Knocked To My Knees

By Denis Campbell

  South Africa, well into her 10th year of independence and healing from brutal apartheid regimes, sees many fresh wounds from the scourges of generational poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and HIV/AIDS. And yet amid such seemingly dire circumstances she offers a shining beacon of hope and healing for both her next generations and quite possibly the rest of the world.

Johannesburg , South Africa , August, 2004

Alexandra Township, about 1 mile away from, and clearly in the shadow of the gleaming office towers of Sandton, Johannesburg’s “Beverly Hills,” is a place where 2 million people dwell in one-room dirt floor shacks. The shacks are made of whatever material (particle board, street signs, corrugated tin, wood planks...) one can carry to build their “home.” The 60 mph winds of a recent winter thunderstorm reduced many to rubble. There are up to 20 such shacks on a typical small English house plot with one toilet (a term used very loosely) for up to 30 people, no running water and the only electricity being what one steals by dangerously slinging a wire over the live wires above.

Education in Alex rarely rises above 6 th grade level and unemployment is more than 60% amongst the generation left behind in the 70s and 80s by apartheid’s exclusionary education system. Many spend angry days drowning their sorrows on cheap homemade beer in the shebeens (illegal pubs in houses) of Alex’s mean streets. Police presence is high and even then crime is a way of life. After dark, most do not venture from their homes.

HIV/AIDS is a plague throughout this community. Hundreds of children are orphaned when their parents die of the disease and many are HIV positive and have nowhere to go. Said one caregiver about HIV testing - “there is no testing here, chances are very high the parents passed the disease along and if they live to age six or seven without onset of the disease, no retroviral drugs and such poor nutrition that stunts both their physical and emotional growth, chances are they will survive” So they scrounge for whatever food they can find in a place where most are lucky to eat every third day.

These two young girls lost their mother a few weeks ago to AIDS. The oldest cares for her baby sister and is a “mother” at age 7 yet has the physical size and frame of my 3-year old daughter. Are they warm? Is their grandmother caring for them or do they sit alone shivering on this dark African winter night caring for each other while she drowns her unspeakable sorrow in the local shebeen? Did they eat or drink today?...

And yet within all of this pain burns a miraculously infectious spirit of hope that knocks even the strongest and most cynical journalist to their knees.

They and 250 other HIV/AIDS orphans rely on Mama Portia, the angel of Alex. Portia recently left an abusive marriage, something that makes a woman an outcast in her family and society. She took her own children into the Alex night and while trying to find food for them, agreed to care for a friend who was dying of AIDS. When her friend passed away her family grew with the addition of her friend’s children.

As she wandered the streets of Alex looking to feed six hungry mouths, she found hundreds of similar AIDS orphans and began to do everything she could to provide some level of daycare support and meals for them. Sometimes the best she could do was provide a meal every 2 nd or 3 rd day, other times even her own children went without food as she devoted her life to helping all of these children. She wanders daily through Alex’s streets like a modern day Pied Piper with children of all ages joyfully following her.

Each afternoon 250 children orphaned by HIV/AIDS gather with Mama and the other caregivers in an old church hall, complete with broken windows and no electricity. She shows me the waiting list for children seeking permanent adoptive homes. It is tens of neatly hand-written pages of names, all carefully documented by the one woman who has dedicated her own life to helping them find homes and a daily respite from Alex’s mean streets.

“At times it’s like trying to hold beach balls underwater,” explained Jane, a volunteer and lifelong resident of Johannesburg. Jane and Portia met at a seminar conducted by the UK-based Journey Outreach based on the work and book of author Brandon Bays. Jane arrived late to the seminar and the only available seat was next to Portia who was a guest of The Journey along with other caregivers, schoolteachers and student volunteers helping keep kids off of the streets of Soweto and other townships from around South Africa.

It proved a fortuitous “accident” as Jane stayed in close contact with Mama Portia and worked through her Rolodex when she got back to raise a continuous ₤2,000 each month from local businesses to ensure that Portia’s children get a meal every day. Since then a local doctor has also joined the effort and provides regular check-ups for the children. Mama Portia’s volunteer caregivers are all being trained by The Journey to help the children through the difficult emotional issues of losing their parents to the disease and The Journey is being tested nationally in the school system and will shortly be included in the curriculum of all primary schools throughout South Africa.

Said Ms. Bays, “we have been coming here every year to answer the fierce prayer South Africa has to heal herself.” “So many people want to bring this work into their communities that we have made a commitment through our outreach efforts worldwide.” “Nearly ₤100,000 have been raised by silent auctions and other donations worldwide, volunteers from the UK, Australia, US and other nations fly here at their own expense to support those seeking this training.” “We are so moved, we brought the entire Journey practitioner training program here for the 1 st time to support their amazing work.”

Mama Portia, Jane and The Journey Outreach South Africa are busily working to raise enough funds to build a permanent orphanage for these children. In addition The Journey is supporting a group of teens in Soweto Township working to keep kids off the streets and former Freedom Fighters all working to heal the wounds of the past. South Africa may have lost a generation to apartheid, but Mama Portia and her friends are determined to make sure this generation has a fighting chance.

© 2005 Denis Campbell, used with permission of the author

Read "Believing in a Place Called Zembeni" by Denis.

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