This month in South Africa has been busy and great!
Working with Zimele has been a wonderful and cultural experience! After a day orientation at a beautiful cottage/bed and breakfast with a real shower and fluffy towels and 2 days in a village with the whole squad my team arrived at our home for the month. We stayed at a Thuthukani Maswazi guesthouse which is run by the ladies who are a part of Zimele. We were right at the base of Drakensburg mountains. It was beautiful and on one of our days off we went hiking in the park. We didn’t do any of the peaks but we hiked to a waterfall and had a picnic there. I loved it and I’m planning on coming back someday to hike there again!
Zimele is an organization that teaches women to provide for themselves. One of the first things they teach is how to save and manage money. Each cluster (a group in each village) pretty much has their own bank in which they can borrow money from with only a 10 percent interest as oppose to the 100 percent interest loan sharks would charge.
Each cluster (8-10 women) works together. The guest house we stayed at is one of the main sources of income for this cluster. They also do a lot of handcraft projects which Zimele sells online and the money from that goes to provide for the families.
This was our home for most of the month. We named it the hobbit hole. Crawling in and out was hard sometimes and I got several headaches, but it was a roof over our head and shelter from the wind in the winter time of South Africa. This place had a toilet and shower. No hot water though. We would take bucket shower with the hot water that was heated for us. I can now take a bucket shower with minimum splashes.
We moved to another village for the last week and stayed with another cluster. This cluster main business is catering and also handcraft.
What we did depended on the day and the weather. We would do anything from visiting orphans, making mud bricks for a home for orphans, running and working out with the grannies (it was a blast!), delivering food to the needy, helping at the clinic, attending the village war room meeting, cheering the locals girls in a net ball game, going into the Zimele office and helping with crafts, picnic lunch on the mountain side, cleaning for blind gogos (grandmas), and lots of cutting felt for the ladies as they had a big order handcraft to complete.
The ladies started an orphan program and go door to door looking for people in need. One of the struggles they have is getting funds for the orphans. The orphans are placed in different homes throughout the village. But people want to see proof of an orphanage before they give, but the ladies want the kids to have a home with a family and not be placed in a housing for just orphans. The ladies also provide food for different families who are taking care of orphans. There are many families that need help and it’s a struggle for them to choose who to give too. Each family receives food for 6 months and hopefully by the end of their term the family can provide food for themselves.
The family we made mud bricks for is taking care of orphans and some guy just came in the house one night and set the place on fire. The birth certificate burned in the fire. The government can’t/won’t help them without the paper work. There are orphans all over that can’t get help for lack of certificates.
We also went to clean at a blind gogo house. This gogo is taking care of her 6 orphans grandkids. She can barely walk and is blind. The house was a mess, ok, to be honest it was nasty, filthy mess. But I am so thankful we were able to go in there and do the massive pile of laundry, to sweep out the house, to get more water from the pump a little ways off, to give the youngest child there a much needed bath (the other kids were at school.) It was such a blessing to serve in this way even though it was a really messy and smelly job. We left the place sparkling and the gogo had a huge smile on her face.
Working with Zimele and the ladies in it has been such a huge blessing! Hearing and seeing their testimonies on how God used Zimele to change their lives. They say that they have confidence in themselves and they all have such huge dreams and visions that they are working toward, like a local supermarket in proving jobs and a place for people in the community to sell their wares, turning a home into a preschool and fundraising for a small bus to be able to help those who live further out in the village. The women in Zimele have such a huge and selfless heart to help the people in their community! It has been amazing to see the relationships between the ladies and the community and how they are working together!
One of the things that broke my heart was the fact the village had no bible believing church. The only thing there is, is a service that’s worships ancestor. Please be praying that God would press on someone hearts to start a church there.
