Isibani

Christine Mennell, an Australian who worked previously at Philakahle invited me for lunch. She is working at Isibani a project based at Winterton. There were a few changes to the original arrangents and eventually ended up going to a camp site near Spionkop where Sophie the driver of Isibani was spending the weekend. A beautiful campsite in the middle of nowhere along the river. Sophie (English born, Australian raised and SA by marriage) had Anne an English accountant taking time off to volunteer ther as well as Ros an English woman, married to a PhD student studying the role of traditional medicine in healing. Kids everywhere. I think Ros had two, Sophie must have three and there was a young (malnourished) orphan Sophie had staying as he was requesting an asthma puffer every two weeks. Her solution was to have him live with her to figure out what was happening. It was established he did not know how to use a puffer so a spacer was acquired and he had not had an asthma attack in a few weeks. As an orphan he did not get well cared for within his extended family. There are many kids like him so a care centre is planned to provide feeding for kids.

Sophie is a go getter. Isibani lives in a hall left in trust by a farmer for community purposes. She is negotiating a twent year lease from the NG Kerk (Dutch Reformed). She has a businessman contact who has acquired a full commercial kitchen from Joburg for free. She has had funds from Australia donated to build the clinic and associated buildings and needs to plan for ongoing recurrent funding. I am going to spend Thursday with them to look at assisting with a proposal for AAF to provide support. The Khetani area where they work has huge numbers of malnourished kids.