2022 Autumn Winter Newsletter
Easter holiday gratitude for all the generous donations, and goodwill messages from all our supportive extended family members, national and international. It takes a caring world village to look after a smaller less materially privileged village. Blessings!
Farewell Con!
CON with his daughters Nicole & Leigh
Con eventually lost his battle with one final additional foe, namely Omicron. Gratitude to the family members, such as Nicole who always provided petrol money and transport, Joseph, who drove us back and forth to the hospital for six years, Leigh, Pauline, and grandson Michael, who were kind and brave enough to sit with him in his final hours.
Con was amazing - a compassionate, loving, humorous, occasionally stubborn and pedantic, stalwart of BCDT. His loss has shaken the organization to its core. Sometimes the space and worth of an individual can only be truly appreciated after they are gone. Con supported, protected, and built our community for 30 years. The role he played in the lives of so many children and youth reverberates in their loving reminiscences of him. Following his cremation, Kessie, who is five, eyed me suspiciously as I attempted to explain that a huge man such as Con could fit into a small box. She and everyone else are very confused about how to treat his ashes, thus, some of the children come into my room and speak in serious, deep whispers to his ashes. Losing one’s body is extremely confusing for everyone. I stress that we should not discriminate against someone just because they don’t have a body. It is a heart-wrenching loss of an impressive role model, yet on the brighter side, it has provided the space for the next generation of compassionate and resilient leaders to step up next to Leigh and Nicole.
Death and change are a constant and not uncommon feature of life in our village. It is important to support the bereaved since a lot can go wrong. We believe and remind ourselves death is not inherently somber. Nevertheless that is a difficult concept to role model for the children, particularly when losing parents or children. Ironically, I [Marion] reluctantly studied theories on death and mourning at university in Social Anthropology, never suspecting it would become such an integral part of my life in assisting children and parents in the grieving process. Visitors or volunteers at BCDT must be prepared to accept change, loss, and death because it is endemic in poverty, even before Covid-19 made its appearance.
Grief and Dying: Thirty years of assisting villagers through the grief and dying process highlighted some of the following:
* Yes, it’s unfair.
* Grief is your own individual path to tread alone.
* Don’t blame the deceased (though conveniently, they are not there to defend themselves).
* Don’t die with the dead, rather continue living, cry, scream, or as village culture dictates, ‘scream, stop-drop-n-roll’.
Regardless of belief or culture, there is no shortcut in grieving. Grieving takes time. It is exquisitely personal, as individuals readjust their daily living experience. So, regardless of the intellectual theories, grieving is common and universal. Time turns out to be the best medicine, but it is a bumpy and uneven ride, like a river, where grief reappears continually when you least expect it.
BCDT also turns out to be a surprisingly good place to experience grief, because when the children, youth, and adults console you it is from the deeply personal and authentic experience of their own loss. For anyone who has lost a loved one, we will hold your heart for you while you grieve, because we understand and relate.
So, with all the above what could be more special than celebrating Easter!
Special heartfelt gratitude to friends who sent donations for Con’s memorial, and cremation, food for the soup kitchen, and Easter!!
Celebrations marked endings and beginnings. The quintessential spirit of Easter. With Con’s passing, as well as known acquaintances, two babies, Dr. Dirk Lourens, our doctor of 30 years, as well as two cats and two beloved family dogs (Jazz and Biscuit). The activities forced us to rearrange our hearts and embrace the spirit of Easter, for ourselves and for the children. Their young, excited faces pulled us back from our pain, and reminded us, the older BCDT generations, that life would indeed continue, as it should.
Loads of chocolate-covered Easter bunnies full of gratitude for donations towards the easter hunt, prizes, and meals. It was the pudding to your donations towards the soup kitchen. Full tummies and chocolate covered mouths were the paper trail of gratitude. We hope that you all had a wonderful and safe Easter holiday with your loved ones.
Easter was delightful. Pouring spoonfuls of melted chocolate into those tiny and large hands, and watching the joy and excitement of devouring rich chocolate. Just for today, all is well with the world.
BCDT Update
The soup kitchen is still providing an essential social net for the villagers. Surprisingly, the villagers understand BCDT is always on a strict meal budget. Whenever they get a short term job, they withdraw their children from the soup kitchen and feed their own children. To experience such attentiveness from people on the edge of social adversity is touching. Despite humanity’s reputation for greed and violence, we see people who are compassionate and available, even when they have nothing material to offer other than decency of character.
Putin, Ukraine, and BCDT
Who would have thought these three would appear in the same sentence, yet here we are. War, some corrupt government departments, droughts, and Covid, have spiraled poor people into an abyss, dragging BCDT with it.
The war and the tightening sanctions on Russia have exacerbated our economic and social problems. South Africa obtains much of its maize, malt, and iron from Ukraine and Russia. Food prices have shot upward; basic food is becoming unattainable for villagers already on the brink. Oil, another staple expense for BCDT, has trebled in price. So many products, from petrol, diesel, flour, cereals, toilet paper, soap, public transport, spices, oils and fats have increased in price, sometimes by up to 80%.
Energy remains a serious problem for BCDT. Villagers buy one or two litres of cooking paraffin. But the price has trebled, sending management scuttling for workable alternatives to prevent the cutting down of trees for cooking fuel. One such alternative is cow manure mixed with paper and water, and a dash of paraffin, though that too is unsustainable. Poverty perpetuates unsustainable and destructive short term “solutions”. BCDT management does their best to avert such strategies. Among other ideas, we have begun to plant black wattles for use as fuel.
The temporary homes provided for learners and their families have proven very successful, and we are expanding the program. Having all your children safely in one house is a privilege for any mother, and parents continue to thank BCDT for this gift. Situating your house near a school also reduces student absenteeism, since children no longer need to babysit younger siblings or fetch wood for cooking.
Crime, Unemployment, and Scarcity of Food the New Normal
All the money received, and all the strategic planning, help prevent our youth from ending up in jail. We can plot on a graph that with the uptake of the soup kitchen, there is less theft. Crime is a complex social problem and perpetrators participate in crime for many reasons. However, at BCDT we strive to mitigate the obvious crime drivers. This includes keeping youth in school, not expelling learners, providing additional food and housing. We arrange for the local police to come and warn youth who have been caught stealing. We arrange paperwork for CVs and birth certificates. All in all, it creates a social network with a higher opportunity for youth to make wise choices, rather than participating in crime.
Winter Shivers
This has been an unusually cold autumn, resulting in children running for blankets. Everyone is hiding their blankets and dog blankets; nothing is sacred in the village. Purchased blankets typically last just one season due to product quality issues and hard use. If anyone has additional monies to buy warm blankets, jerseys, and/or jackets, shoes, hats, and gloves, we would appreciate it.
And finally…
Thank you once again for keeping us in your thoughts, a whole village connected to you, even though we may never have met. That is true philanthropy.