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February 22, 2004, Yesterday Was A Beautiful Day, by Chris
Yesterday was a beautiful day. A day of sharing ideas and hopes and plans and peaches. Yesterday we met with the wife of the chief of the Basotho people at Ndawana. We finalized plans for the community meeting and talked of how we would get the word out to several hundred homes strung along eight kilometers of an almost impassable muddy red track. Homes without water or phones or electricity. We discussed whether to use a loudspeaker, or to send notices to the schools and the churches. Churches that exist without buildings or ministers.
Yesterday was a beautiful day. It is the best time of the year out at Ndawana. This year the rains have been good. The maize is as high as an elephant’s eye and the wild peaches ripen on the trees. Everywhere people munch the pale fruit blotched black with blight, the size of small apricots. We politely munch along, accepting a bag to take home with us. They really are good once we get used to the idea of eating peaches that look like ones we would throw in the trash at home.
Yesterday was a beautiful day. Everywhere in the village people paraded in their Sunday finest although it was Saturday. The women in brightly coloured dresses and pinafores, their hair carefully concealed by tightly wound scarves. Processions were visible everywhere in the bright morning sunshine. Yesterday at Ndawana, the community buried eight of its dead. All eight born in the 1970s and 80s. All probably dead of AIDS although it is difficult to know since AIDS still bears a terrible stigma in rural communities. All died at home without medical care. The toll for one week.
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