Lifeline to a Future

Janet Faubert ministers at St Philip’s Mission school and youth hostel in Swaziland, Southern Africa.

At this time of year, educational assessments are an important part of St. Philip’s mission work. This means visiting each homestead that has asked for financial assistance to send a child to school. The mission has an educational assistance grant for children and during the past year provided 120 students financial aid to attend 13 different schools in the Lumbombo region of the lowveld. Currently there are more than 100 children registered for assessments. Parents, guardians or rural health motivators (RHM’s) come to the mission’s Health Care Outreach office to tell us the children’s names, guardians and where we can find their homesteads. Let me take you out on a typical day of educational assessments.

The Director of Education for Cabrini Ministries, Mr. Pius Mamba, and I set out into the bush at 6:30 am. We often travel some distance into the bush before we can even begin to locate the homestead or someone who can direct us. At this early hour, we have a good chance of finding some adults in the homestead who can help us. Many times we have to approach on foot since these homesteads are well off any kind of navigable path. But sometimes, the people hear the vehicle coming long before we arrive and we are greeted with great anticipation.

“Ekhaya, ekhaya, ekhaya” (We are coming to your home), calls out Pius as we enter the homestead, with its chickens, pigs, goats, cows, or dogs, and small children huddled around. Then an adult emerges from a hut and greets us graciously. From nowhere, a small wooden bench or a tin can or a reed mat spread on the ground appears and we are welcomed to sit awhile.

After explaining what we have come for, the assessment process begins. The questions come from a modified UNICEF form, questions like “What are your possessions?” most often answered, “Nothing.” “What have you inherited?” “Three chickens were left for me at my deceased father’s homestead,” or once again, “Nothing.”

We find as one assessment goes on that there are five children, three seeking placement in the mission’s hostel and two staying at the homestead needing education assistance. The two children staying home must remain there since both their parents are dead and a very elderly, feeble gogo (grandmother) needs them to help her live out her last days. She is not able to walk and crawls out of the hut to talk with us. The children’s mother died in November 2004 and their father in January 2005, leaving the children alone and caring for themselves until their gogo moved in to care for them.

As with hostel placement, most of the children we assess are orphans or vulnerable children. These children have seen death and lived with it most of their lives. They usually have very little food other than what is provided by the World Food Program. I must say, it makes my heart jump to see 50 kilogram bags of rice and corn meal stamped “Provided to WFP by the USA.” Due to the AIDS pandemic and land barren from years of drought, the scene at homesteads is very disturbing and stressful. With little hope for a better tomorrow, daily life is most difficult and this nation loses its lifeline to a future.

The children in the mission’s hostel are most often double-orphaned by the death of both parents to tuberculosis, AIDS or opportunistic diseases. With 126 children in the hostel, each with their own experiences of death, poverty and malnutrition, education has become the single most important tool for their future. Presently, children from 4 to 17 years of age attend school from the crèche (pre-school) to Form 4 (grade 11). The dedicated Swazi staff gives them all the encouragement possible to pursue education for their future. The cost of one year’s schooling may range from 400 Emalangani to 1500 Emalangani ($70 to $250).

Evenings Monday through Thursday, most of the children study in small groups or do homework assignments. Having a mathematics and science background myself, I just delight in spending time with them as they practice division of fractions or attempt problems in physics. They want to achieve and do well in school because they realize this is a way to a future, despite the losses and hardships that have wrapped their lives in a shroud. In this sacred space of learning, they can share the journeys of their lives and reveal their personal stories. Their lives are changed as they begin to know that someone really cares for them and so desires to give them a future.

Visiting the homesteads or spending time with children at the hostel, I never wonder what I am doing in Swaziland. When sitting on a grass mat on the ground outside the hut or holding a sleeping child who has played hard during the afternoon at the hostel or helping a student understand the expansion coefficient of metals, I can only thank God that I have lived long enough to know this! Knowing also that Frances Cabrini enabled this to happen in my life is a force that connects all to the revelation of His life among us. Eyes and ears are not sufficient to travel the road of life with the children of the lowveld of Swaziland. The heart is essential for the journey in this pandemic time. May the Heart of Jesus lead us to the source of all strength flowing from His Life and Love among us, as seen in the face of a child.