"Homeless, homeless..."
I have the words of Paul Simons song from
the Graceland album repeating around and round in my head for the last few days
and they are closely followed by Hugh Masekela words from Stimela on his Hope
album…..
Or when they sit in
their stinking, funky, filthy,
Flea-ridden barracks
and hostels.
They think about the
loved ones they may never see again Because they might have already been
forcibly removed
From
where they last left them
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- (the whole words on http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091128123741AAhgWHi….. or better still, buy the album)
Both songs refer to the plight of displaced
and migrant workers in South Africa. Until this past week they were just words
that had caught my attention, like some distant land.
That all changed this week. We made our first trip to South Africa this
week to speak at a conference and then deliver the 3 day Leadership for Hope
programme up in the Western Cape. The
programme itself went extremely well and we were moved and deeply encouraged by
what we saw happen across the group in the 3 days.
But some impressions will definitely stick....
The beauty of table mountain as the sun was
setting
The endless miles of lush vineyards that
produce some of the worlds best wines
The apples, peaches and cherries that will
fill the worlds supermarkets
The “lord of the rings’ mountains we drove
through to get to the training venue
How much more developed the infrastructure
is in South Africa from any other country we’ve worked in
...And how clean it all was
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| View from our breakfast window |
But there was also
The farm hostel for migrant workers where
we chatted with 4 young girls from Lesotho who had travelled across country in
search of work and there was none
Their tiny dark room, which was their
universe until the harvests were ripe for picking
The time I asked the group of 150 people we were training, how many of
them had had to leave their families and loved ones on the Eastern Cape to come
and live in these hostels and rooms in search of work on the Western Cape and
almost every hand went up!
The fact that they live away from their
wives and children for nine months of the year
I once asked a lady in Malawi what we can
best offer people through what we do and she said with out hesitation “self
esteem….people need self esteem”. These
may not be the poorest people in the world with their £4 a day pay, but their self esteem is amongst the lowest.
Homeless………..homeless………Hopeless……..Hopeful. As we drove away at the end of Leadership
for Hope I once again I feel a shiver down my spine of the honour of
doing this work.
- TW
- TW
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| The lush farms framed by the 'Lord of the Rings' mts |
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| Cape Town sunset |
