Happy Birthday Mom! 9/19/11

The other day I went to Ithemba La Bantwana in Soshanguve to take photos for the new flyers I was putting together to try and increase child sponsorships for that orphan center.
Only 5 of the 46 children there are sponsored so we cannot meet all the needs of the children.
(Oops, how’d that shameless plug get in there?)

After climbing walls and ladders trying to get the right angle and shading and get the children to look natural instead of posing, I gave up and admitted “photographer” will not be listed under skills on my resume.




The kids went inside to have their meal for the day. I was packing up my ladder when Sbusiso and Sidwell shyly approached. They looked quite serious as they posed their question, “The girls got to go to a girls-only Camp, we want to know if we will get to go to a boys-only camp?” A few weeks ago, Pastor Jack’s church (the one that partners with AFnetAid to run the Tsakelani orphan center) organized a girls-only camp and invited the girls from both orphan centers to attend. The girls went to a camp in the country for 4 days and talked about “girl stuff”. Weeks later they were still talking about it, and the boys had had enough!

While we were talking to the boys, Christo noticed Sbusiso’s shoes – the top half peeling back to reveal all his toes. Christo asked him, “What size shoes do you wear?” Sbusiso looked down and covered his face with his hands. He was silently crying and he didn’t want us, and perhaps more importantly Sidwell, to see. He was shamed by his battered shoes and now he was embarrassed of his tears. Christo apologized for drawing attention to them but let him know that it was only because he wanted to help. I piped in, “yes, we have new shoes at Afnet just waiting to go to someone who needs them, maybe we have some in your size. Please tell us.” Sidwell tried to make him feel better too, “Look Sibu, look at my shoes. They are worse than yours.” And they were. Only he was missing the back portion of his shoes, so his heels were on the ground.

My zectron heart went out to both of them - the boy who cried when asked about his shoes, and the boy who understood and tried to restore his friend’s ego by pointing out his own tattered shoes.

They were boys on the verge of being men, wanting to be proud and confident, approaching us to ask for a boys-only camp to learn about things that a boy should know to be a man. Most of these boys do not have fathers in the picture, no male role model. They are being cared for by a grandma, an aunt, or if they are lucky, they still have a mom. At 12 and 13, they are the men of the house, with no one to turn to for the “boy only” questions.

The camp was going to take some time to pull off, but shoes I could do something about! (You may be wondering, what about that shoe drive you just had? It was a huge success! But it was spearheaded by a team that was volunteering at the orphan center in Mansa, Zambia and they distributed the shoes to our children in the program there. Every child, 95 of them, got a new pair of school shoes! It was awesome - can’t wait to share that experience with you in an upcoming blog…)

I have the most wonderful parents in the world. When I decided to quit my lucrative job as a lawyer and move to Africa to care for orphans, and not get paid for it, they didn’t say, “WHAT?! What about the loan that we gave you to go to law school and you haven’t paid back yet and was supposed to be our retirement plan?”
Nope, they said, “What can we do to help you?”
I do have a point here and it does have something to do with shoes. Last Christmas they told me, “Don’t get us any presents. We don’t need anything. Buy something for the children.” So now on every holiday, my parents get a card with a picture of the children enjoying a gift from them or a dorky picture of me with the gift. For Christmas, the children of ILB got swings. For Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, the children at both centers got something they don’t get very often – fruit!

Today is my mom’s birthday and she is getting two new pairs of shoes – one for Sbusiso and one for Sidwell.

Happy Birthday Mom!