Lulisandla - reaching out with love and
reverence for life

When Sondela responded to an invitation to visit the Albini Catholic Mission?s Lulisandla Social Outreach Project near Hammarsdale, it was an important day for the LUSOP team. The co-ordinator, retired nursing sister and HIV/AIDS counsellor, Mrs Anastasia Kweyama and her colleague, Sister Patricia, were interviewing a new intake of 20 volunteers for certified training in home-based care.

Perched high above the beautiful gorges of Ntshongweni, the church, established in 1938, houses a convent for the Sisters of Mary Immaculate Mediatrix of Grace, and runs a co-educational primary school and a secondary school with boarding facilities for girls. At the Mission, currently headed by Father Jabulani Mtolo, the Lulisandla Project works with the Sisters to relieve the severe poverty prevailing in the area, and to raise awareness among young and old about prevention, care and support for those touched by HIV and AIDS.

Mrs Kweyama is devoted to her faith and her community, and has run LUSOP since its inception in 2001, following the initiative of Father Neal Frank, who launched the programme during his tenure as the former parish priest. She is a member of the Ward 7 HIV/AIDS Forum, through which she met HIVAN?s Community Engagement staff two years ago.

The Project has little funding and relies mainly on donated goods and jumble sales for income, while Mrs Kweyama pays from her own pocket for petrol and telephone costs. She tries to make a monthly trip to Addington Hospital in Durban to fetch basic home-nursing supplies issued by the Provincial Health Administration, such as disinfectant, cotton-wool, gloves and protein porridge, ?but the boxes are large and my car is old and small,? she said.

?There have been so many AIDS deaths in our area, and from May 2004 to January this year, we have been caring for about 600 patients. But it is heartening to see more people going for voluntary HIV testing and disclosure, and we are able to refer them to the clinic for follow-up and to St Mary?s Hospital for medical treatment if necessary.?
Mrs Kweyama is justifiably proud of LUSOP?s work, with 40 home-based care volunteers being trained in 2004, and half this number still working in the field. Three of these women have been employed by Gozololo, a community-based organisation caring for vulnerable children elsewhere in KZN. The Albini Mission has allocated a small two-roomed building with a bathroom to the Project for the training, administration and storage of patient records and resources. ?The training is free,? she explained, ?but the volunteers are required to practise their skills for a minimum of six months in the area. Our volunteers come upon many children who are sick and either orphaned or abandoned; I have noted 18 households headed by destitute children or grandmothers.?

Mrs Kweyama keeps meticulous patient and donor records, with every visit and intervention documented, and every item of food or nursing aid accounted for. She is concerned about the levels of teenage pregnancy and unemployment in families. ?We distribute food parcels to households in need whenever we can, but we have to share these out very carefully, as there is seldom enough to go around. A 12,5 kg bag of mielie-meal will be shared amongst several neighbours, and we allocate the parcels to families on a roster basis,? she explained.

LUSOP conducts regular HIV/AIDS education sessions in local schools, and in collaboration with the Mission, holds awareness events on annual focus-days such as Youth Day, Women?s Day, Freedom Day and World AIDS Day at the open-air church site on the premises. ?We invite a guest speaker to address the community on relevant themes, and the schoolchildren perform their own dramatic pieces for the audience,? said Mrs Kweyama.

She distributes HIV/AIDS-related information materials whenever possible and is committed to widening LUSOP?s networking activities.
She is deeply grateful to the nuns at the Mission for their help with the Project. Sister Patricia assists her with screening volunteers and administrative tasks. Some of the trainees are HIV-positive themselves, and have come forward to increase their own knowledge about the transmission and effects of the virus, as well as to help others who are struggling alone with the fear, stigma and physical onslaught of the illness.

As the schoolchildren laughed, played and crowded round to pose for photos, the graceful outlines of the statue of Mother Mary standing over the entrance to the church seemed to characterise the unconditional love and reverence for life practised by these women. Even as they grieve, they keep hope alive through counselling, creating, connecting and caring, as they work for the wellbeing of all the men, women and children around them.

If you can help Mrs Kweyama and the LUSOP team in any way, please contact her on (031) 775 1309, or by mail to P O Box 293, Hammarsdale 3700.
The Albini Catholic Mission is situated in Road D 210 in Ntshongweni.

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