I know that after the
live feed yesterday, that most of you are looking forward to reading my mom’s
Saturday blog with an update. With the craziness of yesterday, and the turn of
events today, my mom has allowed me, her daughter, to write a guest blog for
today.
Spencer and I get to come home to visit our parents and Project Canaan at least
once a year, but this year we were both lucky enough to come a second time. We
arrived to Eswatini on Monday with Spencer’s girlfriend Jane, and his friend
Andrew, along with a team of 100+ volunteers.
We were so excited to be home to
celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Project Canaan with our parents and 239
little brothers and sisters!
As Thursday rolled around, we were ready. Mom had been planning this event for
a year, and we had received lots of updates along the way. From the children
rehearsing, and the invitations being sent out, to the construction of the Imphilo
Theatre (which was completed in 35 working days… that’s crazy), every detail
was nailed down for our 10AM start.
The event when off without a hitch, and what a celebration it was (you can
check out the videos and images on Janine Maxwell’s FB page and the HFA FB
page). We noticed at the beginning of the event some smoke at the top of one of
the mountains on our property, near where our house is located, so Denis’ team went
to check it out. Andrew slipped out as well to check on our house, to confirm
all was okay. The event ended at 1PM, and we all went home for a well-deserved
nap and shower, mom and dad ready for a relaxing afternoon after a hectic year
of planning.
Around 4PM, mom and
dad were sitting on the deck, overlooking the property, when they noticed that
the smoke that we had seen earlier in the day was much closer to our house than
before. The winds had picked up, and that is when the big fires began. We
watched from our electric fencing, as the fires came closer and closer, down
the mountain and back up the valley, towards our house. Dennis and his team had
been fighting the fire for an hour already, and because it was getting so
close, we began back burning from the electric fence at the lodge all the way
down to the electric fencing at our house.
I’d like to add that we’ve burned 17
Miles (27 KM) of fire breaks around the property to avoid these problems, but
these fires had been either intentionally set inside of the fire break, or
jumped the fire break when set on the outside. The fires were huge, we cut
branches or “switches” to beat out the fire where we were told to beat, and the
night seemed to come to an end around 10PM. Another call came in at 2AM, that
the fires had reignited from the wind and were now burning towards the Harp’s
house. After fighting fires all night, everyone went to bed around 5:30AM.
At 11:45AM, we got the
next call, all hands-on deck. The fires had reignited and were bigger than
before, heading straight towards the baby home. We called the Eswatini fire
department (who have never responded to one of our calls in the 10 years we’ve
been here), and they assured us that help was on the way. We loaded up the car,
got the bush knives to cut branches, 2-3 face masks, sunglasses and the 2 pairs
of ATV googles we had (what do you bring to fight a big African bush fire?).
The fire was massive. We split up, sort of,
some going towards the baby home and some going towards the fields where they and
the bales of hay were on fire. The flames were insane, the smoke was consuming.
Jane, Andrew (and others who are a blur now), and I ran through and I looked
back for Spencer and my dad. The smoke was so thick I couldn’t see them. Were
they okay? The fire had picked up on the Kibbutz side now, so the flames were
on both sides of the road. We looked at the burning field, and the flames were
growing higher and turning to a dark red, one I hadn’t seen before in fire.
Andrew ran into the smoke to find Spencer, they came running back out, and dad
came a bit after with the car. I went to his window side, and saw that his face
had been singed. His eyebrows and all the hair around his face were a brown
fuzz... I cried. He had jumped out of the way and fell hard on a rock when a
burst of flames came in front of him by the baby home. What was happening. I
just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
We headed towards the
soccer field, as they were back burning the fire to Kibbutz so that it would
not continue down the hill. The fire got so big and the smoke so strong, we
were sharing the googles and masks we had brought, and had to find refuge under
the stage that Jerry Scott had built on the soccer field to shelter us from the
smoke. Dad came in his car to the rescue, and we were off through the smoke and
down the hill.
The fires burned all
day long. Every time we thought we had put one out, another started or reignited.
I’m trying to remember the order, and I really can’t. All I know is, the fire
was everywhere, coming from every direction. From the Kibbutz, down the side of
the Norman Borlaug Park, flooding down behind Khutsala and the medical clinic,
then back up behind the lodge and flooding towards Emseni, and back on the
farm. The flames were towering over the Khutsala building, and the embers flew
on top of the grass/thatch roof of our beautiful chapel. Within 30 second, the
roof ignited and the whole building collapsed within 2 minutes. Mom sat in the
car sobbing, while allowing the world to watch with her through her LIVE FB
feed. It was hard to breath, our eyes were burning, I felt like I was going to
throw up. It just wouldn’t stop. It was never going to end.
 |
| The chapel built in memory of my biological father. |
 |
| 2 minutes of fire |
Everyone was
everywhere. Up and down the property, Spencer and mom both had vehicles to
shuttle people from place to place and deliver water. We evacuated each
building, we evacuated the Emseni children to the dairy farm, we evacuated the
babies to the toddler home, twice. There was no time to process what was
happening.
Once things had settled and most of our land had burned, the fires seemed to be
“controlled,” so we made our way up to the house. It was 6PM.
Last night and today,
we are pretty numbed out. There are no emotions, there is nowhere to put this
experience. I woke up and went online to see some of the images from yesterday
to reflect, and got a text from mom saying, “I see you’re awake. Want to have
some lemon meringue pie..? And maybe a cup of coffee? Meet in the kitchen in
5?” Coming from the mom who never eats dessert. “Absolutely,” I replied. The
best wake up message.
We started to discuss
some of the moments from yesterday as we looked off our porch at the property. Suddenly
mom wasn’t feeling so well, and had some heaviness in her chest. We decided to
take her to the hospital to make sure things were okay. Mom has been admitted
at the Mkhiwa hospital, and I am sitting beside her as I write this blog. We
think she might have over done it the past few days, but believe she will be
okay. God isn’t finished with her just yet.
No one said this would be easy. I have no more words, but I ask that you pray
for my mom. Pray for our family. Pray for Project Canaan. As that is all that
we can do. God’s plans are perfect, right? He makes beautiful things out of the
dust. He makes beautiful things out of us.
Live from Eswatini ... Chloe Maxwell
P.S. As usual, the
Eswatini Fire trucks never arrived, but we were later told that the reason they
didn’t come was either A. all available fire trucks went to the reed fields to
protect the king’s reeds for the upcoming reed dance in August, or B. they were
broken down.
