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Gaborone, Botswana
Canadian women plant seeds of hope in Botswana


Tsepho Phale is one of the faces of AIDS. The 19-year-old from Francistown, Botswana, is one of half of a dozen southern Africans profiled in Time magazine’s February 12, 2001 issue “Death Stalks a Continent”, written by Johanna McGeary.

McGeary writes: “[Tsepho] never met his father, his mother died of AIDS, and the grieving children [he has two younger brothers] possess only a raw concrete shell of a house. The doorways have no doors; the window frames no glass. There is not a stick of furniture. The boys sleep on piled-up blankets . . .

“Tsepho has been robbed of a childhood that was grim even before his mother fell sick . . . Tsepho had to nurse her, bathe her, attend to her bodily functions, try to feed her. Her one fear as she lay dying was that her rural relatives would try to steal the house. She wrote a letter bequeathing it to her sons and bade Tsepho hide it . . . [The letter enabled the three boys to keep the house.]

“The boys look at the future with despair. ‘It’s very bleak,’ says Tsepho, kicking aimlessly at a bare wall. He had to quit school, has no job, will probably never get one. ‘I’ve given up my dreams. I have no hope.’ ”

Ruth Thiessen, a staff person for Botswana Christian AIDS Intervention Program (BOCAIP), met Tsepho earlier this year. Thiessen is a volunteer with Mennonite Ministries Botswana, a joint program of Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission and Mennonite Central Committee.

Thiessen was captivated by Tsepho who was grieving the death of his mother while struggling to be a parent to his younger brothers. One of them still suffers from the physical and mental effects of being struck by a car several years ago. An insurance settlement from the accident enabled Tsepho’s mother to build the house in which her sons now live.

This past April, Ruth’s sisters, Edith Penner and Clara Thiessen, both of Abbotsford, B.C., visited her in Botswana. When she told them about Tsepho and his situation, they decided to buy sheets, pillows, pillowcases, towels, blankets and two foam mattresses for the Phales.

Edith, who is part of an interdenominational women’s prayer group that meets weekly in Abbotsford, explained, “Every time one of us goes overseas, we take an offering to be given to that person as a ‘seed’ to be planted in that country, to bless the recipients and glorify the name of our heavenly Father.” Edith was given this seed offering, to which Clara also contributed, to take with her to Botswana.

The women drove through the neighbourhood with its potholed sand streets, children everywhere, and many houses built of salvaged materials. The Phale home was being painted and the windows and doors were in the process of being installed.

The women unloaded their parcels and carried them into the house. The boys were bewildered, not understanding what was happening. “We love you,” said Thiessen to Tsepho. “We come from a group of women in Canada who love Jesus. Jesus loves you, and we want to share the love of Jesus with you.”

It was only when they carried the mattresses into the house that Tsepho finally understood what was happening, said Edith. “He came up to me and took my hand. He said, ‘Thank you. Please thank the women.’ He had tears in his eyes.

“We were all so deeply affected, we hardly knew what to do or say. We went for lunch afterward so we could sit and talk and let our feelings come out.”

The enormity of the devastation of AIDS in southern Africa “makes it hardly seem real,” said Thiessen. To look at the big picture make you feel helpless, agrees her sister. You deal with it by taking one individual or family at a time.

As for Tsepho – he is attending night school, determined to graduate from high school and to on to further education. He has started to dream again and regained his hope.

 – adapted from a report by Melanie Zuercher, news editor for the General Conference Mennonite Church

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Last modified October 29, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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