We were expecting this to be different trip because of only having two participants this year. I sensed that the reason for for God only calling two people to go on this trip was because there were things that need to be accomplished that can't get done when there is a larger team to manage.
We did participate in the class room with Derrick's team for two of the three days they were teaching and we also participated with Kenny teaching one of the six lessons at his school. Kenny's school is not allowing him to teach 2 lessons a day for three consectutive days the way we normally do it. They are only giving him one lesson a week during the Life Orientation period.
Not having to plan for or manage a larger team gave us more free time to meet with various people to try and promote the program to make life easier for the Richards Bay teams. On Tuesday last week we met with the Zulu Chief who is responsible for managing the tribal affairs of the community that live in the area that we opperate in. The Zulus still have a tribal governing system that that operates in harmony with the political government.
There is a Zulu king, King Zwelinthini, who still owns about 46% of the land in the Kwa Zulu Natal Province. He has a number of Chiefs called Inkosi's (Lord) that are designated an area of the province to manage. Each Chief has a number of Induna's (Captains). The Chief for the Richards Bay area has 23 Indunas. The Indunas represent the interests of the people that live in the area under his control when making requestes to the chief for land grants, dispute settlements, and so on. Clement's Induna was very instrumantal in getting the land grant across the street from his church for building the school. All this explanation to say that we were given an audince with the chief to make hime aware of the AIDS program that we have been teaching in his area and to thank him for his land grant for the school. We also took him a small gift of a wall clock, which Clemets said would be appreciated because most of the audiences that preside over are requests or disputes or gripes.
Mark also mentioned in our earlier blog that we had a TV interview recorded that is going to be viewed on August 20. The TV crew also came out to the school where we were doing certificate presentations on the day after the recording to tape some local interest footage to go along with the broadcast. The chairman of the Director board of 1KZN TV, who we met with was also enthusiastic about presenting out entire training corriculum on TV. This would be a great way of getting out messsage our to a wider audience. It will naturally require some funding and permision of Campus Cusade to air the training program. We will have to see what becomes of that suggestion.
Our most notable achievement happend on tha last day in Richards Bay when we held a meeting with accountants and a group of potential board members for a Beacon of Hope South Africa NPO. We finally have six people that will be on the board for at least the first year. This is something that we have been trying to accomplish for a two years.
We were also able to meet with an education department inspector, local business, men and the pastor of a large infliential indian church, to promote the interests of beacon of hope.
Last Sunday we attended the church of Thulani Dumisa who the most recent pastor to get a team trained by Clement to teach the AIDS program in the school district surrounding his church. Thulani's church is about 40 Km south of Richards Bay near a small farming town called Mtunzini.
We wrapped our program with the Richards Bay team with joint meeting at Clement's house of all three team leaders. I think it ended on an enthusiastic note after discussing and explaining some thorny issues with them.
Glynn Smith
Beacon of Hope International
Phone: 949-305-1922
Cell: 949-795-0042
Web: www.beaconint.org
Blog: blog.beaconint.org
Skype: africanson3
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