Swaziland

Swaziland, a tiny country of just over 1 million people completely surrounded by South Africa and the world’s last remaining absolute monarchy, is a largely rural, underdeveloped region. Government control is strong in most areas of society. Poverty is severe, and food shortages are widespread. HIV-prevalance and life-expectancy in Swaziland are among the world’s worst.

In 2004 Hands at Work in Africa moved into the Kaphunga area, located in the heavily mountainous region in the center of the country near Manzini. Work began small but grew over the hills and into the valleys to impact hundreds of patients and children clustered in extremely isolated locations. Current expansion targets are the neglected communities in the northern region of Hhohho.

Driven to Care

In the mountains of Kaphunga, Swaziland, 70-year-old Maria Lukhele calls to her children. Three small children, a girl and two boys, file obediently to stand beside her. They are Maria’s grandchildren, whom she cares for. These are just the small ones. Seven other grandchildren stay with Maria and her husband, Jacob, as well. The ten children, ranging from two-and-a-half to eighteen years of age, are the children of her six deceased children.

Feeling that God had broken her heart for the orphaned children and widows around her, Maria began volunteering with Asondle Sive Bomake Home Based Care when it started in 2004, driven to care for these most vulnerable ones. Maria now visits poor families in the area surrounding her home: fifteen homesteads scattered over the hills and inside the crevices of this secluded place. She travels on foot, checking the health and security of the people who live around her, mostly grandmothers, like herself, caring for their orphaned grandchildren. Altogether these fifteen homesteads house forty-three children. Watching over her ten grandchildren and forty-three other children, Maria is one woman caring for fifty-three children.

She continues to do the work, she says, because the orphaned and vulnerable children have “no one to say ‘Hello, how are you?’ or ‘What do you need?’ and those infected by HIV/AIDS have no one to look after them or tell them what to do. They have no one to tell them that even though they are sick, God loves them.