Personal message

Dear all, I have come into contact with a little boy of 11 at the fuel stop on the N4 highway towards Rustenburg. His name is Michael - and on this day, as is usual for him on every day, he was hungry. Speaking softly and respectfully, he asked for bread and couldn’t eat the burger I bought him fast enough, even though the chips were taken from him by older children.

The next day I took whatever I could round up in my kitchen cupboards, and added some rushed purchases from the fuel stop shop. After having crossed the N4 in the midst of fast, oncoming traffic - he was taken home by a customer together with these few things that I could put together for him.

But Michael’s eyes, and face, and desire for magic, stayed with me and I knew that somehow we had formed a special bond that was instantaneous and miraculous.

I met his family, his 29-year old mother who is years older before her time, and 4 siblings. Sitting in the shade of a high-veld bush, on the only plastic chair in the house, I heard her story and how it’s come to be that Michael goes looking for kindness in the faces of strangers.

This page aims to raise funds for Michael and his destitute family. They have no sanitation, no water, and no electricity. The price of water where he lives is R2 per litre - a fortune to spend when there are 6 bodies to wash or hydrate in the heat that is our African summers. There are no beds for them to sleep in, and I couldn’t see a blanket in the dark, made of tin, windowless structure the size of what you and I might call the second bedroom. Normally, I would give what I can and walk away but the smile on Michael’s face as I reached my arms out to him, and the gentle disposition of Martha, his mother, has convinced me otherwise.

Yesterday, Martha said to me: “please can you take my son”? I know that most of us hide from this reality - the plight of mothers all over the world desperate to find a way out for their children.

We are all strugglers in one way or another and we too, perhaps in unawareness, have experienced the generosity of people who came into our lives by divine intervention.

Won’t you please donate what you would have spent tomorrow on a cup of coffee if you feel called to do so. This page has been opened to help Martha and her children move from Rustenburg to Thembisa, where they will have water and electricity and support from an NGO functioning in that area. Whilst this NGO will get the children into school, and provide them with a weekly food package, the generous people who practice “Ubuntu” (you are my brother and I stand with you) will help to pay their monthly rent which is equal to what you and I will drop on one casual meal out.

I will keep this group alive by posting feedback, photos of their journey, and evidence of the transformative power of love. 

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