“Feeding” Our Relationships

One of our favorite days each year did not disappoint!

For twenty-six years now, we have cherished the opportunity to savor our friendship with the residents of Malungeni.

Our 26-year-old relationship with this rural community began with the realization of the life-saving importance for healthcare. It is now a full-fledged approach to the balance of three things:

• Medicine that was previously unavailable…

• Restoring education that was legislated as “illegal” during Apartheid beyond fourth grade level…and

• Food distribution that has slowed the impact of starvation here.

But one of the most emotionally-fulfilling parts of our time, is the one day each year that we clean, primp, and massage the feet and hands of Malungeni’s appreciative residents.)

It begins with delegates washing and rubbing the feet of the most of the community’s oldest and hardest-working members. It’s our symbolic gesture of our commitment to serve them.

We then massage their hands…rub in lotion…and give back rubs. By the end of what we call “Spa Day”, we’d shared the joy of touch with well over 100 people. This is something we know is a luxury that—quite frankly—our friends here would otherwise rarely, if ever, receive.

The universal language of the comfort of touch is something we enjoy giving as much as these South Africans enjoy receiving. And with those able to converse in English*, we share about our families, our joys, and our dreams during the massage.

*Their mastery of English is substantially better than our ability to speak in their native language of Xhosa. (Pronounced KO-sah.)

By midday, the joy of “spa” turns into the fight against hunger. We get the chance to serve plates of hot lunch food to well over 200 women, men and children. It’s a meal paid for by Arm in Arm in Africa’s donors.

This is also the location of our largest food distribution every quarter…

And on this day, 252 parcels of food are given to the members of Malungeni and its surrounding communities. (This is a far cry from the mere five stacks of food we were able to provide in our first year back in 2000.)

Community leaders decide who needs the food the most, and those families are notified in advance. And they come on this day and patiently wait—sometimes in the hot sun—for their names to be called.

We are overjoyed to carry, push, and deliver some of these stacks of food…sometimes even directly into the homes of the recipients.

And this hard-working but wonderful day ended with as much fun as it began with. We provided clothing and sports jerseys to many of the children here and we were able to play games with some of the preschoolers.

This was a day of “work hard/play hard”.

And it was well worth the price of sore muscles for the chance to just BE with these friends who we have been looking forward to seeing all year long!