Day 10 March 31

What I do you cannot do; but what you do, I cannot do. The needs are great, and none of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.”
- Mother Teresa

Hammansburgh Combined School

This was our first school in the Umvoti District. After traveling down a dirt track for quite a distance we saw a small, rather run down looking building in a field, next to a brand new soccer field that was being built by the government. The field was enclosed with a fairly high chain link fence that looked like the children would not be able to enter. The run down building was the school. The government must have thought that the children needed a playing field much more than a decent building for their school. We pulled into the field next to the school and were immediately mobbed by the children, so much so, that it was hard for us to get ourselves out of the van. There was such excitement at our arrival! Hilda had told us a bit about this school already. She had been looking for some small plastic chairs to buy ( she found and brought 75) as when she had visited two weeks before, there had been a lot of rain in the area and the kindergarten class was sitting in their classroom, which had recently been built by a nearby farmer, on pieces of cardboard on the muddy floor. The classroom itself was attached to the side of the main building with a tin corrugated roof and slat walls that looked more like a fence to me. Imagine these little ones sitting in the cold, with wind blowing through the slats, trying to learn lessons! Imagine being the teachers and trying to teach the lessons. The school itself was probably not much larger than what we see for one classroom here and there were over 300 students learning there. Only one half of each window in the school proper had glass in it, so I can well imagine how cold it would be as well. We were told that the school had opened 5 years ago because the other school was across the highway and 'they were having to bury 5 learners a year' when the children would be struck by vehicles, trying to cross the highway. Since the school was opened they had not had 1 casualty. We were lead into the school by a group of young girls, who marched in front of us like majorettes. Inside we were greeted by the teachers and quite a number of parents as well as the farmer and his wife, who had built the addition. A touching speech was made by a local community leader.
" I would like to express my gratitude to everyone for making this day a success. This is the day where our friends from Canada will be planting trees in the area of Nseleni. This exercise is an indication to all of us that indeed World Vision plays a significant role in the establishment of friendship between the people of Umvoti and the people of Canada. This is an indication that our relationship is not minor but major. It is seen as a step towards intensifying our highly appreciated relationship and a step in the right direction towards development of the Umvoti Community.
Umvoti ADP was established in the year 2007 and the mission behind is to bring development into the areas that are poverty stricken and affected by diseases such as HIV and AIDS. The ADP takes into account the views of the people and to make this possible it has established the 'Children Committees' in sub-villages, the 'ADP Forums' in the villages and the 'ADP Executive Committee'. This has been seen as a huge success in making the ADP a people driven ADP. Even though the ADP is still new, people have tasted it's fruits. This was seen when the children were given tracksuits, receiving medical attention through advocacy, general gifts, presents and letters from friends in Canada. The ADP is in it's initial stage of implementing it's planned projects and a few are up and running as we speak. I would like to thank our visitors for making our poor people realize how valuable they are."
This is the only blackboard that was in the school.
We were treated to dancing by both the boys and girls doing traditional dances and singing. As we were heading outside at the end of it all there was a small group of girls in front of me; I was still be-bopping to the music and shuffling my feet, which they noticed and immediately kicked off any shoes they were wearing and really started to dance for me! You should have seen these little ones move! Looked like dances from the jitter-bug era, they were quite amazing and very competitive. I had noticed, numerous times on our travels, little ones on the sides of the highways and roads, with nothing more on than maybe a pair of pants or a skirt, and they would be dancing! They may be poor,but there is still joy to be had in childhood.
Half of our group stayed behind in the classroom, as they were getting a chance to meet some of their sponsor children and give them the gifts they had brought. The rest of carried on outside and planted the trees along with our 'helpers'. After I talked to the Principal about the garbage and re-cycling and she was very receptive and immediately starting gathering children up and having them pickup all the bits of candy wrappers and papers that had been dropped around and had them put the garbage in the burn area that they had. I hope they will keep it up. I see teaching the children about keep things clean and respecting their environment as a learning aid to teaching them about respect and pride for themselves. More talks with other people from the community and I learned much to my dismay that approximately 60% of all the children we had been meeting would be dead by age 12!!! What a devastating thought! I hadn't realized the mortality rate for the children was so high. A lot of the deaths would be attributed to malnutrition, parasites, TB and such, but of course most would be AIDS related. I didn't know that the anti-retro viral's did not work for children! So we have life extending medications for adults, but none for children! How can that be? The children are the future! So, that pretty well took up our day again and it may not seem like much, but it was the most moving and really eye opening day so far. Your mind goes into over-drive with trying to think of more things you can do to help. It's pretty unsettling to see some of the poverty which was evident from the track-suits the children were wearing; a lot of them were already very worn out and some of the parents clothing looked very tattered and worn too.
I'm pretty sure we all found it draining, as there was very little talk on the way back to Zinkwazi that afternoon.