A few more troubling issues have surfaced in the past week or so. About 10 days ago a 13 month old baby died on his grandmother's back here in Cape Town. She had taken him to three different health clinics because he was severely ill, but she was turned away at each one. After walking from clinic to clinic with the child on her back, she finally headed home. When she took him off of her back she found he had died. This was a totally preventable death. On the positive side, the media was alerted to this tragedy, so it has been receiving a great deal of attention. Hopefully, systems that are on the books but that clearly were not followed, will now be more likely to be followed. It has created quite a lot of embarrassment and regret on the part of the Health Department. However, the underlying issues also need to be addressed, namely that the health clinics are often seriously understaffed, leading to poor service delivery by overly stretched and poorly paid nurses.

And that leads to the second justice issue that's bothering me. I met with one of our recent Zanokhanyo graduates last week to see how she's doing. She is working, which is good, but she's working through a temp agency and is being paid an incredibly paltry wage. She is being paid less than $6/day for an 8 hour day of hard work cleaning office buildings and churches. There are a number of temp agencies that supply workers to companies. Because they are not employees of the companies, they don't have to pay benefits of any kind. They pay the temp agency something considerably more than $6/day to hire these people, but I wonder if they know what the workers are being paid? If they do, and they still choose to use temp agencies, I wonder how they sleep at night. We are trying to help this woman, and others, to find permanent employment without resorting to temp agencies, but it isn't easy. 

Another thing that got to me this week was hearing that Sihle (a boy we help) was told on Friday that he shouldn't bother coming to school this coming week if he didn't have proper school shoes. We bought him a pair of school shoes in January, but apparently they are too big, so he hasn't been able to wear them. He has just been wearing tennis shoes, but now he's been told that is taboo. The idea of school uniforms is brilliant when children can afford them, but why should a child be punished (education is theoretically a constitutionally guaranteed right here) because he or she cannot afford some part of it? It's absurd. Fortunately, Sihle told me about this, and we were able to go buy him a pair of school shoes in the proper size so he can go to school tomorrow.

Philip Yancey, noted author of numerous books on various Christian topics, was in Cape Town this past weekend to help Learn to Earn celebrate 20 years of holistically developing disadvantaged, unemployed people. In part, his speaking engagements were intended to help raise funds and awareness for Learn to Earn, which is an amazing organization that has been bringing personal and community transformation about for a long time (www.learntoearn.org.za). Yancey’s books are sold, and presumably read, widely here, and the speaking events were well-publicized for at least a month ahead of the dates, so it was very surprising to find that the crowds were quite thin both evenings. I am greatly puzzled as to why so few people took advantage of this wonderful opportunity to hear such an internationally-renowned author. In addition to Philip Yancey, an up-and-coming South African band – The Arrows (www.thearrowsband.com) played before he spoke. They are REALLY, REALLY incredible musicians with very thought-provoking lyrics. A lot of people missed a great chance to be spiritually nourished, and I’m wondering why. Anyone have any ideas??

It has been a long, draining and emotionally confusing week. Much of it has been spent with Dumisa and her family trying to help them get their feet back on the ground after the fire that destroyed their shack and 400 others on Monday. We visited the site of the fire Monday afternoon. It looked like a moonscape - totally flat and covered in gray ash. By Wednesday the area was a bee-hive of activity with people building new structures as quickly as possible. There were people on the scene from the Department of Social Services giving out school packs with a few supplies and vouchers for buying new uniforms. Also on the scene were politicians in their fancy suits and big cars. There's an election next month...The Department of Home Affairs had mobile units there so that people could re-apply for lost id documents and birth certificates. Without an id document they wouldn't be able to vote next month. Noticably absent were any health care workers or mobile health clinics. Many people were injured in the fire, though none seriously, and people on medication for high blood pressure and diabetes lost their meds in the fire. I took Dumisa's mother to a clinic so that she could get a dressing for a painful cut and so that she could get her medication to treat her diabetes, but what about all the others who are probably in need of medical attention?

Our church members here have donated many items for Dumisa's family, including clothes, linens, and beds, but they don't have a way to cook or any dishes or pots and pans. At the moment, no one in the house of 12 people is working. It must have taken them years to accumulate the things they lost in a matter of minutes. Without insurance or savings, let alone a steady income, how will they manage? The people I have seen this week are incredibly resilient; they aren't sitting around moaning about their ill fortune, but there is a sense of resignation. It's almost like they've just accepted that life is hard, and there's no alternative to scraping by, so they might as well get on with it. But I sense a desperation in the younger ones like Dumisa. She is longing for something better, a brighter future, but she's almost afraid to hope. She has a strong faith, but she is tired of living like this. She is the youngest in her immediate family, but she bears the marks of someone much older than her 16 years. 

So, I am feeling weighed down, too. In January Tim challenged many of us in a sermon to ask God to stretch us, ruin us and heal us. We're not even through the first  quarter of the year and I feel stretched and ruined and in desperate need of healing. That was a dangerous prayer, but I knew it was. I know God will be faithful in bringing my vision and my heart into closer alignment with His if I let Him. And He will bring hope to Dumisa; may she have the strength and courage to keep seeking Him.

The words of Micah 6:8 seem to be a rather constant refrain running through my mind: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” It sounds so simple, right? I suspect that no matter where you live, issues of injustice abound, but sometimes they can be easy to overlook. Here in Cape Town, it takes a real effort of will to turn a blind eye. A lot of the work we are involved in is aimed at helping develop long-term, sustainable solutions to some of the injustices in society, but sometimes an immediate response is required, and it can be difficult to know just what to do and how to proceed.

Yesterday I was approached at church by a lovely young woman named Esther. Esther is from Malawi, and she came to Cape Town two months ago to join her husband in the hopes of being able to find work and a better life for their family who are still in Malawi. Upon arrival she discovered that her husband has abandoned her, but she has found work. However, the work she is doing is essentially slave labour. She is serving as a live-in maid/nanny for a family, starting her work day at 6 a.m. and ending late, seven days a week. She is allowed out for church on Sunday. Her salary? - $100 per month plus room and board. I felt such a surge of anger when Esther told me her wages. She can’t even send enough home for her 8 year old daughter to be able to attend school. There are labour laws here, but she feels trapped. We will try to help her, but she is just one of many who are in situations like hers.

Just after six this morning I received a phone call from Dumisa, a high school girl who was a tremendous help to us last year in working with the team that came out from Blacksburg Christian Fellowship. Dumisa and her family live in the “informal settlement” known as Joe Slovo, which is on the outskirts of Langa Township. “Informal settlement” is the government’s term for communities that consist of crude shacks built by the influx of people coming to the city in search of work. These communities have communal water sources and no plumbing. Periodically there will be a row of portable toilets; you can imagine their condition. The shacks are built in very close proximity to one another, which means that there is a constant danger of fire spreading from one shack to dozens. In the Cape we often experience gale-force winds, and yesterday was one of those days. When Dumisa phoned this morning it was to tell us that there had been a fire last night in Joe Slovo. Her family is safe, but they lost everything, along with approximately 400 other families (roughly 1600 people). The government’s Disaster Relief Services are on the scene, but we don’t know yet what the plan will be to take care of all of these people. Shack fires are common, and usually the government just gives families supplies to rebuild their shacks, but this hardly seems like a solution. We will find out more later today and see how we can be involved in assisting Dumisa’s family and others.