Swazi 1000

From scraping a wall of the soon-to-be-museum with a iron brush for four hours, to removing decomposing household refuse with your hands, to giving a small barefooted child a loving hug … The Swazi 1000 experience is made up of moments where small, positive changes are adding to a major shift in the re-weaving of the fabric of the Bulembu community.

Most of the changes are not visible on a grand scale at first.

As one walks down the hill from the tent camp there is a view of the village. From this perspective, there doesn’t seem to be much happening in the town slumbering in the blazing sun. As one comes closer you start to see dirty volunteers happily doing what is needed in whichever capacity they are functioning on the particular day. Scrubbing showers, playing soccer with the children, removing alien vegetation, breaking down walls after waking up to pray at 3am, sewing costumes for a school play, smearing peanut butter on 500 slices of bread … Just a bunch of God’s friends anonymously loving people that they haven’t met before in their lives.

We are almost at the phase of the Swazi 1000 process where the beautiful Biblical concept of perseverance is set before us as a choice, and the unseen actions that don’t seem to make a major impact initially are becoming the tests that challenge our motives.

There is however, such a sense of encouragement when one starts to notice the visible changes sprouting up. The information signs painted on the buildings, the Dvdvuzi building site that is slowly but surely transforming into a refuge for orphans, the dirt patches in the grazing fields of the dairy that are starting to turn green, a small girl feeling safe enough to make herself at home in your lap …

Transformation comes as we, through these seemingly insignificant actions, challenge our own selfish nature and a resulting culture of apathy. The unseen tasks snowball into moved mountains, and a generation is radically renewed by love.

“Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the perseverance of Christ.”
2 Thes. 3:5 (NIV)

Bulembu Christian Academy’s annual Christmas play is coming up, and the Swazi 1000 teams working alongside the ladies at the Creativity Centre have been sewing up a storm.

Ducks, giraffes, elephants, zebra, sheep, raindrops … all of these characters will be on stage for a special dress rehearsal performance next week for the Swazi 1000 volunteers in the old Bulembu cinema, that is being transformed into Noah’s ark.

Swazi 1000 volunteer Nicole Da Rocha said that this is the first time that she has used a sewing machine. “It’s actually quite ironic that one comes on an outreach like this, thinking that you are going to be able to teach the community something, but in the end we are actually learning new skills as we are helping them with making the costumes,” she said.

“If you think about it, the children that we are doing this for don’t have moms that can spend thousands of Rands on making them the best costumes for the play, and we can do something like this that can make the feel special” said Sophia Wessels, a Swazi 1000 volunteer from the Western Cape. “Apart from that, we have made amazing friends and spent quality time with the Bulembu ladies as we are working alongside them.”

Tarien Visagie, a Swazi 1000 volunteer from Potchefstroom said that the best part of the project was to be able to invest a talent into a community that really appreciates it. “One of the ladies from Bulembu actually started crying when she said how thankful they are for what we are doing for them,” said Visagie. “We are doing something so small, but it is amazing to see how much it actually means.”