Sticky hands. RIpped clothes. Broken English. Huge smiles. Joyful hugs. Goodbyes everyday. These are some of the characteristics of the kids at the care points.
Our squad spends most of our weekdays at the care points where the only real goal is to love on the kids there. The care points usually look like one small cement building on a dirt field with a small playground. Kids from ages 2 to 18 hang out there four days a week for most of the day, and they are still excited to see us everyday. The care points are run by shepherds. A shepherd is a Swazi that have been appointed by Adventures in Missions and agreed to work with them for a couple years. The shepherds work with the Grandmothers (or “Gogo”) from the local community to make a meal everyday for the kids. For some of the kids the care point meal is the only meal that they get each day. The shepherds also teach a biblical lesson to all the kids at least once a week.
For us, our role is to simply love on the kids any way we can. This includes playing tag for hours on end, or learning the Swazi dance moves from them, or embarrassing yourself with your horrible soccer skills, or letting the messy little kid whose meal is all over their front lay on you, or even just taking time to listen to some of the older kids’ stories. Loving on the kids is simple and joyful and one of my favorite things, but it is also means not getting to be selective about when or which kids we get to love on. In fact the angry kids or messy kids or just the kids that are instinctually harder to love are all usually the ones that need it more. It is in no way a burden to hang out with the kids, sometimes it’s exhausting or embarrassing or a little gross, but it is always worth it when you see in the kids’ eyes that pure kind of joy.
Knowing the social context behind Swaziland just adds to the heart behind care point ministry. Swaziland has a culture where AIDS, women’s oppression, absent fathers, and poverty are all rampant issues. This means that most of the care points are full of kids coming from households with one or multiple of these issues. The staff members that are working here long term informed us that there is a statistical difference in the young adults entering the workforce that attended care points than the ones that didn’t. This means that even though it can feel mundane to hang out with kids most days of the week it is actually really important to break the social cycle in Swaziland.
Obviously it has been a lot of fun getting to hang around with the cute kids and their infectious joy, but part of my journey has been about making sure to set aside any of the petty hesitations that I would have about the harder to love kids. It’s a little thing, but it’s lead to all the more fulfillment for the time I get to spend at the care points.
Thankful for little perspective changes like that and I’m working to get as many of them as I can from the time we have left.
Also – If you’re wondering about my fundraising bar you can read about it here: https://joetakayoshi.theworldrace.org/post/whats-next
If you would wanna help me continue this journey then please consider clicking the orange donate button.
