Day Five: Mamelodi

In case I have not yet mentioned it (which I probably have but since I haven't updated this blog in couple of weeks, I will mention it again), we had the opportunity during this trip to share some time with one of our local (Cincinnati) churches. By a twist of fate, Crossroads church sent a group of 33 mission workers to the exact same place in South Africa at the exact same time we were visiting, and all 33 of them just happened to be on our plane.

Crossroads has had a ministry in South Africa for several years, and a few of their former members have actually moved to SA permanently. On Wednesday of our first week, we met with the Crossroads group at their hospice in Mamelodi. We also happened to visit and serve on the same day as the United States Ambassador. On to the pics.

This was our arrival Wednesday morning. The building behind the buses is the Hospice, which serves the high number of Mamelodi residents who suffer from AIDS/HIV and other diseases. We had a brief tour of the facility.

Again, our group just before meeting our Crossroads contact. The Ambassador arrived at around 9AM, and I must say it was interesting to ride through Mamelodi, one of the poorest communities on earth, following a caravan which included the Ambassador. He arrived in a Mercedes. Touche.

There is a school attached to the church nearby the Hospice, and you can see it just behind the students in this picture. Another one of our contacts in Mamelodi was Amanda Kuderer (left). I'll speak more about her later as well, but suffice it to say that meeting her was, once again, amazingly coincidental.

The view of the Hospice from the school, called Bophelong Community Independence Primary School. We also visited and served this school on Thursday.

The students playing outside during one of their breaks. Our students enjoyed meeting them.

This building is an orphanage which is just behind the school and Hospice. It currently houses 12 children, but the community expects it to grow in number quite soon.

We walked further behind to the Kretch, which is a South African pre-school. At first they told us to just look at the students through the windows (as you can see), but we were eventually allowed in to see the children, seen below.


In the afternoon, we made the aforementioned fifteen-minute drive in the Ambassador's caravan to the tents stationed in the informal settlements of Mamelodi. Here, the Crossroads group works with medical professionals and interpreters from the church and neighboring community to provide health consults and medical services to the people in Mamelodi. We were blessed to assist for the day.

In the pic above the students have just arrived and were awaiting instruction.

It was difficult to get a good shot of the tents as a whole, but suffice it to say that it was a well-organized space. The tent to the right was used for medical procedures and dental work, and the tent to the left was for eyecare and vision.

A view from the tent which provides eyecare. Hundreds of glasses and supplies have been donated to assist with giving the people of Mamelodi the best possible treatment.

Left to right: Brian Tome, the pastor of Crossroads church, the US Ambassador and his wife, and Pastor Titus Sitole. Pastor Titus runs the Charity and Faith Church in Mamelodi and is the primary contact for the Crossroads group. Extra tidbit of knowledge: Titus speaks nine languages. Yes, you read that correctly: nine.

Our students hard at work during their consults and information. The line (or, as SAs would call it, the "queue") would begin here with some introductory questions and information before funneling the patients to the proper tent for treatment. Each student had an interpreter from the church to help with the language barrier.

Duhann and Alysse in the midst of asking questions and marking their forms. I was terribly proud of our group this day.

Victoria and Nate Post (with his trademark backwards cap) taking their turn. You can see Maria getting information in the queue in the background. Some of our students worked here; others worked in the tents at the medical procedures. Chloe actually pulled a tooth during a dental procedure, and I believe she brought it back to the States.

Karen Hordinski really enjoyed this day. Her heart for service, poverty and injustice inspires me.

We were told that Mamelodi is a community of over one million people. Everywhere we turned, we saw townships, shacks and informal settlements. It struck me later that the city of Cincinnati has only about 3-400,000 residents. Amazing that Mamelodi is well over double that amount, but not nearly as large.

In the afternoon, three of our girls had the opportunity to return to the school and see some of the new instructional techniques which are being offered. Thanks to a program which is very much like Skype, the students of Bophelong will be personally tutored by American and Canadian teachers online.

The system is still a work in progress. The man in the center with the blue shirt is Rob Seddon, our contact from Crossroads. It was kind of him to allow us to join their ministry for the day.

On the way from the school back to the tents, we got lost in Mamelodi. We could have sworn the directions were wrong and we would drive through the townships for hours, but somehow we arrived just as I was calling. It was an amazing and heart-wrenching experience to drive through some of the most abject poverty I have ever seen.

Our third day of service was perhaps the most impacting. Seeing the poverty which envelops Mamelodi and the reality of AIDS, HIV and other diseases was very difficult for many of the students. Our challenge to the students was not to be glad that our lives are not like this, but to see what we can learn and how we can benefit spiritually from such an experience.

More is coming. Soon.