Jiko and her brothers and sisters

At the beginning of 2005 I went to interview the families in KwaXimba, selected for the KwaXimba Aids Orphan Project supported by Habitat for Humanity South Africa.

I have lived in Africa for over twenty years and I thought I had seen hardship in my work with my local church, but nothing prepared me for the day when I met Jiko Mchunu and her brothers and sisters.

Having lost both parents, Jiko was left to care for the family. Her home, a mud and wattle structure was in desperate need of repair as the walls were beginning to collapse around the children. Inside the structure, there was not a stick of furniture.

Inside Jiko's mud hut

The family's clothes were strewn across wattle beams and a few blankets, stored under a box on the floor. An iron pot resting on a few burning embers in the centre of their home, contained a meagre meal for a growing and hungry family. The floor had huge ruts in it which when it rained, would allow the rainwater to collect as it seeped through the holes in the wattle. Jiko told me how they would have to use bowls to collect the water and throw it out of the door. No one slept when it rained.

Leaving the Mchunu family, my heart was heavy and I knew that this had to be the first family we built for in KwaXimba. No child should have to live in conditions like this.

Volunteers start the foundations

One month later, my prayers were answered and Habitat for Humanity with their first volunteers, broke ground on the first house to be built for orphans in KwaXimba. Jiko Mchunu and her family would be the first beneficiaries!

I will never forget the look on Jiko's face the day we arrived to dig the foundations for her new home – shock, disbelief and finally tears as it suddenly dawned on her that people DO care, that she is NOT on her own. With the support of the Habitat for Humanity programme in the area, the lives of not only her family, but many other families struggling to deal with the decimating effects of the Aids pandemic, will be made easier. KwaXimba, a community where family life has been torn apart and where there is no future and there is no hope as one by one, family members succumb to the ravages of the disease.

Jiko's new Habitat home

Into this dark place a light shines, a light of hope and a belief in a future. Volunteers who came to build Jiko's house, not only brought their physical efforts to build a home, they also bought with them hope and great joy to a family in despair. As day by day, working together, the 'walls of hope' and a 'new future' emerged from the dry African soil. A home that would protect the children from the storms and winds that sweep regularly through the valleys. A home that would give the Mchunu children, bedrooms in which to sleep peacefully each night and for the first time in their lives, a bathroom in which to wash each day.

Today, the Mchunu family has once more, through the generosity and support of Habitat volunteers, regained their self-respect and pride, living amongst their community.

Aids may have taken their parents, and poverty taken every ounce of hope for their future, but a group of Habitat volunteers gave of their time and resources so freely. They replaced despair with hope, tears with laughter and built a home for children in need.

By Sue Johnson, Habitat for Humanity South Africa