Janet Faubert - CMC Missioner
During this time of year, educational assessments become an important part of mission work in Swaziland. This means visiting each homestead that has come to report that they have a child or children who financial assistance to simply attend school. The mission through a Foundation Bursary has a grant to support children with education. During the past year, 120 students attending 13 different schools in the Lumbombo region of the lowveld, received financial aid. 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 at 6:30 am for travel throughout the bush visiting these homesteads. Currently there are over 100 children registered for assessments. Parents, guardians or rural health motivators (RHMs) come to our Health Care Outreach office to tell us the children names, guardians and area where we can find their homesteads. Before setting out to visit, we determine which general area we will direct our efforts and off we go. Many times traveling some distance into the bush before we can even begin to locate the homestead or someone that can tell us exactly which homestead we are wanting.
Being early in the day, we have a very good chance of finding some adults in the homestead who can help us. Of course, they hear the vehicle coming long before we arrive and never knowing just where we may be headed, there is great anticipation when we drive as close as we can to the homestead. Many times we have to approach on foot since these homesteads are well off any kind of a navigable path. EKHAYA, EKHAYA, EKHAYA (we are coming to your home) calls out Pius as we enter the homestead and we can usually see the chickens, pigs, goats, cows, or dogs, and some small children huddled around waiting for their day to begin. Then, an adult will emerge from a hut to greet us and be so gracious. From nowhere, a very small wooden bench, about a foot from the ground or a tin can or a reed mat is spread on the ground to welcome us to sit awhile.
After explaining what we have come for - the assessment process begins. The very simple questions come from a modified UNICEF form. Questions like – what are your possessions? - answered : “5 chickens” or most often, “NOTHING.” The following question – what have you inherited? – answered: “3 chickens they said were left for me at my deceased father’s homestead” or again, NOTHING. We find as the assessment goes on there may be five children with three of them looking for hostel placement and two staying at the homestead needing education assistance. The two staying at the homestead must remain there since both parents have died and a very elderly, feeble GOGO (grandmother) needs these children to help her live out her last days. She is not even able to walk and just crawls out of the hut to talk with us. The children’s mother died in November, 2004, and the father in January, 2005, leaving these five children alone and caring for themselves. The GOGO then moved to this homestead to care for the children.
As with hostel placement, most of the children we assess are OVC (orphans or vulnerable children). These children have seen death and live with death most of their lives. There is usually very little food other than what is provided by WFP (World Food Program). May I say, it makes my heart jump to see 50kg bags of rice, corn meal which have stamped on the outside ‘provided to WFP by the USA.’ Due to the AIDS pandemic and land that is not able to be cultivated due to shortage of rain water, the scene at a homestead is very disturbing and stressful. With very little hope for a better tomorrow, daily life is most difficult and all this as a nation loses its lifeline to a future.
Children in the hostel are most often double orphaned due to death of both parents losing their battle with TB, AIDS or the opportunistic diseases. Having 126 children in the hostel each with their own experiences of death, poverty, malnutrition and the ravages such inflict on vulnerable children, places education as the single most important tool for their future. Presently, children from 4 years to 17 years attend schooling from the crèche (pre-school) to form 4 (grade 11). With the dedicated staff of Swazi, the children in the hostel receive all the encouragement possible in the pursuit of learning and education for their future. The cost of one year of education may range from 400Emalangani to 1500Emalangani or $70 to $250.
An evening visit to the hostel on Monday through Thursday will find most of the children studying in small groups or doing homework assignments. Having a mathematics and science background, I just delight in spending time with students as they practice division of fractions or attempt problems in physics. They do want to achieve and do well in school as many of them realize this is a way to a future despite the losses and hardships that have wrapped their lives in a shroud. At the same time as enabling them to achieve, there is, moreover, the sacred space of learning which allows sharing where they are on their journey of life and listening to them reveal their personal stories. And, as is so often reflected in the educational process, life is 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 ( how can they ever comprehend a thermostat – it is always HOT in the lowveld!) 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 becomes a force or power 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.
