water!

i just wanted to show you a piece of reality that hits us each day as we work out in the community of grabouw.

the picture shows a young girl (about 13 year old) washing her clothes at one of the only two standpipes in the iraq squatter camp in grabouw, this is a pitiful shot when we consider that over 500 people, who's homes are little more than tin shacks with no electricity and only these two taps, live not more than 1/2 mile away from where i am sitting typing this post in my home on the village of hope project...i have just counted up that we have 10 taps in the home i share with maz (and arron)......

first world meets third world and who really cares!

waiting in line

yesterday i had my first real taste of what it is to wait in line as 'regular punter' here in south africa, i had offered to visit the red cross children's hospital in cape town to pick up the ARV meds for one of our little boys. a job which i thought would be a quick in and out turned into a bit of a mission which meant that i missed my soccer outreach in hillside in the afternoon.

the red cross children's hospital is a huge complex and it was somewhat humbling to see so many sick children waiting in line with their parents, i am not going to complain about the service or the amount of time that i spent waiting for a file to be found or the the large amount of people waiting patiently for the medicines to be drawn up at the pharmacy, the hospital are doing an amazing job but the problem is so big that their team is overstretched and understaffed.

after waiting for nearly an hour just to pick up the young child's file, i was then struck by the sign at the pharmacy counter which read something like 'it will take between 1 to 2 hours for us to draw up the medication, please be patient whilst we ensure that the drugs are prescribed correctly to avoid further complications'.

i was given number 163, when i arrived at the counter they were distribution number 98....wow i was so humbled by the peoples patients as they waited calmly in the overcrowded and very warm room.......an experience i would have wanted to miss but not one i really want to rush back to quickly.

marathon run for the village!

we wanted to bring to your attention the fact that gregg quixley is running the london marathon for thembalitshauk/village of hope, gregg is looking to raise £1000.00 for us and has set up a justgiving page where you can give online.

please visit greggs justgiving page, place a donation and lets wish gregg all the best for a successful fundraising event and an amazing experience as he runs the marathon for the village of hope.

my highest walk

on saturday morning i enjoyed a wonderful walk with harry, our longer term volunteer, we walked directly out from the village of hope, over the railway line and through the forestry commision land to a 1150meter high peak called hanskop. the walk took 6 hours in total, walking non stop, and we think we covered about 22km.

the view from the top was awesome, for those of you who know the area the mountain is the one with the masts on top and from the summit we had views across false bay to table mountain, robben island to the west, cape point and the atlantic ocean to the south, views over the village of hope and grabouw reaching out to hermanus and cape agulhas to our east, and the higher peaks of the hottentots and franschoek mountains to the north.

no photo will ever do the view justice but i will post a few onto my flickr account and have set one into this post to give you some idea....this view shows the whole of false bay, table mountain is in the centre of the photo with gordons bay to the near left out to hangklip, with cape point top middle and the helderberg mountains in the foreground, just wish a few more of you could have joined us.....aching this morning!

mandela's 20th year release....

last week south africa celebrated the 20th anniversary of the release of nelson mandela, after 28 years in prison, but what has changed in those 20 years, has democracy helped those who were suppressed during the years of apartheid?.......there have been many interesting comments on this in the local press, but the bbc web site sums it up in this article 'anger not hope'

please continue to pray for south africa, a country where so many cultures, tribes, races, ideals, ideas and tensions battle to be heard, pray for the government and those in places of power both on parliamentary level and those nearer the ground like our town manager mr liebenberg, pray for charities like thembalitsha who seek to serve those whom the government are failing to bring in the basics like, health, education, sanitation and housing.

its hard to live and work in this place, so much of what we seek to do can be undone or misunderstood by those we seek to help, please support us as we seek to share the love of Jesus, who told us not only to love our neighbour as ourselves but to also love our enemies and pray for them.

find febuarys newsletter

we have just sent out our latest newsletter, which links back to this blog, for those of you who follow the blog and not the newsletter you may have missed this months as 'blogger' achieves the post via the draft date not the publish date...therefore if you would like to read our latest news round up then please follow 'this link'.

facebook funds via travelstart

one of the most active of supporters for thembalitsha over this last year has been a company called travelstart, this week they have launched another way of supporting thembalistsha, this time via facebook. basically if you are on facebook and become a fan of travelstart they will donate R50.00, around £3.50, to thembalitsha.

we would obviously love for all our friends and supporters to sign up to this, so if you are on facebook please follow this link and sign up......

soccer saturday goes large!

last saturday we, (tim, daz, harry and trondor), ran a 'soccer saturday' for around 60 adult farm workers from one of the local apple farms. we had hoped that we could have introduced some of the lifeskills that we use when we work with the boys in our town, however due to a late (african time) start and a huge language barrier, as some of the guys were from zimbabwe, we decided to get straight into the main event.....football!

we split the men into 8 teams and ran two leagues, each team playing each other and then a final round of games between the two leagues, it was all great fun, we refereed the games and i am sure the guys had a great time.

it's our aim to start to work with the farm workers children on a friday afternoon, and to find a 'responsible' worker to take over the model that we set last weekend, this will be a long process but one to which we are called.

the main reason for running the event was to keep the farm workers from spending the whole afternoon drinking, which i think we achieved, although we all needed a stiff drink ourselves when we got home!!

first real fire of 2010

we have been watching the first real fire to hit grabouw this year develop over the day and this evening i took this photo, for those of you who know the town it seems that it started in or near iraq squatter camp and with a north west wind has moved down the hill towards pumesa's home in zola/rooidakke.....please pray with us for those people already affected, the fire service who are busy trying to bring it under control and those whos homes are at risk.

February Newsletter

January was a mixed month for the Walkers on the Village of Hope. We started the New Year together and by the end Arron had left for his three month trip back to England to work with YWAM. The team will be coming back to South Africa in May to work in the community via our sports outreach programme during the Football World Cup.





With Arron leaving, Tim and Maz were on their own for the first time in twenty three years and getting used to a quieter home. Actually though, quiet isn't a word you can use for the life at the Village of Hope as the nine children in the unit continue to keep us all busy.





Unfortunately we had some unexpected news when we found that around seventy meters of the new fence we had just installed to provide us with some protection was stolen. It is a little frustrating but when we live so close to people who have absolutely nothing to live on it isn't surprising. God calls us to love our enemies and we are learning that day in and day out as we seek to serve our poor and needy community.





Children’s Unit





Of the nine children, five of the boys are now at school in the mornings, which gives the moms a bit of a break from the stresses of keeping them occupied all the time. This also means that Lisa is able to create some 'structured play' for the smaller girls who are still too young to go to school.





We have also been able to provide some space to care for two older girls who have been placed back home but are not currently attending school. It is one of our aims to continue to support these children and their families and if we are unable to do this these two wonderful children would be stuck at home in their tin shacks alone for most of the day while their parents are at work.





Three of our boys are spending weekends with their families in Grabouw. This is part of the process as we seek to train their parents to care for these boys in their homes. This can be a long winded exercise but one that we need to get right to make sure that they are well cared for when they leave the security of the Village of Hope.





Maz has been able to replace two house moms and this month we hope that we will be able to find the right person to fill the nursing sister roll which we are currently advertising for.





Community News





Things have certainly picked up again with our sports outreach programme and Emily House has joined Tim in the Iraq squatter camp on Tuesday afternoons as we extend the netball side for the young girls who live there. Daz has now established the Waterworks soccer club on Wednesday afternoons and is starting a cricket club with some of the older boys in another area.





It's always a pleasure to work with these young people as we seek to provide them with life skills and bible teaching which sit alongside the sports training and I had the amazing privilege of sharing the story of David and Goliath with the children from Iraq as we learnt the skill of tackling. For most of them this was the first time they had heard this story and they listened with wide eyes as I explained how the shepherd boy with a sling shot and a stone defeated the huge giant.





We held our latest sports Saturday a couple of weeks ago, with around one hundred and twenty of our children joining us for a morning of soccer and netball at the amazing Elgin Country Club. Once again it was great to see the children having so much fun and to bring the different clubs, communities and cultures together is a wonderful privilege.





Trondor, our Norwegian volunteer sponsored the morning, where we were able to provide a sixty five seater bus which we discovered can hold one hundred! Trondor also provided food and prizes. We bought a new set of goals for the under fifteen tournament, much to the delight of those boys. We are now looking to get some portable netball posts which we will use for the next event and each afternoon as we work in the community. At present we have no fixed posts and the girls have yet to practice the art of goal shooting, although they are superb up until that point!





Once again Tim’s team of boys from Iraq won the under twelve and under fifteen soccer tournament but Arron's Rooidakke team once again provided strong competition. Lisa's Elgin Timbers girls won the netball, which sounded exciting as each team cheered the others on with wild songs!

Daz and Lisa have continued the work in the town where they are providing parenting courses, not only to some of our children's parents but also those who are known by the local police, we are hoping that this will continue to develop as we seek to serve those less fortunate that ourselves.

Volunteers





January was another sad month as we said goodbye to our most recent Dutch students who had been working with us at the Village of Hope as part of their university placement. We much appreciated their input, both into the children’s lives and into the management structures as we seek to set up a professional children’s unit.





We were joined in January by a Dutch couple, Leo and Margeet who will be with us for 3 months. Their daughter had volunteered at the School of Hope on a few occasions and they are fitting into life at the Village. Margeet is helping with activities for the girls in the morning and Leo provides some driving support to Thembacare in Grabouw.

Rob and Emily House have taken over the management of the volunteer unit and we thank God for bringing them to us at this stage of the projects development. Their daughter Rosie has just started school and Isaac continues to provide us with much entertainment with his love of cars and car keys.

With Arron departing for his mission trip, we were left a little short for someone to not only do his share of the jobs around the village but also to run his soccer team. Thankfully, help is at hand as we welcome a nineteen year old volunteer, Harry Hogarth from Tring, England. Harry will be with us for the three months that Arron is away and is already fitting in well.

what does zuma say to our nation?

i know we shouldn't really get involved in politics and maybe we should keep out of other peoples business but when the president of our country, who is a much respected figure in our local communities, acts in a way in which he not only puts his life at risk but that of millions of people then i feel we must bring it to the attention of the wider world.

our president has just married is third, current, wife and has confirmed that he has had a 'love child', perhaps his 20th child, with yet another woman, see news story here. in a nation with the highest rate of HIV and AIDS in the whole world, this is doing nothing to encourage the majority of this country to live in any other way than that shown by mr zuma....

this behaviour also undermines the work that many thousands of charities like thembalitsha are doing in this country and also goes against the 'government' departments, like heath and social development, manifestos as they seek to bring education in HIV and AIDS to the masses!....

..help!

where did our fence go?

in june last year our home at the village of hope was burgled, our laptops and cameras were stolen, included on them was a lot of history from the building work stages and opening days from the children's unit......therefore to prevent further theft we installed a 1000meter x 2meter high fence around the village, mainly to define our land from our neighbours and to let people know that if they crossed the fence they would in fact be trespassing..

...on tuesday afternoon whilst i was showing our new volunteer, harry hogarth from england, around we found that over 70 meters of this fence had been stolen......the thieves stolen the fence but left the poles and the razor wire which sat along the top of the fence.....looking at it they must have come over the river and up the steep bank to steal this....

....as you can imagine this is somewhat frustrating and a little worrying as we had hoped that the fence would offer some protection against theft instead it has itself been stolen!

voh update on thembalitsha web site

we are thankful to charl who has made a much needed update to the village of hope page on the main thembalitsha web site, please visit the new page here and let us know what you think!