Report from BHW Field Director Following Visit 15-16 March

Recent Events

Play Area

S has been slowly getting the play area refurbished after it was dug up by the installation of the flood channel around the edge of the property. Truckloads of rubble have been removed. The playground has been leveled and pavers put down. The sides have been rebuilt to make it easy for people to sit and watch the children playing. The playground equipment has been installed and been given a base coat of black paint. Football goalposts have been installed and the kids are getting excited. 

In the next few weeks they need to put nets on the goalposts, put some yellow paint on the playground equipment, connect the slides and lay rubber mats under the equipment. So, it’s almost ready to go.  

Visitors

They have visits from groups of people wanting to help, mainly friends from churches in Helwan and Cairo. The day I visited there were four women from a church in Cairo who came out to pray with people and prayer walk through the community. Two weeks previous a group of dentists came for a day clinic and treated many people.  

Programmes

The regular programmes continue. The one that takes the most coordinating and that involves the most time is the clinic and pharmacy. This involves doctors coming each Friday. They have trained a young girl to be able to prescribe some drugs and do minor things like sutures etc but S is always dragged into medical issues every time he goes out there. 

New houses

There were some serious rains in winter, though not enough for the flood bypass to be tested. However it turned the place into a terrible muddy bog. A number of houses were permanently damaged and S was asked to coordinate the building of houses. He has completed 8 with at least that number still to go. It’s putting a lot of pressure on his time and he is very tired. 

Personal Stories

We are not able to use photos of people or their real names here:  

Person one – is a young girl at secondary school. She is being assisted by S and P to get to school. She comes to the youth programmes and is very committed. The parents are reasonably supportive of her staying in education but cannot afford anything so she has been given a part time job in the clinic and dispensary. She is given a little salary and now can give out certain medication, suture cuts (there are many in this place from handling the rubbish) and is learning to use the microscope to do blood tests. She now wants to be a doctor to come and help. 

Person two – is another high performing 17 year old girl. She tops her class but suffers terrible opposition at home. Her parents accepted that she be given a scholarship but now want to get her off their hands and marry her and her 15 year old sister to their first cousins who live next door to the centre. 

Two weeks ago she was involved in a medical camp in the village with a group of doctors and helpers. One of the helpers went to her father and said he wanted to marry her. First time they had met. So the father agreed sort of, but she refused and came to S who sorted it out. However the following day she visited the house next door to the centre, her first cousins’ place. The mother, her aunt, slapped her around the face shouting at her and asking why she is bringing shame on the family by not getting married or accepting these proposals.

All she wants to do is get out of the place and fulfil her dream. S and P have to spend hours standing between her and her family and protecting her. She has a scholarship to stay at school, but it could all be undone at the whim of mindsets that fight against her success. 

Person three – OC is a diminutive little woman with six children. The eldest is 16 and OC is a widow, her husband committed suicide. She shifted to this community from a similar one to escape the shame. She is Hep C+ and has suffered a great deal. She has just been able to get help with drugs through S and the clinic. 

One of her children is going to school through the ministry, the other boys are out finding rubbish. They scour the streets of the city leaving at 4:00 a.m. on a donkey cart. They start this work at 8 or 9 years of age. They bring it back and she sorts it into piles in their back yard. The place is swarming with flies. Glass, plastic, food scraps and cardboard are all sorted. 

A Christian group gave her some pigs which she feeds from the food scraps. She was also given a couple of goats and she has chickens and ducks. All these animals and her family live on a piece of land about 15 metres by 20 metres. S has helped build her a couple of better rooms to live in. A Christian charity from the city with a ministry called Draw and Smile came and put a roof on for her and some others.

A few months ago the children who were out collecting trash had an accident and damaged a vehicle. The person became very upset and demanded 500 Egyptian Pounds from them ($US55). This was more than a whole month's family income and there was no way she could pay. As well their cart was severely damaged so they had no means of income. She came to S and P who were able to help her. They tried to patch up the cart but it has not been a success and is very hard to pull, so hard that their best donkey died the day before I visited!

The week before one of the younger children fell off the bed and broke her leg so is now in plaster for 6 weeks. S had to set the leg! He’s a vet.

Person four – OS is an old woman. She still lives with her husband and is a very regular member of the church. She has had multiple operations for cancer and it has not been fully cured. She now cannot eat solid food so has to have soup and milk. She cannot afford to buy milk so she is getting a monthly supplement to help her survive. She is a vibrant, lively woman and a blessing to many people. Her adult kids refuse to help her (mindsets!).

Person five – OK is a widow with a very sad story. In 2012 she and her husband lost a child, he was electrocuted when a live power wire was left exposed. Her husband has many brothers and they wanted to go and kill the man responsible but he refused. He was a vibrant Christian. He had shifted into the area a few months previously and the first time they came to church he and his wife were converted, totally transformed.  

So, the situation settled down and he was doing very well at the trash business. He bought a car but had no license. He got a license but was not an experienced driver. He went out onto the highway one day and crashed causing a huge accident. He died some days later in hospital leaving a wife and two children who are now 15 and 9 years old. 

The family gets some help from time to time with food and funds for education. Her situation has improved slightly and she now has a pig which will help over time. Since her husband’s death a number of his brothers have become believers. 

Person six – OM is a vibrant Christian woman with three children. Her husband was killed in a vehicle accident but he had done well at business and left her with a nice property. She has managed to continue developing the place and in fact has bought a neighbouring property so has a nice piece of land. 

It’s like a farmyard really. She must have 30 or more sheep and goats and maybe 25 pigs of all shapes and sizes. She mainly gets the trash for the value of the food waste in it to feed the animals. Anything else is a bonus. She then sells the animals to live and send her children to school. 

She is a success story in a sense, but only because her husband left her with some security. She has risen to the challenge and it’s interesting, she is the one who told me her name. She is a committed member of the church and gives regularly as well. 

Partnership's Influence within the Community

It’s easy to see how well known S and P are. Everyone they meet they know. The widows I met obviously love P and they hug her a lot. She’s like the matriarch in the area. Many people are being assisted and the feedback is positive up until now. However, there are more people moving into the community and this is causing some issues. They don’t know the story and are not the same to deal with.

Development is now putting some value on the price of land they were “given.” This is changing the dynamics and causing numerous issues. One widow’s neighbor is trying to force her to move so he can grab her land. There was a public meeting after a politician promised he was going to electrify the community. This has put further pressure on values and at the meeting some were saying that the land the ministry is on should be given to them because an organization can’t own land, only a person can!! Mindset issues again. 

Plans for the Future

They are continuing to work on the agreed strategies. This will continue for another year and be reviewed at the end of this year when I visit again. 

Current Issues and Challenges

The distorted mindsets of most people there is a constant source of frustration and their greatest challenge. The plight of women in the community, especially widows, is very frustrating and hard to deal with. Knowing how to respond is a constant struggle and puzzle. 

I visited a widow with P whom she had known for 10 years. While there she told me her name and P was shocked that she used her real name. It was the first time P had ever heard her use it. Women have no personal identity. They are called “Om” followed by the name of a child. Their whole lives are lived with the identity of someone else. First they are known as the daughter of their father. Then the wife of their husband and then the mother of a child. Often wedding invitations will not even have the name of the bride on them. 

This says a lot about the way this culture treats women, they are faceless creatures with no name whose only purpose is to serve the needs of men! Life is fiercely hard on them and infinitely more difficult if they become widows. The community does not accept or allow widows to remarry. No man would want another man’s children. So it is very rare for this to happen. The reality is that if she did chose to remarry she would have to choose between her children or the man. Some do this and the kids are abandoned. So, how does she make ends meet? Often relatives of the deceased husband own the property so she may have to find somewhere else to live. She’s often not educated or skilled so life becomes very desperate. There are few or no jobs she can get and if you don’t have a donkey or a cart or kids old enough to work it’s pretty difficult to do the rubbish work. 

The people are very demanding. It’s hard, frustrating work and very tiring for those involved. 

Prayer and Praise Points

1) That people are still coming to be involved with the regular programmes. The doctors continue to come each week and are a real blessing. Young people come from the church in town to help every Friday with the children’s ministry. This is a huge blessing to S and P. 

2) S and P are struggling to keep up the balance in their lives. This work can suck all you have from you. 

3) The constant battle against destructive mindsets. 

4) The health of so many of the widows and children. Many are Hep C+ which is incurable and debilitating. 

5) The church continues to grow with more people coming to faith. They have about 80 kids in Sunday School and can get up to 300 at a special event. 

Comments

This has got off to a good start. We have to put it into the right time frames as this is a long term deal and it won’t be for a number of years that the real fruit will become obvious. There will be further opportunities for projects but I think there is real deep work going on in this place.