First Day of Home Visits

Posted by larsviggo on June 16, 2010 · 3 Comments 

We spent Wednesday evening at Jolly’s house, enjoying the company of a few of the Nyaka staff and peppering them with endless questions about Nyaka and its work.  After getting a great night’s rest, we got the opportunity to go out on our first home visits to meet with the grandmothers on Thursday (May 27th).  Traveling along a bumpy, dusty dirt road, we made our way up to the small family compound of one of the grandmothers, Dorah.  I got the sense pretty quickly that Dorah is better off than many of the grandmothers here.  But even still, her house is quite simple – dirt floors, no electricity, and a kitchen consisting of a few stones to start a fire on.

This first visit was a lot like many of the home visits Adam and I would be making in the coming weeks.  We chatted for a bit, thanking the grandmother for welcoming us into her home and asking some general questions to sort of feel out her life situation.  At this first visit, we were served tea and bananas – two things I have consumed quite a bit of since arriving here.  This grandmother was the chairperson of her local grannies group.  So, we got a lot of useful information from her about how the grandmothers organize themselves and what purposes the grandmothers’ groups serve.

We made several more home visits that first day of real work.  One of the women we visited, Hannah, already had a new house, kitchen, and latrine built by Nyaka.  This woman will probably always stick out to me because of the intense joy and gratitude she expressed to us.  In a way I felt bad about receiving so much thanks for work I really didn’t have anything to do with.  But I think from her perspective, anyone associated with Nyaka deserved all the thanks in the world.  After all, this housing project had radically changed her life.  She no longer had to be afraid about her mud house crumbling during the rainy season.  She had a covered kitchen to cook in that wasn’t subject to nature’s elements.  And she actually had a covered latrine, allowing her some degree of dignity regardless of her poverty.  Hannah could not stop thanking us and showering words of blessing on us.  It was really quite humbling seeing what a few hundred dollars could do for a courageous grandmother, raising 5 orphans.

It’s really quite something when I compare Hannah’s newfound blessing with the plight of another grandmother whose property we visited last Thursday.  To get to her house, we had to travel along one of the side dirt roads for a while, jutting through forests and farms.  We drove until there was no place for our van to go.  To actually get to her house, we had to walk through several banana plantations until coming up to an opening.  It’s here that we saw the leaning structure that meagerly served as a house for this grandmother.  She wasn’t home at the time, and I honestly don’t remember if I was told her name.  But I know that the grandmother who lives in that house only recently became a widow and is in her 70s trying to raise two orphaned grandchildren.  This woman’s only source of income is selling bananas from the tiny piece of land she owns surrounding her home.  Thankfully, she’s one of the planned beneficiaries of a new house to be built by Nyaka in the near future.  Her new home will provide her with many of the same blessings as Hannah.  Despite the frustrating tragedy of her life situation, I am hopeful knowing that this grandmother will soon enjoy what to her will be a radically changed life.

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