Newsletter July/August 2007
Strelitzia Trust
(Sofi)
Another fun filled couple of months, between strikes and fires we keep moving on………………………
Not much news on the hospice front, the strike has put us behind on moving things forward but people are still in discussion about it all.
On Friday I went to pick up Bonneni from Emmaus hospital where I had dropped him the week before, unable to walk and struggling with the system and TB to get him started on ARVs (Aids treatment). They managed to stabilise him and discharged him to go home to return this week to start the treatment.
As we drove back into the small township he lives in, there were 60km p/hr winds and a fire from hell blazing through the settlement. We eventually managed to get though to his home which was burning, there were metal roof panels and dust and flames flying all around us and the houses. His mother who had been asleep when the house burst into flames had run off on fire and we couldn’t find her, there were children and mothers running to get away from the fire……………
We started piling people into the car and taking them into Winterton. Everywhere we looked there were houses burning, after about 5 hours of taking people out to the local church we returned to try and find his mother, luckily she was found by paramedics and taken to hospital.
Bonneni organised and managed all the people coming through the church for help, clothing them, feeding them and comforting them, an angel in the midst of it all.
For three days we have been trying to get children back to their families and pick up the pieces, the white community got on board and have been cooking and bringing in food, blankets and clothes.
We must have clothed and fed more than 200 people. 15 houses were completely burned to the ground in the township and another 7 white farmers homes were destroyed.
9 people killed and one 3 month old, her mother still in hospital with horrific burns.
People not only lost their possessions and houses, but their identity documents and medical cards and treatments, the long term knock-on effect is huge.
Amongst all of this, farmers who wouldn’t assist their staff who had lost everything, and people pouring into assist in any way they could.
The polarity that exists here is incredible, the compassion and love and the total blindness and callousness all in one!
Forgiveness keeps coming through……………………
There have been offers of money, and support with the rebuilding is coming in, so now the clean up starts. In amongst it all, families who have lost everything squashed into a tiny hut 2m x 2m still smile and laugh.
In between we managed to put out fires at my place that were happening in the midst of it all and a birthday picnic for my son.
There is always enough…………………..
Strike SA
There has been a nationwide strike in SA for about 3 weeks, with angry political unions marching and threatening staff in hospitals, schools and other government institutions.
Schools and hospitals that were trying to keep going have been threatened verbally and physically by other teachers and nurses striking ringing the institution and threatening to come and beat them if they did not leave.
At the local hospital they came in by force and with sticks went around the hospital dragging out patients and staff alike and escorting them to the gates and kicking them out.
People who needed life saving treatment were dying in their homes, hospital beds and at the entrance to the hospital.
One Doctor stood inside the gates pleading with the strikers to let an incredibly sick man come in and be treated they refused outright and kept the gates locked, the man lay there for a few hours and died at the gates…………….
So just when you think the suffering can get any worse, mankind does it again…
In the midst of this I picked up peoples prescription cards and with the assistance of a pharmacist at the hospital I would sneak in and get peoples drugs. On one of my rounds I was asked to check on a young girl who was giving birth in hut, I went to the hut to find 5 old grannies sitting around the hut whilst the young girl lay in the corner in the throes of child birth ( I am not medically trained at all!) not knowing what to do I sat with her and talked to her and begged her to wait till the hospital was open Uhuh! The head was already showing, we rang the ambulance again who had already refused to come who said they would think about it, after an hour or so out it popped, screaming and well, just when you think you can’t do it, you just do.
Feeling quite good about myself and relieved it was all over, I realised there was the minor detail of the umbilical cord and the placenta, just as I was fretting over this the ambulance arrived and finished off. Mother and baby well for now.
Afterwards I found out she is HIV positive has a 2 year old not tested, no husband all her family have died, she had been visiting friends when she went into labour.
Life goes on.
0 comments:
Post a Comment