Wolfgang and I are in Hermannsburg at the moment and are enjoying the warm weather together with the green trees, neither of which exist in South Africa presently. We are approaching winter, which is expected to be early and cold this year due to the heavy rain. We noticed something of this before we left.
We’re glad to have a little break. The reason for this was Wolfgang’s mother’s 95th birthday, which we celebrated on May 15th. We are thankful that our mother is in relatively good health, still lives alone in her home and is well supported with the help of a faithful domestic helper who comes three times a week.
Our work in Tsibogang has not been easy in the last few weeks. We had started the year well, after the COVID infections went down drastically, the schools and kindergartens can work as before. All children are allowed to come. That was and is a great relief; because we now know that due to the irregular participation in lessons, all children are about a school year behind in their school work.
We notice this particularly with the children who come to our After school programs: The children in the first three school classes can hardly read at all. This is a big task for our employees. In February, we did reading tests with all the children in the six After School centers to determine whether and how and they could read. Of the 225 children in total, 118 could not read well enough, namely in grades 2-6. That is devastating. Now we are faced with the great task of helping these children. And that is exactly what we have set out to do!
In March we learned that the South African Lottery, which has been supporting Tsibogang regularly with large amounts for 17 years, rejected our application this year. Reason: The funds are exhausted. The press reported that a Lottery employee renovated his private home with Lottery money. Wolfgang sat down at the computer and quickly prepared a new application for the Lottery, which, however, needs at least six months to be processed. So we have no choice but to live on the reserves of the Tsibogang account. And that only is enough until the end of the year.
At the end of April we heard from the annual meeting of Förderkreis that they want to help us in this financial crisis. We are very grateful for that; nevertheless, the Tsibogang Management Committee decided at its last meeting to cut all salaries and incentives by 10% in order to stretch the financial reserves as long as possible. This is bitter in view of the fact that most of them have to make do with very little money anyway. As everywhere in the world, the cost of living has risen enormously. We notice it with the travel costs (petrol, shared taxis, buses), vegetables and meat, cheese – with all staple foods. This applies to our kindergartens, After School programs , where the children are fed every day; but it ultimately affects all employees. So we hope and pray that God sees our need and that new money will come from somewhere.
A heartfelt thank you to all donors who have made our work possible in the first five months of this year.
Christel Hermann