 | Twelve kilometers beyond Ingwavuma, on the dirt road to Gwalaweni, there is a community at a place called Esihlangweni. It is here, in a two roomed building, that Fancy Stitch has met with a hundred or so women of the community over the years, training them in embroidery, submitting work and helping them generate income for their families.
In front of the building, the land falls away down to the makeshift dam, which provides the cattle with water in the summer months. The grass covered slope, scattered with a few shrubs is often windswept, lonely and empty, occasionally disturbed by the clattering of a bakkie as it rattles past the site.
How remarkably different was the visit to the site on the 15th of December 2009. When we arrived we met Nonhlanhla Mangema with two of her children, washing their clothes and blankets in an assortment of basins and buckets. The fences were transformed, adorned by those already washed, fluttering in the breeze like the banners at a parade. Nonhlanhla lives 50m from the site and usually collects her water from the bottom of the nearest valley. When I asked Ignatia Nyawo, how long it takes to get there, she answered in a typically Zulu way, “you will have to walk with me and I will show you how long it takes”.
The transformation is due to the newly installed borehole, offering water to a community, desperately in need of it. The bright orange pump draws people to it like bees to a flower. When people speak of their joy at the arrival of the hand pump, it is their eyes and smiles, that tell the depth of the story rather than their words.
On behalf of the community of Esihlangweni, we would like to thank the Diageo Foundation for providing the funding and the Ingwavuma Children’s Fund for their facilitation thereof.
|
