. We have divorce, Prozac, guns, rape, poverty, suicide, harmful words, manipulation, pollution and so much more crapyness, and here they are…eating figs. There’s an innocence in that which was touching to whiteness. To see such raw nature makes you feel so many emotions. Makes you feel vulnerable, and in awe of what exists (happily!) without the involvement of a human mind or hand. Having studied
architecture there has been something in the back of my mind telling me that without “designers” the world would be a hideous place, and we are needed to make it tolerable, beautiful, beneficial etc. But that isn’t true, as humans we molest nature so often and so severely that it becomes a sea of intolerables. Then we hire people to construct bubbles of tolerable landscape within the chaos we ourselves have created. I have to say that I felt intimidated by the beauty, partly because I knew that I could never compete with it. I was also thankful to see somewhere that our civilization had not touched, and had a desperation about hoping it would remain that way. It’s not just that there wasn’t a MacDonalds there, but there were no hand rails on the edges of cliffs, no designated photo areas, no caution signs, no light posts etc. A series of “safety engineers” and lawyers from the wilderness bureau were not there with industrial glue and sponges to get rid of sharp edges, abrupt corners, and drops in elevation. This was raw nature, and we walked carefully and respectfully through it. I’m happy we did.

The guys on the building team usually sang as we drove to play soccer after work, they are being trained in building while getting a small incentive, so that they can enter the desperate job market with experience at Hands@Work. Many have lost parents and siblings to hiv/aids. We were working on a multi care centre for orphans.