Light can overcome darkness and in fact in darkness, the tiniest sliver of light shines brighter!
And yet, blessedly, even in this tsunami storm little bubbles of hope stubbornly emerge, and this hope bubbles upwards and we realise that every person supported by AAF is bolstering national hope.
So thank each of you for reading, loving, praying and supporting South Africa in her brokenness. Through your support you provide light and hope to AAF teams.
As they push on supporting, loving and caring for the forgotten, the hopeless and the lost, we still find forgotten children and open doors of education. We support teachers to go into schools to minister to little broken worlds of hope. We house tiny tots in safe spaces, get hungry babies fed, wormed and vaccinated. HIV medications land in bellies cushioned by countless vegetable gardens. We support tribal elders to whisper into young boys hearts that they ‘have what it takes’ and that girls are to be wooed and then treasured in marriage. We provide health care and medications for those who have none so that men can lead and provide for their children. The list goes on and on. Bubbles of hope forming rivers of life.
Because hope has to start with somewhere and with someone.
Despite the multiple challenges, AAF clings to our starfish vision which fuels our passion to build Africa, each day, one person at a time, through Indigenous trusted friends embedded in village life. Yes, we are aware of the seemingly insurmountable challenges we face, but we remain fuelled by our vision of one life at a time. AAF boasts a strong and robust faith, emboldened by our committed board in Australia. We are the Aarons and Hurs lifting up Moses’ arm (who go by different indigenous names).
This same Australian board has encouraged me to go beyond my writing and to road map for you, dear reader, the glorious, tender yet evolving shape of the handprint of AAF which has held hearts and touched souls in Africa since my early childhood in 1975 when mum and dad said ‘Yes… if not us then who?’
So today in 2024 we persist.
With every cent donated by the public reaching the most desperate.
Some trips to Africa it’s difficult to leave.
Not this one. In fact to escape from such florid brokenness was a gift.
It was a great physical relief to be gathered into the familiarity of our red flying kangaroo and to be lifted off African soil back towards the waiting arms of our people. As Johannesburg and her pain receded in the glorious mist of an ochre sunset it was also underpinned by the black mountainous clouds of a summer storm.
The plane definitively ascended above the storm as guilt descended on our souls. The gnawing injustice and searing inequality – that the depth, breadth and width of the brokenness existed – but that we could fly up and away above the storm simply due to a privileged birth. Whisked above and away from a broken rainbow world.
Below the endless ocean of ache and the summer lightning flashed hope in the sudden form of a memory of a blessed apple. On an apple tree in a forgotten corner on Robben island. A tree laden with unripened fruits, withstanding a storm of fat summer raindrops. A tree planted, perhaps by Mandela at a time of great personal pain and injustice. A tree he wrote of as he watched seasons roll on and on and pains pass by. A tree which perhaps nourished his trust in his creator and his own hope that good can sometimes be born from our bleakest moments. A tree, which at Easter especially calls to mind that Mandela knew, as we can, a creator who promised to one day to make all things new in this tired, broken world.
Nelson Mandela said at his Nobel peace prize award in 1993 that the children of the world should “Play in the open veld, no longer tortured by the pangs of hunger or ravaged by disease or threatened by the scourge of ignorance , molestation and abuse. Children are our greatest treasures.”
AAF strives to do just this !
Hence Mandela day occurs each July and communities are encouraged to grow trees (especially fruit trees) in support of sustainable food production for vulnerable communities, to look out and up. God willing in each of our own lives, we can be met with that same promise and hope. Rainbows still hover after storms. Fruits still grow in thunder even when nations totter on the edge of an abyss. Thank you for standing through the storm with us, as we yearn to support the broken, forgotten, least of these.
On behalf of the AAF board,
Dr Jane Gray
Our work must continue… in November 1997 Mandela wrote of apartheid, and this image persists in KZN mountains we work in.
“apartheid continues to live with us in the leaking roofs and corrugated walls of shacks . In the bulging stomachs of hungry children, in the darkness of homes without electricity . And in the heavy pails of dirty water that rural soma carry for long distances to cook and quench their thirst”
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