Sometimes travel days are my favorite days. Today, I get to look out the window at the Swaziland mountains, the plains of South Africa, and the gazelle running down the field. It kind of seems like a dream. Besides the scenery, I love that long car rides give me an opportunity to think. Right now, I’m trying to process the month that was Swaziland.
Swaziland is unlike any other country I’ve been to. This month we worked with AIM Swaziland (the organization World Race is under, but the Swaziland branch) and we served in different areas of the ministry. Some of my squad did agriculture, some did administration, some did sports ministry, and, like me, some did Care Point ministry. Care Point ministry entailed going to a care point every day and playing with the kids, helping the cooks prepare food, teaching bible lessons, singing songs, that kind of stuff. My Care Point was about a half hour drive from my house up in the mountains. This kind of rural setting made for a different experience. As we drove up the first day, I was struck by the houses that were made out of half water tanks with a tarp over them. I was struck by the children wearing rags and having no shoes. And I was struck by their hygiene. I’ve never smelled kids that smelled like that, a mixture of urine, burnt garbage, and dirt. These kids that were there for the first few hours also don’t get to go to school.
Our AIM staff member explained that a majority of these kids had only 1 parent, or were orphans. She didn’t know of any that had both parents. A lot of them lived with grandparents that aren’t their own, known as “gogos”. Can you imagine an 85 year old woman trying to care for 5 children under the age of 10 who aren’t her own? That’s the living situation a lot of these kids were in. The kids were scared of us at first, a lot of them hadn’t seen white people before, so it took a few hours before they’d approach us. After that, we were best friends. They’d fight over who got to stand next to us, hold our hands, or who we’d read stories to. At first, honestly, it was frustrating. If a kid was holding our hand, another one would come up and punch him in the face to take his place. This went on the entire time we were there, no matter how much we tried to explain everyone would get a turn.
These kids were also extremely sick. They all permanently have runny noses, and don’t even try to wipe the snot off their faces. It’s just everywhere. When you hold them, you can feel the mucus in their lungs as they breath. It’s awful. I asked another AIM staff member about it, and he explained that most of the kids are sick because they have HIV. You see, HIV/AIDS is such a pandemic in Swaziland that the country is predicted to be extinct by 2050. You don’t see a lot of people aged 35-60 in Swaziland because if they get HIV when they’re kids, their life expectancy is only 35. This AIM staff member explained that if you properly treat HIV, it’s treatable with a medicine called ARVs to regulate the blood cell count, and then the disease won’t progress to AIDS. But, these kids especially, live so far from the hospital where you get the medicine that they more than likely won’t take it. I can’t describe how it feels to hold a child knowing they have HIV, and probably won’t get the necessary medical treatment.
This pandemic is a cycle. If by the grace of God a child is born HIV free from a mother who is HIV+, this child will then get HIV from breastfeeding because formula is too expensive to buy to keep the child from getting HIV. Because of the extreme poverty in Swazliand, even if the child gets the ARVs needed to keep the HIV in check, the malnutrition will ultimately make the child sick. Then, if for somehow a little girl stays HIV free during her childhood, it’s extremely common in Africa that men, usually known to her, will rape her, because there is a superstition that if you have sex with a clean virgin, it will cure you of AIDS. How demonic is that?
I was super overwhelmed by all of this, and still am. I loved being at the Care Point and loving on those kids, and feel so blessed God gave me the opportunity to do so. But what made leaving so hard was the same things that were so frustrating to begin with. I began to understand that they were only fighting to get next to us because they knew we’d hug them, hold their hand, look into their eyes, notice them, hold them, and they don’t get that at home. They don’t get that any other time, and they so badly wanted attention. It’s been easier leaving other countries because I knew the kids that stole my heart at least had someone who would give them attention, love them, make them feel wanted, but not with these kids. And that’s hard. This whole situation is hard. This month has been different for me, and I’m not sure why or how. But it feels different, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those kids.
God is doing such cool things through these Care Points, though. I just want to brag on the AIM staff for a minute and say that they’re doing so much good for the kingdom. They currently have 34 Care Points that each serve between 100-250 kids, where they get fed (through the help of Children’s HopeChest), get discipled, and learn about the love of God. And that’s definitely a comfort knowing they’re learning about the love of their heavenly Father, knowing they probably don’t have an earthly one.
Please keep these beautiful children in your prayers. Please pray for Swaziland, for the government to increase the amount of aid their giving to HIV victims, that those in the rural communities will get the help they need, that the nation will bring up a generation who believe in monogyny and love their children well, that the men will be brought up to be men of God who will stay faithful to their families and not leave their kids fatherless. Please just keep this beautiful country in your prayers, it would mean a great deal to me. And as I look out the window driving on to the next country, I’m comforted by the fact that God created all of this, knew these struggles would be here, and that His plans are greater and He’ll redeem them all. His promises are always greater, always kept, and always good.
God bless,
Jenna
