Hey, Africa!: Soup Kitchen

Today we went to soup kitchen for the first time. It's really rough. I came away feeling pretty upset.
So far we've only really seen Big Bend (which is fairly well off due to the sugar cane plantation and the sugar mill business), so this came as a shock. It's even more rural than the Injabulo project, it's in the middle of nowhere.
We were greeted by Aunty Vina, a lady who oversees the soup kitchen because she runs an orphanage in some buildings on the plot of land that we serve off. She does an amazing job with the kids considering how little there is, but the extent of the poverty here did really hit home today.
The houses that the children live in have no doors, and we found out that snakes getting in is a really common problem for them. Two little boys showed us massive snake bite scars that they had, it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. I asked Vina if it had been a Black Mamba and she said no, therefore I thought that it may have been a big snake but one that wasn't as dangerous... But it wasn't. Turned out they were cobra bites and they'd actually found a snake in one of the rooms just the night before. I really can't fathom this, doors are such simple things and these children are sleeping every night with the risk of receiving a deathly snake bite.

Most of the children didn't have shoes either and today was cold and rainy, it was such a depressing sight being up at the soup kitchen and realising just how lucky you are. These children have nothing but they manage to find joy out of the simplest things. We were again asked to dance; this set the children off laughing and imitating what we were doing. They really are amazing people, even in their situation they are still some of the most friendly and lively people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Now, I know that this isn't nearly as important as the children but another thing that just added to the sadness of visiting soup kitchen was the puppies. There are a lot of dogs roaming about Aunty Vinas land and I presume that one of them had puppies. There was a pile of breeze blocks with some corrugated steel over the top and I could hear this wailing and crying coming from inside. When we went over to check it out there were 5 puppies inside, sodden hungry and shaking. Their crying was the backing track to the whole visit, it was absolutely heart-breaking.

On the plus side there is so much that we can improve on at soup kitchen and we know that these people will really see the benefits. Even the smallest things such as buying Aunty Vina a wheel barrow will really help them out... it's so she can transport water from the river 2km away to her vegetable patch which she grows to make food for the children. A wheel barrow. When you think about the world is really is appalling how unbalanced everything is.

I really hope we can make a change here.

Kate xxx