Does it matter whose child?

Siteki, Swaziland

12/05/09

14:20

I have a Swazi name. It is Mduduzi (meaning ‘comfort’) and was given to me by a warm and beautiful woman named Make Bhembe

Make Bhembe (pronounced Magay – meaning mother) is a phenomenal woman who runs the Makhewu care point for orphaned and vulnerable children, which is situated just a stones throw away from the Good Shepherd hospital.

I’m sure that the poets would say that her wide smile and gentle heart tell of days ‘in goodness spent’. Make has dedicated her life to working with children who have lost their parents to HIV. There are approximately 70 orphans who visit her care point for food and informal education.

Yesterday she rang me to say that there were a few homesteads in her area which she was very concerned about and asked whether I would go with her to see them and offer whatever help we could.

So this morning as the sun burned golden above us, we ventured forth in my little blue car to visit some of the families in Makhewu.

The first family we visited was run by Gogo (grandmother) Ndzimandze.

Gogo had 5 children who have all died secondary to HIV/AIDS. As is the custom here in Swaziland, as each child died, Gogo took their respective children into her own home.

She now has 13 orphans whom she is looking after.

The most recent death happened early this week when Gogo’s last remaining daughter died in her bedroom in the early hours of the morning. Gogo took in her children Modra and Bongani and she is now preparing for the funeral this weekend.

The childrens only food supply is corn which Gogo harvests from the fields and grinds down into a powder which can be used to make a porridge.

They are lucky if they eat one meal a day.

They sleep together in one room of Gogos house on straw mats.

They each have just one pair of clothes.

In order to fetch water, the children walk for half an hour to a little stream which lies a great distance from the homestead.

I cant imagine the pain that must live within Gogos heart. What it must be like to watch your own children suffer and die, one after another, only to find that you must now find some way of supporting 13 orphaned grandchildren between the ages of 2 and 16.

She is a woman of deep strength. A strength which I can barely begin to understand.

The final homestead we visited today quite literally took my breath away.

Their mother had died two years ago of AIDS, leaving behind a husband and two children who are now aged 2 and 3 years respectively.

The father works night shifts and is absent from the homestead most days, while the children are left on their own.

Each day they can be found in the same pair of dirty pair of clothes, with no food, completely vulnerable to anyone who might want to hurt them in any way.

One of my favourite movies is called ‘The Girl in the Cafe’. In the film, a girl describes how she was sent to jail for ‘hurting a man, who hurt a child’. After telling the story her friend asks “Whose child was it?” And the girl responds “Does it matter whose child?”

As I watched these children clearly malnourished, showing evidence of micro and macronutrient deficiencies, without clothes, or protection, or care in an unforgiving world, I remembered those words.

“Does it matter whose child?”

If we saw little feet this dirty, this wounded, this unprotected in our own house would we not fight for them?

If we knew that there were kids next door who were dying because they needed a meal, would we deny it to them?

Then why does it matter if these children live elsewhere? In another house, on another shore.

I know how the story goes. I know that these children will die if no one helps them.

Their only chance lies in someone deciding that it truly ‘doesn’t matter whose child’.

Perhaps you and I, can be that someone.

Love the world into the change,

Maithri