Thursday, January 19, 2017

ENVIROLOO

Yes, you read it correctly:  Enviroloo for Nobody.  St. Francis of Assisi Church and parishoners has sponsored a full Enviroloo and the project began with part of the team beginning the Enviroloo at Noboday, South Africa.  Nobody is sure how the town Nobody came to be yet many stories have come forth about it’s inception.

Dustin Blessman set out with part of the team to begin digging on this project.

Nobody, South Africa Enviroloo Team at the end of their day.

For those of you that do not know what an Enviroloo is, it is safe toileting for school children.

When pit toilets become too dangerous to use, students and teachers must climb into the South African bush, among snakes and insects, for relief. Many children, especially girls, stay home because of the embarrassment they would suffer with out access to private restroom facilities.

Students who use pit toilets are exposed to disease, injury and even death. Those who wander into the bush face humiliation and danger. Children must choose to either put themselves at risk or forgo an education, simply because this basic human need is not met at school. The problem has become so severe that the South African government is seeking assistance.

This team also served the needs of a crèche (pre-school) where Juliana, Sharon M., and Carolyn helped with the children.  The staff ratio was about 1 teacher to about 45 students.  Needless to say, the help our team provided was very welcome.

OPTICAL OUTREACH AT ST. OMAAR COMMUNITY

The other half of the team traveled to the community of St. Omaar to do an optical outreach that was at a “crèche”  or pre-school.  We stopped to pick up on the way two medical professionals from Folang Medical Center who took A1C blood sugar test for helping the community.

The team was surprised when they drove up to see the large amount of people waiting for optical outreach.  Many people needed glasses and NEVER had them before.  There were a couple of people with very needed correction.  Besides seeing people’s vision changed, the best part was connecting to some people that we had seen at St. Omaar church on Sunday previous.  Not all were from St. Omaar Church. 

This was just part of the people that were waiting when we arrived at the St. Omaar Optical Outreach.  It turned out that it was members from Team 2015 that were apart of this outreach.

The team fit 110 people for glasses and gave 136 pairs of glasses.  Many could not speak English so we had community interpreters.  Regardless, our team was able to spend time getting to know the people we helped and we prayed with them also.  Kind, thankful and respectful people is who we served.  It was an honor for the team to pray for each person – even if we did not always have a language in common. 

Team St. Omaar also spent time playing and doing a craft with children in the creche next to the room we did optical outreach in.

We returned to our crockpot meal that was prepared earlier in the day and to a great Team Debrief around a bonfire debriefing about the day.  This time is always so very special to hear the hearts of our team members.