Just one of those weeks

 

This was one of those weeks. My computer is broken making work difficult. The letter “T” has completely come off, the letter “N” doesn’t work and the space bar gives me two spaces each time. Ian came to my rescue, as always, and loaned me a keyboard to use, which was great, until the space bar stopped working completely. Is it possible that I am THAT hard on a keyboard?

 

Ian had his own challenges this week, including the guard at the baby home closing the electric gate by accident as he drove through, smashing the door beyond repair. `That gate is only closed after the kids are all in bed and this was the middle of the day. He was not happy.

 

 

After 16 days of the bridge to town being impassable due to heavy rains, Arlyn and Sibusiso were able to get the JCB to the river (3 miles) and then spent FOUR hours clearing large trees, bush and debris that had been stuck on the bridge then making it passable. We are so thankful to our friends who came many years ago and said, “You guys need a back hoe!” and then they shipped us a brand new JCB back hoe from the U.S. 

 

 

That piece of equipment has been a life-saver!! We expect heavy rains and flooding again this weekend, but at least we all got to town and were able to grocery shop again.

 

Our farm team had their own challenges. The ground is SO saturated with water from the rains that it made bailing a huge challenge with the tractors, trailers and even the backhoe getting stuck in the fields. YES we are grateful for the rains and are always thankful for water, but sheesh, we have a LOT of water!

 

While it’s been a challenging week, we also have had a great week!  We are harvesting tilapia again and the kids will have fish and chips for lunch on Sunday! We harvested 19 crates of dragon fruit. Ian and I got to see the new library at the primary school, which is ready for school to commence!! 

 

We have a container shipping from the U.S. this month and ALL 200 pairs of rain boots and ponchos have been purchased from our amazon shopping list as well as some ping pong tables, swimming pools and foosball tables!  Ian has ordered me a new laptop, with a fully functioning keyboard and we our volunteers have been able to purchase goodies to also come in the container to help with a few comforts from home since our borders are still closed to travel.

 

All in all, it has been one of those weeks, with highs that are high and lows that are lows. But we give thanks for the encouragement that James gives us during our times of trouble when he says, “My brothers and sisters, you will face all kinds of trouble. When you do, think of it as pure joy. Your faith will be tested. You know that when this happens it will produce in you the strength to continue. And you must allow this strength to finish its work. Then you will be all you should be. You will have everything you need.”  James 1:2-4

 

Lastly, I want to leave you with something that was a “fun find” for us during our trip to town. While it is impossible to buy fresh fish or seafood here, there is a frozen seafood store that we stopped by to pick up some salmon. While there we saw something that we had never seen before. Mozambican lobster! WHAT??  They had never had it there before, but they had 3 of them in stock so we bought one to enjoy tomorrow on Valentine’s day.  

 

Lock down/lock in can be hard, but we are trying our best to find fun and joy in our daily lives. I hope that you can do that too.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

 

Live from Eswatini ... staying inside the ark today.

 

Janine

Massive flooding and massive blessing

For those of you who have been reading my blog or following Heart for Africa on social media for years, you will know how much we talk about water. When we first purchased the 2,500 acres of African bush, that we now call Project Canaan, there was no river, which meant there was no water. For years we drilled bore holes and built dams to capture rainwater from the sky and runoff from the mountain.  Then the drought of 2015 hit sub-Saharan Africa and our bore holes dried up and dams emptied, which lead to the mammoth undertaking of building a 6 miles pipeline from the top of the mountain down to the farm.

 

Last weekend Cyclone Eloise arrived in Eswatini after causing massive destruction in Mozambique and brought more water than have ever seen.  Much of Eswatini suffered from the heavy rains (thankfully there was very little wind), causing roads to crumble, rivers to flood and houses to collapse. 

 

Road to Nhlangano

Nkonyeni Golf 5KM from Project Canaan

Dam #1, which has been dry since 2015, filled up to overflowing in just one night of rain. Thankfully our spillways worked the way they were supposed to and dam #1 spilled over to dam #2, which spilled over (with some help of some quick bulldozer work) to the Living Water dam (#3).  Even THAT spillway overflowed and that has never happened before. One week later, with minimal rains each day, the dams are still flowing into each other.

 

Dam #1

Dam #2

Living Water Dam (#3)

 

The only real damage to Project Canaan was a retaining wall which slid down the hill due to excessive water at the back of two new buildings which had not been trenched yet. Not only did we have little damage, but our dams full we have been blessed beyond measure with water and protection.

 

One thing that did come to light during the week of rain is that our children don’t have proper rain gear. In fact, we realized that have never bought our children rain jackets or ponchos. Last year we did a quick amazon drive for rain boots for the older kids and there are a few umbrellas that are shared on the wettest of days, but otherwise they put on their hoodies and walk to school in the rain, arriving soaked and cold (no matter the temperature).

 

 

 

We quickly realized that we need more rain boots and we need rain ponchos for our kids. THANKFULLY (because God is God and He is the great “planner”) we have container coming this way in February that has space on it so we are hoping to fill it with enough rain boots for all our school age kids (200) and ponchos for all of them as well.  We set up an amazon wish list, which you can access by clicking here. When you go to the check out, just click the Heart for Africa gift address and it will automatically be shipped to our warehouse in Georgia. The deadline for delivery is February 18th.

 

If you want to drop off or send gently used rain boots, jackets, umbrellas they need to arrive no later than February 18^th.  The address is: 410 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 146, Cumming, GA 30041 and please only drop off on Monday – Friday. We are also accepting gently used Hot Wheels type cars and Barbie dolls and Barbie doll clothes.

 

It does take a village to raise a child and I am eternally grateful for the great big, beautiful village that I am a part of in raising 275 Swazi children.

 

Thanks for shopping at our amazon wish list today http://bit.ly/raingearforpckids!

 

Live from Eswatini … trying to stay dry.

Janine

Let’s talk about the weather

Christine

 

Yesterday was a scorcher with a high temperature of 50C or 122F.  It was too hot to even get the air conditioning in my truck to get cold.  Our buildings are not air conditioned so when I went down attend Samantha’s 3^rd birthday party, I wasn’t surprised to see all of our toddlers in shorts, no shirts, dripped with sweat.

I happened to have a box of 48 Icy Pops in the freezer for a rainy day (I mean hot day) so I took those down to the party. Each 2-year-old received their frozen treat by extending two hands, giving a little courtesy and saying some form of “thank you”. I LOVE how our staff teachers our children good manners and Swazi customs.

Princess with an ice pop in the pool.

After getting their treat they all headed into the sprinkler and/or kiddie pools to try to cool down.  It’s hard to explain heat and humidity that we experience here. Everyone moves slowly, intentionally, and you only do what you have to do.  And remember, I grew up in Northern Ontario, where we had snow from October – May.  I thought this pre-menopausal mama was just simply going to go up in a puff of smoke.

39 toddlers enjoying the sprinkler

At the end of the day an incredible storm hit with a lightening show that brought Ian and I out on to the patio to watch (like watching fireworks, complete with “ooh’s” and “ahhh”s), and the dogs hid under anything they could find.  Then the hail started, plants knocked over and we had to move inside because the rain was horizontal.  And last, but not least, the power went out at around 6PM.  The power is still out as I write this, and we are thankful for our generator that has kept our lights on and our refrigerators cold.

February is Valentine’s Day month and we have a treat for you! Next Saturday, February 10^th at 9:00AM EST (that is 4:00 PM Swazi time) we are inviting you to celebrate Valentines day with the children at Project Canaan through a live streaming party.  If you read my blog of last week you will know that we now have unlimited high speed internet, which will allow us to do this (http://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2018/01/when-little-things-become-big-things.html).  I will be streaming live from the HEART FOR AFRICA Facebook page and then I will repost the video on my personal page when the party is finished.

Did you know that in February 2017 more than  $18.2 billion USD was spent on flowers, candy and cards for Valentine’s Day loved ones according to the National Retail Federation?  Would you consider reducing your Valentine’s Day spending on friends and family and becoming a monthly donor to support our 179 children?  Maybe you would consider a one-time gift?  Your gift helps us love our children back to life. 

To give in theUS click here.

To give in Canada click here.

I hope you will join our Valentine’s Day party next Saturday, February 10^th at 9:00AM EST – Janine Willis Maxwell Facebook. 

Live from Swaziland … we are always grateful for rain.

Janine

Drought + storm + power-outages + 105 babies =

Over the past two weeks I have been praying and asked the Lord to turn down the heat a bit on our lives. I wasn’t speaking about temperature, but rather I was asking Him to turn down the crises, tragedies and human suffering that we have been dealing with so much.   I believe He answered my prayers and I have had some quieter days and even got a beautiful newborn baby boy on Friday, which brought me great joy. His name is Barak, which means "lightening". We thought that was appropriate based on the rest of the week... keep reading.

While turning down the “injustice” temperature a bit, He turned up the environmental heat to 100F+ for many days with intense humidity.  We don’t have air conditioning here on Project Canaan, and we all depend on ceiling fans and ice in our water to cool down.  We use sprinklers and small kiddie pools to cool down our children and leave the ceiling fans on high at night when they/we sleep.

This week the temperatures hit 105F+ (Swaziland was the second hottest place on earth on Thursday according to the newspaper), the rain started to fall and the power went off.  There are a few reasons why our power goes off 3-4 times a week.  Sometimes it’s South Africa (where our power comes from) who turns it off to help “load share” for their own power-shortage issues.  Sometimes it's a line that breaks due to a storm, and sometime it just goes off, seemingly for no reason.

This week the rains we have be praying for came, which was awesome.  The rains came and the electricity left.  First it was off then on, then off then on and then off. And it stayed off for almost 30 hours.  But the beautiful rain kept falling.

Imagine having 104 babies to care for when the power goes out.   It’s pitch black so you are working with portable flashlight type things and worse, the fans would not spin and the children were crying from the dark and the extreme heat (and I wanted to, but tried to refrain).  When the power goes out, so does our water purification system so all the water then needs to be boiled in order to drink it.  I want to stop and give thanks for ALL of our Caregivers who handle these situations with such grace and love.  They are truly amazing women and men.

It was the hottest night of my whole life and we didn’t sleep a wink.  The next day everything in everyone’s refrigerators and freezers started to melt and by sundown the next day the walk in freezer (full with a new order of chicken) was melting. Then I got a call from a neighbor at the nearby golf club who saw my whining on Facebook and offered her bunker freezer to help us out. What a gift that was at the right time.  Anthony and Denis loaded up the chicken and rushed it over.

Later that night the power did come back on (and off and on and off) and then stayed on. This small town girl from Northern Ontario, where it’s minus 40 degrees for weeks on end in the winter, was NEVER so thankful for a simple ceiling fan to come back on. 

We have looked at alternative energy sources and are working on a plan to get a large generator that will cover the Children’s Campus when the power goes out, but for now, we pray, and we give thanks for the rain, and the roof over our heads that doesn’t leak and that we are not living on mud floors that turn to muck when the rains come.

To answer many of you who are asking if the dams are filling. The answer is, not yet.  Our experience is that we need about 30 days of this kind of rain for the dams to start filling. The dams aren’t directly filled by rain, but rather it’s the rainwater that flows down from the mountains that fills them.  There has to be enough rain to saturate the ground up the mountain and only then does it start flowing down the mountain in to our dams.  So, we continue to pray for lots of rain.  The good news is that we do believe the ground is wet enough in the maize fields that we can go ahead and plant our maize crop next week.  

In other news, Friday was our first Kindergarten graduation at the Project Canaan Academy! Teacher Amber did a wonderful job (as always) and 4 Kindergarten students will go to Grade One next year and six Preschoolers will move up to Pre-Kindergarten.  We are so proud of them all.

We will miss Isaac Flentge next year as he moves back to the US tomorrow.

 

Preschool moving up to Pre-Kindergarten in February.

Giving thanks for rain, and electricity, and ice for my water to cool me down.

Live from Swaziland... Jesus bring the rain (and keep the electricity on please!).

Janine

PS – please consider giving a year-end giving gift to Heart for Africa to help us help the people of Swaziland and 105 children. Thank you.

In the US: https://heartforafrica.secure.force.com/pmtx/cmpgn__donations?id=7011A000001DHGq

In Canada:  https://www.heartforafrica.ca/2015%20Year%20End%20Giving.aspx

Everything is dying – we are in a crisis here!

Some of you know that we are praying for rain.  Two of our dams are dry and the Living Water dam is almost too low to pump water and irrigate our crops.  There is no way for us to know how much water is left in the wells that we get our drinking water from.

But our irrigated fields still look green, while the hills surrounding us remain brown, or on fire due to the dry grass and high winds.

The fire up behind the Emseni Children's home last night.  Photo Credit: Chris Cheek.

In June 2015 it was predicted that the drought that was ensuing would kill an estimated 200,000 cattle if there was not immediate government intervention.

See article:  http://www.observer.org.sz/news/73934-200-000-cattle-will-die-due-to-drought-govt.html.

Today I sat down with Anthony and got a report from our work in the surrounding community and with our 27 church partners and I was given a much deeper understanding of what  “drought” really means today in Swaziland.

The number of children seeking food in each of our church partners has increased by 25% in the past two months.

But I was confused.  I asked why the lack of water now would be cause more children to be hungry, when the food they are eating now would have been grown in last years crop?  Here is how it was explained to me.

The maize that is the staple to the Swazi diet is planted in October/November and harvested in March/April.  It is then dried and stored, to be eaten throughout the year.  The harvests in the past decade have decreased and so the maize has not lasted from one year to the next.  Swazi’s have used the “early rains” which typically start falling in mid-September through October to plant back yard gardens, which provides with healthy food quickly while they wait for their maize to be planted and harvested.  Also, they typically are required to sell a cow or some goats to pay for seeds, fertilizer and food to get the family through the gap.

The drought is killing the cattle and thereby leaving Swazi’s in an even more dire situation.  Even we at Project Canaan have lost 5 cows in the past month.  Sickness, heat, snakes and disease are hard to manage even when you have full-time dairy staff, outside expertise and veterinarian support.  The rural Swazi has none of these. 

So, here is what is happening.

There are no cows to sell because thousands have already died and the ones that are still alive are too thin and sickly to sell.  There have been no early rains so the ground is hard and dry and gardens cannot be prepared and planted.  Even many of our church partners who had access to year-around water no longer have it and their gardens have died. 

I also received more deadly news from Gebeni, the community beside us. I was told that there are many people there who are on ART (Anti-retroviral Treatment) for HIV/AIDS who are now stopping their treatment because they know that proper nutrition is a critical part of the efficacy of the medication that is so hard on their internal organs.  Going off treatment will make their infectiousness increase and death will come faster.  UGH!

I did receive some good news while I was in Taiwan, and that was that King Mswati III made a public declaration that the drought was officially over. We are thankful for that and look forward to the rain falling soon.

In the meantime, if you can contribute to our ongoing feeding program we would very much appreciate it.  Thanksgiving is right around the corner and maybe you would consider making one less pie or reduce the variety of wonderful treats and instead give to help us feed the orphans and vulnerable children of Swaziland?  A $50 donation will purchase 110 pounds of maize, which will feed up to 250 children.

Please donate today if you can https://heartforafrica.secure.force.com/pmtx/cmpgn__donations?id=701C0000000U6eS

In Canada please go to:  https://www.heartforafrica.ca/canaandonation.aspx

Live from Swaziland … please pray for rain!

Janine

Another interesting article: http://allafrica.com/stories/201510160752.html

Never-ending rain, another pit latrine baby and an intervention of sorts

Swaziland is in a 20-year drought.  Both our dams were dry last week.  Very few people in the country had any kind of successful harvest last year and ours was down 65% vs. the year before … all because of weather (lack of water mostly, but also wind).  Water is life and we can’t make it rain, only HE can.

In Swaziland we don’t have “summer” and “winter” we have “rainy season” and “dry season”.  The rainy season starts at the end of October and goes until March.  Last year we had virtually no rain, which leaves us with no water to irrigate crops during the dry season as we had hoped and planned.

This is usually a small bridge - we cross over it to get home

Dam #2 is starting to fill!

We have been praying for rain (which seems a bit senseless during the already dry season because it would be out of season to get rain).  It has only rained once since we moved here on June 1^st and that was the day that our friends from the International Egg Commission and the American Egg Board stepped foot on Project Canaan in August (a “lucky” and much appreciated gesture).  When we arrived back from the US on Tuesday at 2PM the rains started as we were unpacking the car (not that our arrival had anything to do with it, but that is how I know when it started because I got wet!).  It is now Saturday morning and the rains continue to pour, the ground is saturated and the runoff from the hills around us is starting to fill both our dams.  We are thankful, but we are also stuck … literally.  There has been 6 feet of water rise up and now covers the bridge that we use to get to town (office, school, gas station, grocery store, airport, hospitals … you get my point, eh?).  I am glad that I have a fully stocked pantry, tetra milk for my coffee and matches in case the power goes out.

Many people around the world have been praying for rain and it has come without ceasing. Be careful what you pray for – you just might get it!

Baby Joy arriving home.

Okay, on to our new bundle of joy.  Yes, her name is “Joy” and she came to us on Tuesday at the tender age of ten days.  She was dropped in a pit latrine (outhouse/toilet) when she was born and thankfully someone heard her cry and climbed down in to get her out.  She was immediately taken to the police and hospital to be cared for while an investigation took place.  As you might guess, the mother was found and is now in prison for attempting to kill her baby. Same story, different faces.  Joy is a beautiful baby and we are thankful for our fourth little girl.  We have eight boys and now the ratio is a solid two to one.

On Thursday I spent the day with Gcabile (one of our wonderful caregivers at El Roi) and Robert Smucker (volunteer extraordinaire) trying to have an intervention of sorts and get ahead of the problem of baby dumping.  We know that Emmanuel’s16-year-old mother is almost ready to give birth to her third child, (Emmanuel lives at El Roi and is 13 months old).  The mother is HIV positive and sometimes lives in a bus shelter.  She does not want the baby in her belly and we fear that she will give birth and “dump it”, just like Joy’s mother did.  So we spent the day with her, trying to encourage her to get pre-natal medical care and promise to go to see our wonderful doctor friend at the hospital when labor begins.  But she is afraid of hospitals (both of her first two children were born in someone else’s home because she had been kicked out of her family homestead for her bad behavior=pregnancy).  She is also very young, mentally unstable and is refusing to take live-saving Anti-retro-virals so this was a very difficult day for us all.

In the end, after a short, but unsuccessful visit to the hospital we were able to negotiate “plan B”.  Gcabile’s sister-in-law kindly agreed to allow this young girl to live with them until the baby is born.  I don’t know many people who would offer that to a stranger, do you?

Emmanuel and his mom.

There were times on Thursday that I found myself asking myself if I was helping her only because she had asked that her baby would be able to go to live at El Roi?  And the answer is complicated.  Yes and no.  I would want to help her either way, but sometimes helping is hard to do and people have to want to be helped (and have the capacity to accept help) in order to be helped.  The flip side is thinking about a newborn baby being left in a ditch or on the side of a road or in a filthy, bacteria filled pit latrine.  Wouldn’t you want to get ahead of it if you could?  We will accept her baby (if she still decides she doesn’t want him/her) whether she has dumped him or not, but I would rather give her the choice of making a healthy decision rather than one that will haunt her the rest of her life, which won’t be long if she continues in this lifestyle and without ARV’s. 

This was such an encouraging week to everyone who is living here at Project Canaan.  God’s love, His provision, His promises were seen and felt every minute of the day (even when scooping after our 5 dogs who don’t like the rain and really like our front patio to do their business).  He is faithful, He is Holy, He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and His plans are perfect, but they rarely look like our plans. 

Thank you all for continuing to read this blog. I am truly overwhelmed by the comments I get (most of them positive so far J ) and to know that so many people are praying with us and for us here at Project Canaan. 

Live from Swaziland … we are thinking of building a raft (or ark!)!

Janine