Thanda’s Story, Continued…

Hi, it’s Angela Larkan again, the founder of Thanda. This blog continues my letters home from our second year of running Thanda After-School. By then I was 25 years old, and things were getting tough.

In May 2009, I wrote…

“I was holding down the kettle lid today, desperate for a cup of coffee. It doesn’t boil unless you hold down the lid and as I stood there, hand on kettle, looking into the corner of the bare cement and noticing that we clearly have cockroaches in the office again, I thought about how my life might be different if I had just gotten a normal job. I wondered what Merrill Lynch might have for a coffee machine. I bet they have filter coffee. Maybe even a cappuccino machine. As I sat back down at my broken desk, in my plastic chair, drinking instant coffee, I looked at my computer screen and realized that it had frozen again. For the fifth time that day. Then I was told that the rats have been inside the copy machine again, and I thought about how Merrill Lynch probably has a filter coffee machine, working computers, and they probably don’t even have rats.

Then something will happen that makes the rats, my unbearably slow computer, and the endlessly appearing problems OK. And not just OK, because life is enriching here. I am living in Africa and just by being, I am influenced, confused, frustrated, and then humbled. Every day. Last year was exhausting: it was emotional and tumultuous as we threw ourselves into starting a program. This year, as our place here is becoming one rooted in people and experiences, we are thrown back to thinking about the basic, most fundamental elements in life. As Richard Dowden writes in Africa, ‘It is the prize that Africa offers the rest of the world: humility.’ HA! Is that what it’s called? Coming home at the end of every day, uncomfortable, edgy, and with all emotions running through your veins. Humility? Writing this on edge at lightning-speed on a tortoise-speed computer with a bag of cheese curls for dinner? I guess so, because it challenges everything you think, do and feel.”

Another year later, in May 2010, I wrote…

“Like all over South Africa, adults in this community are tired now. It has been 15 years since they were freed from apartheid and they are no longer second-class citizens in their own land. But they are worn out. There are still no jobs. They are still fighting for every day, for enough food to make it to tomorrow. It is exhausting.

One day, I look out from the small plot of land with two humble huts. Every hill is covered in a blanket of tall, prospering sugarcane. I ask around about life before the sugarcane plantations but no one can remember even hearing of such a time. ‘I have lived here since my sons were born. Before that we lived over there. My grandfather built the hut we lived in. He was an important man in this community, my grandfather. I have been sick for years now. Before, I could cut sugarcane and drive the trucks, but now I am sick.’  He hangs his head, slowly, like too many men I have seen. They all hang their heads slowly. It is the dismay that comes from not being able to support your own family. It is the embarrassment of relying on your 12-year-old child to bring in something to help you all survive. It is the sadness over your skinny, fragile frame, too weak to lift your infant baby and your bones so thin they look like they might snap. It is the dismay when you look at your children and realize you are dying, their mother is already dead, and there is no one to care for them. Then you look back up at me and I smile, holding back tears, mentally adding these children to the list of those we will need to support. ‘They will be OK’, I tell you, one adult to another.

I grit my teeth, like I always do. I think of what is left of this family, look out over the hills and multiply it by thousands, and then by every community in the country, and then I start to realize the damage that has been done. The damage from 50 years of being a second-class citizen, forced off your land, forced to move away from home to work in the mines and pay taxes, torn from your family for 11 months of the year. You need formal employment and cash to survive. And then I see generations repeating the same scenario over and over, families torn apart more and more with each year. And a desperate struggle to hold on to one’s tradition, to the hills and the huts and the comfort, so always traveling back to the rural areas to see a wife and children. Choices are made, love is found, and promises are broken. It is a human scenario — but one that in South Africa is leading to millions of deaths.

Still struggling to balance relationships you want and ones you are allowed to have — typical human existence — only it is the government that makes the law and decides what you are allowed to have. A government that believes you are not worth anything more than a body working 10,000 feet underground.

And so now you have AIDS. You are too sick to work anymore so you come home. Your wife is already dead. She said it was your fault. Your heart is like a tight ball of elastic, bound too tight to stretch anymore. Too tired of trying to hang on to a beautiful past during an ugly time, to please your ancestors, your wife, your children, and your love all at once. And so you hang your head. Too tired of being pulled in so many directions, while trying to survive. Your children need food, school supplies, uniforms, and clothes…

‘We should get back to the site, but it was wonderful meeting you. You should be very proud of your son. He says he wants to be a doctor some day. He will be a very kind and good doctor.’  A look of desperation. ‘He reads everything he can find — rubbish, pamphlets, books. He is addicted to reading, he soaks up knowledge. I can’t feed him, how will I pay for his university?’ I grit my teeth. ‘You have a lovely home. I hope to see you again soon.’

‘I wish the sugarcane could be cut down to make more room for new people,’ typed one student in the Thanda After-School computer program. ‘I wish my community would have better understanding about their right[s]’ wrote another. ‘I would like to see more jobs in my community. There are many people suffering from poverty because there are no more jobs. I also wish that our school could be more educational, because education is our key to success.’ How would you improve your community? ‘I would try to organize a group of youth and discuss how we can create jobs.’

Amid the tiredness, like sparkling glass in the sunlight, the children write about their hopes. They write about libraries they wish for in their community, houses that need to be fixed, clean water systems that need to be installed. I don’t know how these things will happen, but I do know that if nothing is done for these children, they will be tired very soon too.

We have lofty goals, I admit. It’s arrogant to think we can achieve them, I know. But we have made a commitment to these children and their dying parents, and we will continue. Because what we are doing is the start of something revolutionary in this community. Empowering and supporting people to help themselves. For girls to stand up for themselves. For kids to say ‘no’ to death by AIDS. For graduates to start their own enterprises. For this community to contain leaders, not dependents. For these children to have children that don’t grow up in poverty.”

So here we are today, in September 2011. We have a program that supports 325 children every day. We have an (almost-finished) building that will enable us to help thousands more children. We have momentum and energy that will keep us going for years to come, and we have the determination to impact millions more children around South Africa.

One in five South African children are already orphaned, and soon it could be one in three. South Africa needs a reasonable, sustainable solution to this crisis — and soon. Throughout all of Africa, there are 12 million orphans who could also use a support model like ours.

Recently, I wrote a quick note home…

“We spend so many of our days worrying that we’ll have enough funding to buy food for the children and to pay the staff. It is exhausting and it keeps us from the real work we are trying to do. We are trying to find a large foundation to fund Thanda, but in the meantime, it is the donations from individuals that keep us going each month as our bank account gets close to 0 again”

Our loyal supporters around the world have been with us every step of the way as our story continues to unfold. Levi’s has been amazing in helping us spread the word about what Thanda is doing and funding the Primary Education program next year- (check out https://www.facebook.com/#!/Levis?sk=app_211692855545581 ). But we still need your support to keep everything else going.

If you can offer anything, we would appreciate donations of any amount. Please visit www.thanda.org for more information on how you can creatively help out our organization. (Definitely check out the Donation Catalogue at the bottom of the page.)

One of the photos available online for a $120 donation

Thank you very much for helping us build such a strong foundation. We are excited to show you how we’ll grow in the coming weeks, months, and years.

Love,

Ang

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