When I signed up for the World Race, the only thing that I wanted to do was pick up and love on orphans. In my mind, children are the ones that needed the most love because their parents have either died from various illnesses or they were abandoned. Orphans have a soft spot in my heart because I think that every child should feel the warm embrace from a parent… so I wanted to be the one hugging on the kids and kissing their cute little chubby cheeks!
During our squad debrief my tea and I received our assignment of where we are doing ministry. We found out that we will be ministering to Nsoko, Swaziland …..90%AIDS and orphans galore! I stretched out my hugging arms, put on my smile that children love oh so much, and packed my bags and boarded a bus to Nsoko. When we arrived here our contact Eric Peterson and his family gave us a run down on what was going on in this city. Eric explained that the children are raised by not their parents because most of them do not have any, but rather they are raised by Go-Go’s.
When I say they word Go-Go what comes to mind? I know in my case I think of a young girl that dances for money ya know..a go-go dancer. To my surprise they are not young women but quite the opposite. They are very old ladies that are designated to work at a carepoint and cook food for the orphan children of the village. Instead of working with these children we actually had a new assignment that we created ourselves. We figured as a team that the root of these children’s problems is how they are raised. After spending time in prayer we felt that the Lord wanted us to invest in the Go-Go’s. The Go-Go’s are the ones that are pouring into these kids and not only are they cooking food but they are teaching the children what could be the foundation of their faith in God. The mission this month for us was to go to each Go-Go and interview them, find out about their families, how they became a Go-Go, and then ask what we could pray about with them. Each Go-Go that we visited we would try to pour into as much as we could and encourage them for what they do. It’s shocking what you find out when you sit and get to know these women. One sweet lady named Go-Go Elizabeth shared her story and she told me that she had 13 children at one time and 10 of them are deceased, and the other three live dispersed all over Swaziland. Can you imagine mourning 10 children?? I would be mourning my entire life. It was awesome to pray over her and I was just inspired to see how these Go-Gos are so selfless, where they spend their entire lives raising children that aren’t even their own because if they don’t, no one else will.
Just on a side note because I want to really want to share this story with everybody… I will title this.. My favorite memory with the Go-Gos. Evan and I went to a carepoint to visit some sweet Go-Gos and just find out their stories and laugh with them and pray with them. They were cooking and stirring their beans and pop to feed the children. Well I noticed something. There were 4 pots cooking on the fire… so besides beans and pop.. what were in the other mystery pots? I was curious, so I asked. Uh oh.. what did I get myself into. Go-go Kylina picked up the lid and with a smile she exclaimed, “it’s head of goat. Try it. It’s nice!” Fur, nose, mouth, eyeball and all. Yep.. looked like someone just went and sliced off a goat head and plopped it into some boiling water sprinkled with some goat hooves. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, we gladly accepted the nice head of goat that she was offering us. So she sliced off a piece of fatty head and we chewed it down. Then she cut open the goat hoof and we gnawed on it for a while. Then Evan saw the goat eyeball rolling around on the plate and so he asked Go-go Kylina, “Can me and Kacie split the eyeball.” Of course she said yes.. so she began to slice up the eyeball and as soon as the knife hit the round moist ball rolling around on the plate. I saw it. SQUIRT! Eye juice everywhere! So we picked up our halves and on a count to three we downed it! Slimy yet satisfying ? The best thing about the goat head, hoof, and eyeball is that hair is pretty hard to remove the hair from the fat.. so in every bite we had a small tuft of hair to chew on. Yum! Go-Go Kylina was so proud of her meal and we thanked her profusely for her hospitality and feeding us!
