2021 Autumn Newsletter
Autumn - What it Really Means
The most beautiful time of the year in South Africa, gardens still green and filled with flowers, weather mild, children and youth in malls on excursions with parents. A time to throw away the old and become introspective.
However, it is a little different for poor children in the village, that are always deep in dust, scrappy bits of wild grass competing against hardy daisies, chickens, scraggy dogs, dust covered children squealing in delight at living, for moments forgetting the daily struggle to survive their childhood and youth in poverty. No electricity, running water, books or electronics. Bathing in buckets, nutritionally depleted, using long drop toilets, living in a one to three room home shared between a large family, without the family living spaces that privileged citizens take for granted. BCDT, and its sponsors use every feasible strategy, to take some sting from the poverty, and the appalling and inexcusable reality the babies, children and youth live in.
Circumcision Chronicles
The traditional approach is for boys [11 to 16 yrs old] to go to chosen healers and then attend initiation ceremony, which includes the transfer of social rules of being a proud, upstanding black man, with all the rights and duties that go with that. Even though a new law requires initiation schools to be registered with the health department with a minimum age of 18. However, it is difficult to break old traditions, even though many children die each year from botched surgical procedures, which often includes shared razor blades.
The Modern Approach
An NGO arrives in a mobile van, with doctors and nurses to perform the procedure on all the young boys. Not that it helps the BCDT management group who are on annual ‘penis duty’. Each person gets a small bucket with pain killers, a cloth, wound cleaners and coarse salt. The NGO returns within 3 days to check the boys. Yet every year, up to 16 boys with severely infected wounds must be lodged in our recreation center. We pay for antibiotics, assist with painkillers, clean and bind [has to be in a vertical position for 14 days], and assure them that ‘IT’ is not going to fall off. I can see the pained look on all parents’ faces.
Circumcision candidates
The circumcision sounded much more exciting before the operation
Interesting fact: circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV transmission by 60%,
Activist BCDT team members jailed for closing illegal bar
I discovered how personally alcoholics take their drinking holes, when the youth and managers broke down an illegal tavern in the village. Previously, under age children had been found at the tavern sitting with truck drivers, [they stop on their way to Botswana], they were high and drunk for 12 hours at a stretch. Subsequently, Collen, Choni and I [Marion], were arrested and jailed. Thabo, the illegal tavern owner opened a case against us, the charge, ‘malicious damage to property’. He told the police that it was his private home and it was destroyed, which was untrue since he lives with his girlfriend three blocks down. The alcoholic mothers in the village went on strike with him and said that BCDT is unfair and the youth managers too strict. Ironically, BCDT had assisted many of these mothers with their children since infancy, providing food, education, clothing and protection. At times like this the larger debate is highlighted for BCDT and its management: ‘are you assisting people for their gratitude or for the well-being of the country’s future generations?’
Many of the children of the alcoholics ran and hid in the recreation room, refusing to participate. But to cut a long story short. Collen, Choni and I were jailed. Jail is always a humbling experience and a great equalizer, even though it was for one day. On the bright side, one meets the most interesting people; people who either need a fix, a cigarette, a drink or a lawyer. There is a strange camaraderie amongst people in jail. Having broken society’s laws, they find themselves in a foreign world of police, cells, lawyers, prosecutors and magistrates. All our jewelry, belts, shoelaces and watches were confiscated. Choni and I were put in a cell that looked like it had not been cleaned in a decade, it smelt of urine, dirty shoes, body odour and desperation. Collen had it worse because he was squashed into a cell with many other inmates, and rats the size of cats. I went to the toilet, no doors, while a male police officer watched me; fortunately, I have lived in a village for 30 years! Anyway, I had a more immediate problem - performing a delicate balancing act, my jeans around my ankles, while preventing my bottom from touching a toilet seat which had enough hazardous specimens on it to train an entire class of medical students!
After several weeks our case was moved to a regional court, where the prosecutor threw out the case. The tavern has remained shut. The takeaway is that, despite our fears, sometimes it is necessary to go all the way. “In for a penny, in for a pound”, as it were. The youth and children have another perspective on what parents or caretakers must do to protect them. Many thanks to the many individuals who sent money to ensure our victory. We were particularly touched by the youth and individuals in the village, who, despite their own poverty, lent us small amounts of money to see us through.
The fallout from living in a home with alcoholics is well documented and remains an area of academic research. But academic studies are distant, theoretical and statistical; an entirely different reality emerges when one personally witnesses the health, educational, emotional, and relationship devastation. Young men, imitating patterns learned from their own fathers, and still filled with rage, beat up their pregnant girlfriends. Mothers buy alcohol, rather than mealie meal for their family; unsupervised children roam the village until 3 a.m. while parents party drunkenly; children drain the last drops of alcohol from discarded bottles. All of this sets up future patterns of behaviour, as the youth learn to use alcohol to ease their stress, just as their parents did.
Alcohol abuse is also strongly linked to new statistics showing a toll of seven women and three children murdered in SA every day, on average. For 2020, child murder dropped by 7%, yet even during this comparatively ‘good’ year, 943 children were still murdered and 24,000 were sexually abused.
The fight against alcohol continues amidst a grim post-covid-19 backdrop. A recent report states fully 50% of South Africans live in dire poverty, and a third are unemployed. The country faces a logjam of rampant crime, serious corruption and theft of public money, an energy crisis and a deficit of skilled labour. But rather than despairing, this is a time where all citizens must become accountable, and each must do their small part.
Easter 2021
Easter Egg Hunt
Excitement reigned supreme - for children of all ages!
What to say, it was wonderful, no snake bites, lots of tummy aches, children had to run faster than all the dogs who now know that Easter is bonanza time. The only new participants for Easter this year were the cows who decided to chase the children.
It was fun! Fun! Fun!
Latest numbers on soup kitchen
The second covid-19 has caused unprecedented unemployment and has put enormous pressure on our soup kitchen. BCDT is no longer just feeding children but now their parents and grandparents too. Please continue your amazing support and care.
This takes 4 x 48kg of gas per month and 2 volunteer cooks and all the managers to dish up
To all our sponsors, supporters, friends and followers may you be blessed.
- ‘what we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal’
In Summary
So despite angry tavern owners, sore little boys, and parents with severe substance abuse, BCDT must, and shall, continue on with our mission, with the generous help of people like you. Every dollar, rand or physical item is hugely appreciated!