Education and poverty in Mpumalanga with Viva

I had the great privilege in June 2014 to travel with the Viva Foundation to meet Pastor Jonny in his home in Kildare.

Pastor Jonny is 2nd from the right in the black jacket.

Kildare is in Mpumalanga, South Africa near Kruger National Park.

It was a 2 hour drive from Pretoriuskop Camp mostly on dirt roads

Pastor Jonny with the support of the Viva Foundation is developing the local community, with the building of a church, a school and kitchen. He told me that the biggest problems the community face are poverty, alcoholism and HIV and AIDS.

The Pastor wants to address the issues of poverty by providing education at a young age and training for the youths of the community to learn new skills they can use to gain employment. The nearest Pre School for their community is 6km away and a cost of R100 per month for lessons and R150 for the transport. Not only does Pastor Jonny want to provide training in building, but he wishes to develop the communities farming skills and teach them to become self sufficient.

There is no employment in the area and as a result most families are grandparent led due to 2 reasons: the parents work away in Gauteng and return home at the end of the month or the parents have died from AIDS, there are also many orphans in the community and Jonny’s dream is to build an orphanage for these children. Most of the men work in the mines and many were been involved in the strikes at Marikana and were without work for 5 months without pay, striking for a living wage and safety improvements. There was little income in the community for those 5 months.

Families receive social grants for their children of R320 per month, this is often the only income and despite the intention for it to be used to provide their children with education, it is often the only income to feed the entire family, therefore the children don’t attend school.

Jonny set up a crèche 2-3 years ago and employs local teachers who do not receive a salary; they currently teach in a wooden, slatted building with a tin roof and even in the middle of winter the building is hot and humid. 

The children receive a cooked meal daily, which is often the only meal they eat during the day. It is cooked outside, there is no kitchen.

Uniforms supplied by Viva

There is no water in the community and men, women and children walk 2 kms each way to Ximhungwe to fetch water. There is no municipality water available and on occasions the pipes break and then it’s a 12 km trip to fetch water, which is the basis of sustaining life. A bore hole would make  a big difference to the community.

There is however a river that runs through the community and Jonny wishes to fence off the land to enable them to farm and become self sufficient. We discussed how he could start this project starting with a small vegetable garden that the children can be involved with seeing where their food comes from, planting, nurturing the seeds, harvesting and then cooking and tasting the food and understanding the process of the foods that they eat.

On Friday's a mobile clinic visits the area, they give flu jabs, inoculate babies and treat minor illnesses for free. For more serious conditions they give a letter to take to the local hospital some 30 kms away who charge R40 to open a file. For transport to the hospital Pastor Jonny has a vehicle and he is also the person called at 2am when someone goes into labour and needs a lift.

We took tables, chairs, educational supplies, stationery, clothing, toys and food. Everything was donated collected from businesses, neighbours, colleagues and friends. 

If you want to make a donation to this project and other educational projects in South Africa please click here. Paypal address is thechickendoesjoburg@gmail.com

I will be returning to South Africa in October and November this year and hope to visit Pastor Jonny and update with all the good works that have gone on over the past year with the help and support of Viva.

Top 8 Tips for visiting Kruger National Park

On my last trip to Kruger there were a few things I wish I’d packed. I stayed in a lodge with electricity, which included a fridge and air conditioning, plus there was a sink in the corner of the room.

There was only one plug socket and when I wanted to charge my laptop, camera or torch I had to unplug the fridge. Secondly I couldn’t help but wonder how many people had made use of the sink when caught short during the night.

Must pack items:

Binoculars.

Torch for trips to the toilet during the night and for night drives.

Animal, bird and plant identification books or an app.

Blanket for night drives and sitting round the camp fire.

Flip flops to use in the showers, although cleaned daily, there is a lot of traffic through the bathrooms.

Bottle of bleach to ensure the sink in the room WAS clean.

Sink Plug, I was unable to fill the sink with hot water to wash.

Adapter and extension cable to plug in more than 1 item at a time.

Cup cakes, Witch Doctors and Goats

Sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s just one of many things that occurs at the Viva Foundation located in the Alaskan Informal Settlement in Mamelodi.

For the vulnerable children and orphan family day, 100s of people come for their free blankets and food. The kids play, have their faces painted and the adults receive educational advice, this year in the form of RapePrevention, then to signal the end of the day, cup cakes are handed out at the gate to ensure everyone goes home.

My first event at Viva was in 2012 and the distribution of the Christmas gifts from Santa Shoebox and let me tell you, it was chaotic, a woman approaches me and states she is 17 and would like a box she was easily in her late 70s and I’ve since found out she is in her 80’s. Something weird and wonderful happens in Mamelodi at least once a year and 2013 was the Arts festival that runs every year, in fact you can get involved for #67 minutes for Mandela if you have an artistic streak in you or you can come make tea and food for the artists, in fact just come, it’s fun.

March 2013 I took my son  and we painted shacks and then spent the night under canvas, we didn’t sleep much, it wasn’t fear that kept us awake it was the choir at 1am, the drums banging to save a soul at 2.30am, the goats fighting, the cockerals crowing and the bloody taxis at 4.30am announcing with a toot of the horn ‘we are here to collect you for work’

2104 is the Witch Doctor who I met last month, he was tying up a goat on the side of the road to put in his boot, so I approached him and asked him what he was doing. Once he realised I wasn’t there to interfere he told me about his apprentice and how they would hide the goat and how the apprentice would have to locate it, using his new powers he’d learnt, then the goat would be slaughtered as an offering and the apprentice would become a Witch Doctor. I didn’t ask any further questions.

On Friday this week a group of us and teachers from Viva are going to Bushbuckridge near Kruger for the weekend, to turn a building into a school, we’ve collected kitchen utensils, clothing, educational supplies, toys for the children and always welcome donations of any kind so please get in touch if you can help out.

We are paying our own transport, food and accommodation costs for this project.