helping with some electric homework!

one of our sports mentors (rasta) with a
well worn soccer ball...anyone willing to help?

what started out as a simple visit to our sports mentors to inform them that the rain had washed out any chance of running our sports outreach in the iraq/zwelitsha informal settlement this afternoon turned into an opportunity to help two young school girls with their homework.

after chatting with the guys around a very warm wood fire about the need for some more footballs to be donated for the sports outreach over a cup of ricoffe i was asked to take their sister and a friend to the local library to enable them to do their homework, when enquiring as to what their homework was about i was told that they needed to find out about electricity.....some what ironic that the tin shack that they live in doesn't have access to electricity, or basic sanitation for that matter, but i thought that it could be an opportunity for me to take them to visit the very local, and even more ironic, water turbine powered electricity plant which lies around 2kms from their home.

chilling round an indoor fire with coffee

the girls enjoying a coffee at the visitor centre!

so we made the short trip to the palmiet dam power station, run by eskom, the same company who have completed our recent upgrades at the village of hope, and after a few minutes we made ourselves welcome into their 1st world visitor centre where the girls were presented with a pack of glossy brochures informing them about how electric is made.

back home with their info packs to help with their homework

we were also shown a short video giving some depth to the setting up of such a power station in one of the worlds 6 floral kingdoms, the cape fynbos, under the kogelberg biosphere....all this was a little overwhelming to the two girls who had only asked for a lift to the library where they would have had to scan books and paid for photocopies of info which really was on their (and their school mates) doorsteps, after a cup of coffee at the centre we returned to their tin shack, to a warm fire but alas no electricity for them to enjoy!

sometimes one has to just connect a few dots to make the day for people, if only we would take the time to do this (even me sitting here in south africa, a missionary to this land) for our fellow man.

how to make someone's day.....provide them with candles and matches!

barbara and our good friend
outside his small home

you may remember the story about a young 16 year old boy that has become a great friend to me, read the short blog post from december 2010 by clicking here, well yesterday, via some funds that were donated from a generous guy in england we were able to bless this local teenage boy with some basic supplies.

the photos show barbara wood, from aylesbury, southcourt baptist church, with this young guy both inside and outside of his small wooden shack in the zwelitsha (iraq squatter camp) here in grabouw. this guy is such a blessing to me, as he helps me to translate to the younger xhosa speaking kids at our sports outreach each tuesday afternoon.

you couldn't imagine the delight in
receiving a couple of candles and a few matches!

he was so happy with his parcel, which included some tinned and dried food, as well as deodorant and much to his delight some matches and candles. we (thembalitsha/thembacare/village of hope) don't normally hand out support in this direct way, as it can create a culture of reliance upon us to provide, which is obviously unsustainable and doesn't empower people to help themselves, however there are some exceptions to every rule and it was such a humbling experience to know that these few supplies will help this young guy not only to have a fuller stomach and less body odour but also light for him to do his homework in these dark winter evenings!

he got his bible

following on from the 'shouting for bibles' post that i wrote last week, i managed to get hold of a xhosa bible for the builder who wanted to have his own bible in his own language.

today on my way to our rescheduled soccer outreach in zwelitsha/iraq i saw him and past the bible to him, i hope that you can see just how happy he was to receive this and he was even more surprised to hear that i didn't want any money for it!

and the amazing thing was that as he received his bible more builders came up to me and also asked for their own bible...i think i might have started something that i wont be able to stop!...is it sustainable?, probably not. is it what Jesus would do?, who knows. did it make us both happy, one to serve and one to receive? yep!

finding new rest

as part of one of our dutch (HAN) university students thesis he needed to find out what difference the sports outreach that we run in the community had made to the young people that we work with, so this morning we (me and bart) spent an hour interviewing a couple of the boys that we work with in the iraq squatter camp.

the area is made up of small tin shacks with limited access to running water, no basic sanitation and no electricity, the local municipality has been encouraging people to move their homes to a new area, slightly nearer to town (like 200 yards!) but on what will become 'serviced' plots...that basically means that they will have a stand pipe within walking distance, access to a toilet, which they will share with another 12 families, but still no electricity.

people have slowly been moving their homes to this new area, and whilst chatting with the boys this morning i found out that the local community have named the place zwelitsha (or new rest)....whilst the name is somewhat better than iraq i still wonder how anyone can call that place 'rest', but for those few families that's what it is and we are constantly challenged by the resilience of these people who live in the most desperate conditions in the world.

the photo shows a small boy who was desperate for me to take a photo of him reading his bible in his new home at new rest!