Yes, you can make a difference! By Mrs Inky Granville

Luke Ch 9 vs. 13: But Jesus said to them,”You yourselves give them something to eat.”


Rollo, my husband and I have been farming in the Nkomazi area, in Mpumalanga for over 40 years. We knew about the Aids epidemic in our area, shook our heads sadly, donated the odd amount of money and old clothes but didn’t really see ourselves as making a difference. What could just the two of us do in the face of such a huge problem – besides, where was the Government – why weren’t they dealing with it?

In 2000 our youngest daughter came home from church and told us of an appeal to help a local Home Based Care group. They had run out of funds and could no longer get food to about 400 Aids orphans in a nearby village because there were no funds to run or maintain their van. These children had not been fed at all for 2 weeks. We were shocked. We thought of donating money and felt dismayed at the thought of these children suffering like that. A few weeks later Rollo went on Retreat for a week and it came to him that he had a roadworthy van and could easily do the weekly transport of food for the Home Based Care group, so when he got back home, he volunteered his services.

When he got out there he realized there were many many more than 400 orphans needing a consistent supply of food. Then in 2004 the nature of the funding to the Home Based Care changed, and so their focus changed to the training of skills, establishment of vegetable gardens and school holiday camps, with the result that not much feeding of the orphans was done. Rollo decided to break away and that was how we started our own feeding scheme for about 1600 orphans. We called ourselves Makhundu Christian Support – Makhundu being the name of our farm. Financial help came from the Jesuits, the Missionaries of Africa, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and the South African Catholic Bishops Conference who funded us for about 2 years. We registered as a non profit organization. I got more organized, computerized and business-like with the books – donors are forever asking for feedback, budgets and audits! Then we approached Breadline Africa in Cape Town, and various friends and we were able to keep going – but only just! We were running out of funds fast and decided that if nothing had materialized by September 2006 we would have to close. What we needed was a miracle.

Unknown to us an article was written about us in a Franciscan magazine overseas. It made a big impact on a reader in Ireland who was looking to donate to a feeding scheme for orphans. He came out to South Africa on business and paid us a visit on the 11th September. He, his wife and his personal assistant went out to the villages with Rollo and were deeply moved by what they saw. He decided to support us and we were able to carry on. We asked for a miracle and we got one – we have even been able to buy a bigger second hand truck!

With the Aids epidemic being so rife here, the number of orphans is increasing at an alarming rate. We are feeding approximately 1600 orphans in 8 of the villages in the Nkomazi district near Malalane Mpumalanga. The villages are Phiva, Mdladla, Kamlhushwa, Langeloop, Driekoppies, Bongani, Middelplaas, and Schulzendal. Each village is visited and fed every fortnight. We issue 760 X 12.5kg bags of mealie meal per month i.e. 9500 kg and 6 tons of vegetables a month from our farm. We provide 1 meal a day per person. It works out to 6kg maize meal and about 4kg vegetables and fruit (tomatoes beans and papaya) per child per month. We also supply the children with 380 kg dry beans and 380 kg soya soup powder – approximately 500gm of each per 4 children per month. We also receive the odd donations of out of date dry foodstuffs, blankets and old clothes from various sources such as local stores, churches and friends.

With the help of Breadline Africa we have started a scheme whereby orphan-headed families are “adopted” by a donor family from overseas who see to their needs in the line of food, blankets, school uniforms etc. I buy provisions for them every month, and Zanele Mabuza, employed by us, supervises the families in the role of big sister/mother. We hope to interest local donors in this scheme and eventually develop a type of informal “soup kitchen” for these families where the pooled food is cooked for the children by Zanele’s mother, alleviating them of that chore, avoiding waste and ensuring that the children eat properly. Just imagine being a 12 year old orphan, now responsible for your younger siblings, going to school, coming back home in the afternoons to gather wood and fetch water, cook the family meal, wash clothes and get breakfast going for the family in the mornings! The children would quite obviously be better off being catered for by a soup kitchen.

We are volunteers but employ two “liaison officers”, Jabulani Mathabela and Zanele Mabuza. whose job it is to check that the orphans are genuine orphans. They supervise and help the children, report regularly to Rollo and help him distribute the food every Saturday. They are developing a data base on the orphans and keep a weekly record of who was fed. We insist that the children attend school and the school heads comment that the orphans attend more regularly, are able to concentrate better and seem cheerful and happy. However money remains a problem as the price of mealie meal has more than doubled in the last year from R17 per 12.5 kg to R33 and we are unable to expand and feed any more children. The children are more often than not unable to get grants form the Government as they don’t have the necessary documents. A lot of the orphans have nursed their parents, watched them die one after the other and buried them in the yard because there was no money for undertakers or to buy a grave site. This has meant that they have no death certificates to submit when applying for a government grant. Some of them however, have managed to obtain grants, and whenever that happens, another grateful child takes up the empty place. The physical condition of the children that we have been consistently feeding has improved. Six years ago there was a hopeless, lost and confused look in their eyes. They were starving, lonely and frightened. Nowadays one can see that they are growing, and are full of smiles and mischief.

We hope and pray that the orphans will survive and grow up to be good and solid citizens of this country. We also hope and pray that they will become socially integrated and a healthy part of the social structure of our nation. This feeding scheme has put hope in the hearts of these neglected and abandoned children, hopefully alleviating the temptation of crime and prostitution as a way of surviving. Hopefully we are proof to them that people out there care for them and are willing to help and monitor their development into useful citizens rather than street children and potential criminals.

We also like to think that we are a sign of the type of honest caring that is so badly lacking in this world of the rich and the poor, the privileged and the not so privileged. Except for the salaries of our employees and certain small admin costs e.g. transport and distribution of food, every penny that is donated is used for the children. We are very
aware that our scheme has conscientized all those who come into contact with us and has activated a lot of good people to support and help us. Until you have come face to face with the reality of this epidemic it is difficult to imagine. The problem with Aids is that it is not a calamitous, dramatic cataclysm that happens all at once like a flood or a volcano, so society sorts of lives alongside it and can even ignore what is going on to a large extent. Without efforts like Makhundu Christian Support, what hope have these orphans got of ever rising above their circumstances?

Looking back over this time I can see how unaware Rollo and I were of the dire straits that so many people in our country live. One needs to see for oneself the houses these children call home – no water, no electricity, no sewage or rubbish disposal, often no furniture, homes built mostly of mud, or rusty tin sheets with no security for themselves or their paltry possessions. The orphans seem destined to live out their lives in these abject surroundings, trapped in squalid slum conditions, passing poverty on the next generation. The first time I went out there I came back very depressed, and wondered how on earth these children would ever grow up to be law abiding, self sustaining citizens. “Surely the Government has to step in and do something” we all exclaim angrily. Statistics of the low life expectancy of our citizens rouse us out of our complacency for a short while. Somehow we seem to think that our efforts would be puny, useless and isolated so we don’t even try. How could we ever make a difference? But ordinary folk like us do and can make a difference – a huge difference. We are making a difference - and you can too!

If you would like to contact us, or offer help or donations in whatever form, please contact us:

Rollo Granville cell 084 853 3471
Inky Granville cell 082 388 2165

Postal address:
Makhundu Christian Support
P/Bag X510
Malalane
1320
Mpumalanga

Banking details:
Makhundu Christian Support
First National Bank
Malalane
Branch Code 270952
Account no 62079127132
Bank Swift Code - Firn jj 926
Money Market Savings