Load shedding and other news from South Africa

So, this is my second attempt at writing this message as the power went out just as I was about to post yesterday! This phenomenon is called ‘load shedding’ and is basically rolling brown-outs; a schedule is posted to alert you as to when your area will have its power cut (usually for 2-3 hours at a time) throughout the week. Welcome to SA!

So, back up a week and a half to last Wednesday. Every Wednesday we have our Tree Clinic where women and children gather to sing, pray and to get counsel from the medical clinic for any ailments they or their children may have. This Wednesday was a special one because a local company called Beares was sponsoring their annual ‘birthday party’ at Tree. Not only had Beares delivered new furniture to Bobbi Bear for the drop-in, counseling room and beds for our place of safety, they also arrived at Tree with a tent and lots of balloons, food, drinks, desserts and goodie bags for the kids! There were well over 100 kids as schools were on holiday so it was a blast, see some of the pics below.

Towards the end of that Tree, I was called over to these 5 siblings, all of whom were in desperate need of clothing; the baby only had on a jean jacket and none had shoes. Although I had set aside some clothes that the girls had outgrown, I hadn’t brought them with me. Of course I felt awful to not have anything for them right then but we made a plan to get new clothes to them. On Saturday the same kids showed up at support group, Sdudla (one of the CSO’s) immediately grabbed me and told me that we have to wash the little and get them some clothes. Even though the little one ran away at first, I’ve never seen children so thrilled to have a bath. Note: by bath I do not mean that they’re getting bathed in a tub as they would back home, I mean bathed in a shallow basin…BUT, there were bubbles and bubbles really do make the bath. The 3/4 year old twins were so happy to be clean and cared for that the girl twin would not let me go, she just wanted to sit on my lap and share hugs, I didn’t mind either:). I didn’t realize until shortly after that these kids have no parents, both had passed away leaving the older two siblings (aged 10/12) to care for the three younger ones, a common situation in SA.

Court today for the girls has been postponed until Monday...will update you then.

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