The Art of Love

Picture Credits: Tessa Edwards; All rights reserved

"Imagine all the people, sharing all the world" - John Lennon


One of the great blessings of my life has been the wonderful souls whom I have met through the medium of this little blog.

Tessa Edwards, http://aerialarmadillo.blogspot.com/, is a visionary artist, poet and humanitarian who lives in the United Kingdom.

She honours and loves diversity, and yet still sees the common threads which weave us together as one.

Tessa wrote to me one day asking how she could help the people of Swaziland. After some thought she generously decided to donate all the proceeds from her artwork for an entire year to our work in the little mountain country.

Part of the money which she has raised has gone to help bring clean water to the people of Mambane. But today I wanted to tell you about another very special project which Tessa has made possible.

As I have written on the pages many times, 10% of the population of Swaziland is comprised of orphaned children.

As there is only one orphanage in the entire country, most of these orphans remain in their homesteads. Many thousands of them live entirely on their own. The lucky ones have a Gogo (A grandmother) to look after them.

Let me tell you about two of them:

Gogo Alvinah is 73 years old. For the last 40 years she has been the janitor at the Good Shepherd hospital. She mops the floors, cleans the wards, changes the linen for those who are sick and dying. Alvinah is famous for her heart of compassion. She is often seen feeding patients who are too sick to feed themselves, and she always has a smile and a kind word for those she meets.

The work Alvinah does is hard and her days are long. She actually retired 10 years ago, but finding no way to support her family, she was forced to return to the job.

Alvinah had 11 children. Seven of them have died secondary to complications of HIV. Her most recent bereavement was just last month on the 8^th of June. She tells me that there is not a day that goes by where she does not dream of her children. Of the four remaining children, three live in South Africa, and one is mentally ill and still in her care.

Alvinah is currently looking after 12 of her grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.
She never sleeps. She wakes early every morning to cook for the children and prepare them for school (school fees are expensive in Swaziland). She then goes to work and returns in the evening to cook once more and tend to 14 sets of bruised knees and lonely hearts.

Gogo Ndzimandze is another amazing Gogo who lives in the community of Makhewu.

She is a woman of quiet strength and deep dignity, known in her community as one who does not complain. All of her 5 children have now died, the last one in late May.

Currently there are 16 lives in her care (14 grandchildren, 2 great grandchildren).

They all sleep in the one urine soaked room. They eat one meal a day.

I asked Gogo once, “Are you still grieving for your children? Does the pain ever stop?”.

She turned away from me and wept quietly into her hands.

“It never stops.” She said “There are some days where I have considered taking a weevil tablet and ending it all. But then I remember that I am all that these children have.”

With the money raised from the selling of Tessas artwork, Gogo Alvinah and Gogo Ndzimandze will each receive 25kg of Mealie meal (out of which porridge is made - the staple diet for Swazis) - and 60 eggs each month for the next 12 months.

To us it may not sound like much, but for these families it means everything.

The following videos give you a glimpse of what happened on the day we told Gogo Alvinah and Gogo Ndzimandze about Tessa’s gift to them. Gogo Alvinah was full of words, whilst Gogo Ndzimandze as my friend Matron Zwane put it "kept it all quietly in her heart" .(The final video is a montage of photo and videos)

People sometimes tell me that Swaziland is a lost cause. That the country is imploding, haemorrhaging life as HIV runs rampant. They tell me that there is nothing we can do to ameliorate the suffering of these people.

But its on that last point, that we very much disagree.

We live in an abundant universe. There is more than enough for everyone on this earth to live a full and happy life. What we need to do, is simply to learn how to share what we have.

Not out of pity or condescension, but out of love.

To me, this is the great art of living.

Love the world into change,

Maithri

ADDIT:

Friends, I'm leaving in the early hours of tommorrow for some interstate work. I will be away for the next month. Depending on my internet access there, I may or may not be able to post.

For those of you curious about the progress of the Swaziland appeal, to date readers of the soaring impulse from all over the world have donated over six thousand Australian dollars for the Waterpoint project at Mambane. A borehole has been drilled, a water pump and ten thousand litre water tank purchased. We are well on our way to seeing clean water delivered to three thousand people in the area. I will post further about the exciting progress of this project upon my return.

Salani Kahle, (Be Well)

Maithri