Tag: Tshwaranang

Day Fourteen – Bang BANG!

Once again spent the whole night dreaming, which meant I woke up knackered. Last night I dreamt about having to fly back through Africa, try to get home, and I didn’t have a passport, and no tickets, but I just kept blagging it onto planes, then somehow landing in the wrong place again. I don’t remember much except seemingly spending the entire night pleading with airline officials. Odd.

Today we went to a meeting with the Ministry of health, where they outlined what funding they are going to provide, and the very specific, long-winded way we will need to claim it. Interestingly, its all part of a new EU partnership; they are getting ideas on how to run their health system from our pathetics attempts – if the NHS had to deal with 7 million HIV positive people, it would utterly and completely collapse.

Day Eleven – The name’s Lowry. Chief Facilitator Lowry.

Today was mainly spent preparing for the meeting at 5:30. Me and Mohau were planning what we would say, as well as trying to finish off proposals to send to various departments in the South African Government.

For lunch we went for a meal out at a snack place called Food4U, run by a guy from our church. We got talking to him, and it was frankly just scary; his son died 3 years ago from cancer, he himself now has cancer, and his marriage is also on the rocks, plus he is having to work a 14 hour day, 7 days a week at his restaurant. We prayed for him there, but it would be good if you could lift him up too. I think his name is Reynard (Unsurprisingly, my rubbish-at-names skill is even worse in a country where everyone either has Dutch or Sotho names).

Day 7 – So who’s in charge?

So, to fill you in on how things are here; the church I am visiting split. Its always difficult to point a finger, I just know I will miss the Pastor Matthew; who I deeply respect. Its caused a lot of pain and bitterness, but a new church has been formed from many of the friends I made previously. Its pretty small.

The way its really impacting me is that Edwin, the brother-in-law of the pastor, and CEO of Tshwaranang has left Harrismith. Various reasons, but I think the loss of his spiritual church home was a big one.