Mbekweni & Fairyland

I spent the day today working with the home health workers from Drakenstein Hospice, doing home visits into the townships and informal settlements of Mbewkeni and Fairyland (a cute name for a dismal looking place), as well as to a farm (to visit the farmworkers).

The home health worker, Myrtle (wearing the vest, right), was really amazing. She used to have a better paying job in a private hospital and gave it up to work for hospice - she is amazingly dedicated to the families she works with. She brings food to them every visit out of her own pocket - little things of yoghurt, or a sandwhich. She sometimes pays for gas out of her own pocket to bring kids to the hospital in town when they need to go. Here, we are measuring and weighing one of our little patients.

The thing is - I think they're all like that. Doing amazing work with few resources, just a lot of caring and love.

Some of the mothers / grandmothers / aunties we talked about in rounds have been really amazing, taking in other orphans and looking after their own and other kids. Others struggle.

One family (a grandmother, her son and her 6 or 8 grandkids) had been doing really well, with a small meat selling business in a container. (containers, like shipping containers, are often used here as little shops). About 2 weeks ago, during the xenophobic attacks, her shop & home were attacked, her husband shot, and all her furniture, fridges & freezers stolen. So now they have no income, no food, nothing. (Incidentally, they are not foreigners!).

It was a day when the inequities of life here were so blatant. The photos are taken beside some shacks, just 25 m from a train track. We visited a daycare - basically a one room shack liket he ones you see in the photo, with 9 or 10 preschool kids wandering around. These two little kids on the left were not in the daycare - they came to see the commotion and watched as we gave out little things of yoghurt, so I had to give them some as well. The big brother could hardly carry the little brother strapped on his back.

It was an exhausting but illuminating day.