Hands at Work in Africa

South Africa

Since its initial post-apartheid elections in 1994, South Africa has seen rapid development, especially in the badly-neglected, crime-heavy squatter camp areas surrounding the country’s largest cities. Yet rural communities remain heavily underdeveloped, often still lacking clean water, adequate schools and health care. HIV/AIDS remains a major issue in the country, which holds the largest population, 3.5 million, of HIV-positive people in the world and an alarming number of new orphans each year.

Hands at Work was birthed in South Africa, after George and Carolyn Snyman began Masoyi Home-Based Care in 1997 in the rural Mpumulanga community of Masoyi. It began simply by challenging and training local volunteers to visit the sick and dying in their homes, but quickly expanded to include orphan care, feeding, pre-school care, support groups, and youth work.

The success of the work in Masoyi inspired the notion of replication to poor communities across the continent. Subsequent expansion in South Africa included work in many other communties in Mpumulanga province and partnerships in the Northwest province.

Waiting for Hope

“Joanna Ndlovu, 17, and her sister Lebo, 11, live in a dilapidated one-room shack in the village of Welverdiend, within Bushbuckridge. Their mother died in 2006, leaving the girls in the care of their grandmother and father. In 2008 the girls suffered yet another loss at the death of their grandmother.
To make matters worse, later that same year their father, their only provider, was involved in a road accident that left him paralysed and permanently hospitalised.

Left alone, Joanna and Lebo are faced with many hardships, such as, having to haul water 2km each day from the community water tap, and rationing the little food they receive in order to make it last. They comfort one another as they spend each night alone and vulnerable in their rickety room.

When one of them is ill, more responsibility falls on the other. There is no parent around who can comfort them or nurse them back to health.

Joanna dreams of being a tour guide one day, while Lebo’s dream is to be a nurse. It is clear from the way that they express these dreams that the girls feel that they will simply remain only dreams.

In 2008, Hands at Work helped a group of local churches come together to begin going out and caring for the most vulnerable in their communities. Among their community they found Joanna and Lebo. Since their father was hospitalized, the girls have been visited weekly from a local Care Worker, Esther, who checks on their health, inquires about their schooling and how they are coping with life’s daily struggles.

The girls also attend the newly built local Care Centre, which is within easy walking distance of their home. Here they receive a cooked nutritious meal and find a safe place to forget about all their adult responsibilities and just have fun playing with the other children. It’s a place they can be reminded there are people who love them and who care about their dreams.