2022 July

Gratitude

Greetings to all our current and future sponsors! We send you gratitude for your time and effort in supporting BCDT, particularly under the current global challenges impacting every country. So, our appreciation is huge and filled with personal blessings to you and your families.

Soup Kitchen - Food for thought

Thanks to the faithful support from sponsors, we have managed to continue the soup kitchen, providing much-needed aid one plate at a time. Shocking price hikes, some as high as 400%, have sadly hindered what we can do.

We did have to drop a few children and youth from the soup kitchen (except for the sponsored breakfast). When we explained the necessity to ration for only the neediest cases, the children culled from the program were surprisingly accepting and accommodating. This behaviour alarmed us at one level – was it due to apathy and lassitude? We personally interviewed some children to better understand their emotions for being excluded. We learned that growing up in extreme poverty hones an understanding of priority of need. Most understand well the need to step aside for weaker, younger, or ill family members.

We asked the children how it felt to go hungry. Frighteningly, death came up frequently, they felt hunger leads to ultimate death. It is a terrible thing to look into the eyes of a hungry child, the bleakness and fear is gut crunching.

Sissy and Junior

The wait is worth it!

When is dinner?

Sponsors who help feed these children provide far-reaching societal benefits. Perhaps children and youth are not tempted into crime by hunger. Possibly landowners and nearby individuals are a little safer. Maybe some young man has avoided a criminal conviction. Sponsors, please know that in the tapestry of humanity, you have woven a small silver thread, with invisible benefits to many whom you may or may never meet.

Friendship rules

To help fulfil her dreams...

Loadshedding, Birth, Death, Wow! and ‘what the…….’

BCDT stayed on its toes as June became July. The utility provider is attempting to keep South Africa from a national blackout, but rolling blackouts kept us in the dark much of the past month.

We welcomed new Botshibelian babies, so beautiful and cute.

Farewell to an elder

We said goodbye to an old Botshibelian, who sat around a fire with the people he loved most in the world, went to bed and never woke up. This is part of our pledge to enable senior farm workers to live their latter days peacefully on a piece of BCDT land before they die. A promise that the government is failing to fulfil.

Over the last 35 years, ex-Botshibelians return to visit and inevitably say. ‘I will never forget when you said….’. Likewise, the grandchild of the deceased man kept repeating, ‘He taught me so much, I would not be the person I am today, how will I live without his guidance?’ To all parents, caretakers and grandparents, never stop guiding and giving advice, even if it seems to fall on deaf ears.

Further Struggles with Medical Care

We apologise in advance for some of the horrific and sad events that we share with you below, but feel that it carves us out as humans and makes us evaluate our relationships with ourselves.

A Missing Finger

Meanwhile amidst the funeral arrangements and condolences to the bereaved family, one young boy attempted to chop wood with a huge axe, missed, and chopped into his finger. We sent him to the hospital, which promptly sent him back with a letter to return to see an orthopaedic specialist. Upon returning, they decided to operate because the bone had allegedly splintered up his hand. Once more they sent him home with a little packet of dressings. Illogically we were excited about the operation, but not surprised that the hospital sent him home again having cancelled the operation. Their medical advice: ‘it looks like it is healing, go home and keep dressing it’. This, in a shack with no running water or electricity? All queries and protests from the caretaker were met with derision. We have continued cleaning it and hope for the best.

This pattern of unfair health treatment for underprivileged children makes us angry, but not surprised. Our ire increased upon reading an article describing how South African medical specialists get paid by the State but moonlight in private practices. Although the state pays them, some specialists brag they perform minimal or no services in state hospitals, focusing instead on their lucrative private practices. In a queue of more than a hundred patients with serious orthopaedic conditions, a child with a injured finger gets routinely overlooked.

BCDT’s fight to build mental health around resilience and endurance

For 33 years, BCDT has strived to provide every young person with a ‘fighting chance’ to live up to their potential, and to stimulate the passion they were born with. We struggle daily to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for children growing up in uncertain and changing times.

The Children’s Institute’s 16th annual review on the state of mental health of the child in South Africa makes for dismal reading. Children’s mental health is the cornerstone of a healthy society. Yet it seldom receives priority when so many other urgent factors must be addressed, including poverty, discrimination, abuse, food insecurity, inequality, violence, orphanhood, climate change, forced migration, and other humanitarian emergencies.

When things cannot be unseen

BCDT adds ‘sight trauma’, i.e., children trying to make sense of adults misbehaving. Most of the children in the village have seen or participated in a group action against the government or organizations. More terrifyingly, some have witnessed individuals who are accused of having raped or murdered a child. Where rule of law is substituted by mob justice, the sentence is invariably either stoning to death or being ‘necklaced’, where a burning tire is thrown over the accuser’s neck and set alight. Such scenes of agony, burning flesh, despairing cries of helpless family members, and groups chanting, having once been seen, cannot be unseen. These same children are told repeatedly that violence is unacceptable, and that the law and social law should be respected. It is difficult for the children to process, and it sadly affects their mental health.

Death by Fire

BCDT recently had its own horrific visual to deal with. A young man, related to a village family, arrived after an emotional fight with his pregnant girlfriend who lives 4km away Intent on suicide, he ran to his brother’s house and doused himself with paraffin and set himself alight. It took a while to douse the flames. He stood wailing in pain and shock on the veranda with clothing and skin hanging from his body.

We took him back into the shack and managed to cut off his scalded clothes while we waited for the ambulance. He asked us if he was going to die, and whether God would forgive him. We lied, telling him that he would live, despite knowing survival was unlikely with his severe burns. We could only fill his last moments with our love and respect for his journey as a human being. We kept telling him that God would never forsake him and would be waiting for him, letting the words of the Lord’s prayer pour over him while he continued wailing. His brother’s girlfriend merely sat down and howled her misery to the world. The horror of the incident and the stresses of living in dire poverty and emotional pain was too much to bear. The police and children churned around the shack, feeling helpless and uncertain how to act. The paramedics, hiding their sadness and shock, kept wondering aloud why so many youths try to kill themselves in such a painful manner. We remained silent while we assisted them as best we could. His younger brothers and sisters watched us, still numb from having to say goodbye to their mother from across a gate because she had covid (she died the following day). The funeral for the young man was very poignant for a life lived too short.

Again, we witnessed how the children in BCDT never spoke to the surviving siblings about what happened to their brother. Sometimes there is nothing to say. They merely covered them in a blanket of compassion and comfort. Everything that needed to be said or felt was in their eyes.

Stressed relationships post-Covid continues to plague BCDT. An enraged man burnt down his home, but fortunately, everyone assisted to put out the fire; the house and all the contents were burnt and nobody got hurt.

Winter camping, what’s not to love

Camping has become one of BCDT’s firm favourites. The children and youth don’t care if we are experiencing one of the coldest winters in years, or that they don’t have enough blankets to keep themselves warm enough for night temperatures of 3°- 4°c. It becomes a cuddle fest of note and huddled around a huge fire cooking a huge pot of warm sauce. The excitement is contagious, like we have never camped before. It’s understandable, yet humorous to watch the look of confusion on the face of a child that has never camped before as they contemplate the culture of camping. On the face of it, there is nothing appealing or logical to leaving a shack that is warmer than a tent, and freezing, yet calling it fun! But once they have experienced hanging around a large African fire under a star-filled sky, speaking about absolutely nothing and giggling at everything, and eating fire-burnt food, they are hooked and experience a whole new dimension of enjoyment.

Every enjoyable memory builds character, and one never knows when you need your character to step up and provide you with the resilience needed to survive life. It is BCDT’s full-time work to build happy memories.

Fighting for happy memories

A group of women came to us during the night to say that a woman was having problems with her pregnancy. When she arrived, her 18–20-week baby was stillborn. We named the perfectly formed but lifeless little girl Honey, and gave her a burial under a beautiful mulberry tree. The hospital phoned to confirm that she had been pregnant, we said yes and had lost the baby somewhere in the village during the night while seeking help.

Women still have many rights to fight for and this was confirmed when in the same month a woman from the village had a miscarriage in a taxi. When she begged the driver to stop so that she could go into the grass, he screamed at her due to his time constraints. She miscarried in the grass and was too afraid to get back into the taxi with the ‘pathological waste’, so she left the remains in the grass and returned home. Women need very strong hearts to survive poverty.

Please participate in the partnerships between BCDT parents, children, and government departments to build the Heart Homes as jump-off platforms for children living in poverty

BCDT has designed a project to build small self-contained units in the village, which we call Heart Homes. They are for extended family members to look after the children in their families who attend the village school. The family live in the village during the school term with any requested assistance, such as food, education, counselling, additional educational intervention, arranging hospital visits for more complicated medical problems, safety and security, empowerment, and stability. Once they go home for holidays, which is in informal settlements, they have a BCDT emergency number to use if they should experience any health, nutritional or safety issues.

The system comes from the experience gained over the past 33 years. The success has proven itself from the demand from needy parents and a thumbs up from the strictest of critics, the children and youth themselves. The premise is that with all the dangers facing families living in dire poverty and governments in trouble, they can team up with BCDT to negotiate their lives. This leaves the power of decision-making in the home and their lineages thus avoiding traditionally unequal relationships when receiving assistance. For you and BCDT, every child we see and help could become the adult who could provide solutions to world crises or the ultimate achievement of becoming a happy adult.

Please consider participating in building these homes, even if it is one bag of cement or 10 bricks. We have the foundation dug and ready. A complete unit can be erected for as little as R19-000 ($1,100 USD).

Our winter holiday has been filled with fun, games, camping, dancing, and TV

The school term was successful, and the three weeks of winter holiday was welcomed. The recreational centre has become a central meeting place, something envisioned by BCDT, keeping children out of the taverns and areas where adults meet to drink. Seeing so many children and youth wanting to dance, watch TV or sit talking in groups has encouraged us to increase the activities around the centre. We are seeking funding for gym equipment and gaming portals, which will encourage the youth to spend their free time on more positive activities. The centre during school nights is used for prep and additional teaching in the evenings.

Nunusi and Thomas [3rd generation]

Momo, Zeus, Lesedi, Kessie, Nandi and Anele

Conclusion

This covers some of the action at BCDT for the last several weeks. Thank you all for making time to read the newsletter. We want to remind you that a large percentage of the happy memories made for the children and youth comes from the support received from you. Gratitude to you and your families from everyone in the village.