8 April 2005

Dear Friends,

The Samaritan Care Centre in Pefferville is not part of the Joining Hands Against Hunger network here in South Africa, but it has become an important personal involvement for both Susanne and me. Initiated and maintained entirely by volunteers from nearby churches, the Centre provides free hospice care for terminally ill (mostly AIDS) patients. We find that the biblical name makes it almost impossible for us to simply “pass by on the other side of the road.”

So, on Monday afternoon, when the nursing sister in charge, Sister Rosemary, phoned looking for help to transport a very sick woman from a shack in Duncan Village to the last open bed at the Centre, I agreed to go with our car.

The alley was alive with activity: a scrawny cat leaping to catch insects in the air; chickens pecking away at the barren ground; dogs barking and drinking from puddles in the road; and people of all ages walking to and fro along paths between the shacks. Women lugged water in huge buckets on their heads. Children played with sticks and stones. I was a bit self-conscious as the only umlungu (white person) in sight, but a continuous parade of friendly greetings put me at ease.

There were no visible electricity lines, and the pervasive smell told of no functioning sanitation system. As the stench got to me, I became increasingly angry that so many human beings have no choice but to live—and die—in conditions like these.

Soon a young man came and parked an empty cart from a supermarket near the door of number 765. Someone else arrived with a battered wheelbarrow. A woman from the house next door came out with several plastic bags in her hands.

After half an hour or so, Rose, Tesha, and several neighbors emerged from the shack with the patient in the wheelbarrow. Nontombi, age 42, was too weak to walk and too heavy to be carried. More neighbors gathered; everyone was outfitted with plastic bags for gloves. There was a great deal of conversation in Xhosa, which I could not follow. It soon became evident that moving this very large and barely conscious woman from the wheelbarrow into the back seat of the car would be impossible.

“We need something like an ambulance,” I said to myself, and then I remembered where we were. We were not in some middle class community, in Africa or in America, with access to EMS, or medical insurance, or even anti-retroviral drugs. All that this AIDS-stricken lady had were some caring neighbors.

In the midst of further animated discussion in Xhosa, someone brought a pillow to prop up Nontombi’s head, and the plastic-bag-protected brigade took off down the alley with her in the wheelbarrow. Rose got into the car. “Let’s go,” she said. I asked about what was happening. Rose explained that somehow the neighbors would get Nontombi to the Centre, and told me to drive back there now.

She then asked me to drive her into town to buy some supplies needed for the new patient’s care. By the time we got back to the Samaritan Centre, Nontombi had arrived. The empty wheelbarrow was standing outside the door.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is centered on the person who decides to show mercy toward the battered traveler. One could say that a more comprehensive concern for neighbors in the story would include working toward safer conditions on the Jericho road. It is good that Nontombi can be attended to by compassionate caregivers and is not left to die alone in a dismal shack. But the appalling conditions in which her former neighbors live have not changed one bit.

Sister Rose phoned again on Thursday night. “My” patient, Nontombi, had died from meningitis. She was one of more than 600 people to die that day (and every day) of AIDS-related causes in South Africa, the majority of them women.

The vision of the Joining Hands Against Hunger program is to transform systems and structures of oppression. It is rooted in our biblical faith, which requires both justice and mercy. And it is continuously motivated by the familiar question, “And just who is my neighbor?”

Ken

P.S. The photographs were taken by Susanne the day after Nontombi’s admission to the Samaritan Care Centre.

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 339

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Contributions from individuals may be sent to: PC(USA) Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Please write “JHAH South Africa” and Designated Account # H000109“ on the check and on the cover letter. Send a copy of the cover letter to: Presbyterian Hunger Program, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, KY 40202-1396. Or click on the "give" button below to contribute online.

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