05243
May 9, 2005

Wheelbarrow Samaritans

A missionary letter from a land
where death is everyone’s neighbor

by Ken Jones
and Susanne Carter,
PC(USA) mission co-workers                

PEFFERVILLE, South Africa — The Samaritan Care Centre here is not part of the Joining Hands Against Hunger network (a program of the Presbyterian Hunger Program), but it has nonetheless become an important personal involvement for the two of us.

     Initiated and maintained entirely by volunteers from nearby churches, the Centre provides free hospice care for terminally ill patients, most of them suffering from AIDS. We find that the Biblical name makes it almost impossible for us to simply “pass by on the other side of the road.”        

     So, when the nursing sister in charge, Sister Rosemary, phoned to ask for help in transporting a very sick woman from a shack in Duncan Village to the last open bed at the Centre, we agreed to bring our car and help.                              

     When we arrived at the Centre, Rosemary and a volunteer, Tesha, were waiting with sheets of plastic to cover the back seat and blankets to cover the passenger. Rosemary mentioned that there was only one pair of latex gloves, which could be a problem.

     We wound our way through the narrow alleys of the township, repeatedly asking directions to number 765. In shantytowns like this one, the streets have no signs and the dwellings have no number markings. Once we found the shack, Rose and Tesha went inside. I (Jones) waited in the 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 was proof that there was 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, someone arrived and parked a battered wheelbarrow near the door of number 765. A woman from the house next door came over 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, all 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 not be possible.                            

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

     After further animated discussion in Xhosa, someone brought a pillow to cushion Nontombi’s head, and the plastic-bag-protected brigade took off down the alley with her in the wheelbarrow.

     Rosemary got into the car, saying, “Let’s go.” I asked what was happening. She said the neighbors would get Nontombi to the Centre somehow, and told me to drive there.                              

     As we arrived, Rosemary spotted the owner of a funeral parlor that had recently opened next door to the Samaritan Centre. Switching to Afrikaans, the mother tongue of this colored man, she asked if he would allow his hearse to be used to move a sick person.

     Yes, he said, he would — but he said he knew from experience that the people of the township would accuse him of prematurely soliciting business. This misunderstanding would be compounded by the differences between colored and Xhosa cultures.

     He did, however, promise to give the Centre several boxes of plastic gloves for future use. Rosemary said it was good to have him as a neighbor.               

     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 rested just outside its door.          

     The parable of the Good Samaritan is about one person who decides to show mercy for a battered traveler. One might say that a more comprehensive concern for neighbors would include working toward safer conditions on the Jericho road.

     It is  good that Nontombi can be attended to by compassionate caregivers, not left to die alone in a dismal shack. But the appalling conditions in which her neighbors live have not changed.          

     Sister Rosemary called again Thursday night and said Nontombi had died, of meningitis. She was one of more than 600 people in South Africa who died that day (as every day) of AIDS-related causes — most 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 challenged by the familiar question, “And just who is my neighbor?”