Time to come home!

On our Boxing Day, Rosalind and David invited us to lunch and a performance of "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" by The Nuxia Street Performers. This was most entertaining and enjoyable, the pictures are of the starring thespians!!


Lunch, which was Springbok pot roast, was a new experience to us all to us all, very tasty! We had a lovely afternoon and early evening and it was good to be with Catherine and Mary who are 10 and very nearly 8 years old.

Yesterday we had very high temperatures of 30deg so we only went to the beach later and then on to have sundowners at Harbour Island.





We drove home through Somerset West Main street to take a last peek at the Christmas lights.




Tomorrow is our last day so it is washing and packing up day!


Lots of love to all
Di and Paul

Happy Christmas

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a Happy Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

We started our day by going to church in the bright sunshine, it was packed with young and old and there was lots of singing and a story for
the children. The flowers were beautiful.

































After that on to Blauwklippen wine estate, for lunch, it was superb all the food and drink you can imagine and in beautiful surroundings. Now for an afternoon siesta and then a walk on the beach
Love from
Di and Paul

Carol Concert at Vergelegen

There was an outdoor carol concert at Vergelegen, which is a local historic farmhouse/winery with lawns and gardens and it was here that the carol Concert was held,
outside on the grass with our picnic hampers. It doesn't get dark until 8 30 pm and then we all lt our candles and joined in the familiar and the less familiar carols.The moon was bright and all the stars were shining and the whole park was packed.

love from
Di and Paul

Feed the Children - December 2005

During the last week Dianne and I have met and been learning about two women who live in the small, impoverished settlement of Sir Lowry’s Pass Village, which is just outside the town of Somerset West in South Africa, where we are staying throughout December. These two women were featured on the front page of the local Helderberg Sun newspaper, and the article described their continuous struggle to provide one meal a day for the children of their village – who would, otherwise, probably not eat at all on most days. As if this isn’t enough, Emily and Joyce also take food every day to the weak and ill in their own homes – and Joyce also runs a food kitchen from her home to provide food for the many Aids and TB sufferers in Sir Lowry’s Pass Village.


As seems to be so often the case, this daily quest for nutrition takes place in a setting of great beauty – the little settlement lies at the foot of the majestic Hottentots Holland mountain range in the Western Cape region, 25 miles east of Cape Town. The village is named after the important Pass through the mountains which was improved and opened up by Lt-General Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole in 1830, during his tenure as Governor of the Cape Colony. Sir Lowry was tenacious in his efforts to repair and improve the existing, hazardous Hottentots Holland Kloof pass, because the farmers of the Overberg had suffered tremendous losses due to smashed wagons and injured animals - all of them casualties of the infamous pass. Sir Lowry had written to the Secretary of State, who initially refused to sanction the scheme, because of his concerns about the plight of the farmers who worked these lands beyond the mountains. He pointed out that they were “separated from the more civilised parts by mountains over which there are few passes and those of a description that would not be considered passable for a wheel carriage in any other country of the world, I believe?”.

In the 19th Century, the pass was still a challenge for travellers. Here are some resting at the top before continuing their journey


Today, the roadway through the Pass is the smooth, fast-moving, tarmac-surfaced N2 highway, which connects Cape Town with the beautiful Garden Route of the Eastern Cape, before carrying it’s thousands of vehicles up the east coast to the industrial area of Durban. It is now a major traffic artery in this fast-growing country – but passage through the HH mountains could perhaps still be life-threatening if it weren’t for the extraordinary determination and perseverance of Sir Lowry. This is the view of Table Mountain over the Cape Flats that can be seen by today's travellers over the Pass.

We have been witnessing these same qualities during the approach to Christmas 2005, as embodied in Emily Stewart and Joyce Flandorp.

Emily, who has lived in Sir Lowry’s Pass Village settlement all her life, originally helped her mother, who ran a Soup Kitchen for local people in the village for 18 years. She says “on the day my mother died, she told the children that they must go to school and study so that they can make their lives better. That night she died – and I’ve been running it since then”. Her determination to care for the children of her community is unwavering. “Many of them come from families where the parents are too sick to work, or can’t find employment – this is their only meal of the day”.

Her Sun City Kitchen feeding scheme operates from premises that are no more than a large metal container on land adjacent to the local clinic.



They used to provide food only once or twice a week, but now feed between 150 and 200 children daily from Monday to Friday every week. On Monday, when we first visited Emily, she explained that, because the schools were now on holiday, the numbers of children that they were feeding had risen to nearly 350. Those who attended school during term-time would have received some bread there during the day – but, during the holidays, nothing. So the queue at the Sun City kitchen was vastly increased for the whole of their summer holidays.

Whenever the children begin to surge forward and get unruly, Emily speaks to them firmly and they return to their assigned place in the line. She knows all their names and always makes sure that the smaller ones are fed first. Otherwise, she says “if there isn’t enough food to go round” ( and this often happens ), “the big ones take it all and the small ones get nothing”.


On the day we visited, the team were providing a two-course meal; because they currently have a sponsor for milk they are able to supply a small bowlful of Nesquik to many of the children. This provides essential nutrition to the children in an easily-digestible form. The main course follows – today it is rice with fish, baked beans and whatever vegetables are available to increase the bulk of the food. Most of their vegetables are acquired by visiting, with prior permission of course, the waste bins behind the local Fruit and Veg City – a supermarket chain dealing solely with fruit and veg. Emily and her helpers use whatever is still safely edible from these bins.


They also get support from some local people, and the Bisweni Community Church, from which sources they get essential food like pasta, rice, veggies and tinned fish. Emily also tells us about Ernest, a disabled man who always brings them 10Kg of rice, tinned fish and soya mince at the end of the month when he gets his disability money. But, of course, “this is still not enough, because every day the children are still hungry and the pots are empty”. Emily appeals to the community to help them where they can. They need petrol for their vehicle, so that they can go and fetch donated food, as the onus is on them to collect things, “because people won’t bring it to us”.


During our visit we spoke to both women about their plans for a special meal at the Sun City Kitchen on Friday, December 16th. In particular, they would love to be able to give the children some meat with that meal “for a change”. They were also putting together little gift packs, using donated toys and gifts. We felt that the very least we could contribute to these children’s Christmas was to ensure that they did have some meat with that special meal, so we thrust some Rands into Emily’s hand – really a small amount by our standards, but hopefully more than enough to provide all the meat for that one ‘special’ meal.





We returned to the settlement the following day, Tuesday, to visit Joyce at her home, where she feeds those of her village who are rendered destitute by Aids and TB. She lives just a few streets away from the clinic, in an older part of Sir Lowry’s village. People are already sitting quietly in a queue outside her kitchen door – during our time there, the number probably reaches about 50 people waiting to be fed. Like the children yesterday, each of them carries a small, empty container. Most of these people are very thin, and some look exhausted by the effort of getting to her home.



In Joyce’s small kitchen is a gas stove with massive aluminium pots of rice and vegetables. The big stove is a recent acquisition, having been found discarded and unused in someone’s back yard, and was then donated to her. Before that she used an old wood stove – “and we killed ourselves carrying the wood”. Joyce’s daughter died of Aids in 1992, when the disease was still ‘the hidden sickness’. The family was ostracised, but despite the humiliation of the experience, Joyce has devoted herself to caring for the afflicted in her community.


As we leave her home, Joyce leads all the people in prayer, before the food is ladled out. At the end, if there is any food left, she gives it to those who are too poor to feed themselves. She can’t turn people away because those who are on anti-retroviral drugs need food to accompany the medication, so the meals she provides are vital to this process.
Some of the downtrodden are lying unnoticed at the side of the road, and she uses her old Datsun bakkie ( truck ) to transport them to shelter. The people have to walk far from the hospital and sometimes they are too weak to make it home, she says.

Six years ago, Barbara Tofoute, a resident of Somerset West, spotted Emily at the kerbside, struggling with her bags of vegetables, and gave her a lift back to the village. As she learnt more about Emily and Joyce’s work, she decided that she had to help as much as she could. Ever since, she has been a very active fundraiser for the kitchen, and provides the gas for the cookers.


We met Barbara at Emily’s kitchen, before she led us to visit Joyce’s home. From there, she took us to see the crèche that has been started in the village, in a building donated by a local church.

It is a wonderfully encouraging sight. All the children are neatly dressed, and attend the crèche from 7am until 5pm – this allows their mothers to find work during the day, and thus feed the family. This can be a very significant source of income and food. Work for the men of the village can be very intermittent – they mostly have to wait at the roadside each morning, hoping to be hired for the day, or even a few hours, by the employers who travel round in their ‘bakkies’ picking up the labour they need that day. There are always many times more men at the roadside than there are places in the bakkies. So it can sometimes be a long time between times of paid work for many of these men. There is little or no ‘Social Security’ support for them – most of them don’t have any official ID or other papers - without which it is impossible to get help from the state.


The crèche is staffed by four trained teachers and a cook.

There is a full daily program for the children, but one essential part of their day is when they are taught English. This can, in future years, mean the difference between remaining in poverty in Sir Lowry’s Pass, or getting work somewhere.

Barbara, who is one of the Trustees of the crèche, told us of their imminent plans to expand the operation. This is excellent news, because it is so encouraging to see these happy, smiling children at play in these surroundings. Not for nothing is Barbara’s fundraising operation called ‘Hope and Light’.




We returned to the Sun City Kitchen on Friday, to visit the children as they enjoyed their special meal – Chicken ( two pieces! ) and chips for every child, with plenty left over for a change. Then, oh joy - ice cream. We found ourselves surrounded by a couple of hundred very happy, if also very sticky, children.

And they are all little prima donnas when they see the camera – many of them just strike a pose when the see the camera come out of it’s case, and then call out again and again for us to take their picture. Then, of course, they all cluster around in an attempt to see themselves on the camera screen – no easy task when fifteen impatient children are jostling to look at a 2x1-inch screen!

After the meal, the children queue again to receive their goody bags.

These are distributed by Barbara, from her vehicle at the roadside outside the Sun City kitchen. This enables Emily and Joyce to gradually let the children one by one through the gate from the kitchen onto the roadside, where they are given their bag of goodies – mostly sweets and chocolate. And a small pair of plastic sunglasses. By exporting the children from the compound in this single-file way, the women try to ensure that no child rushes back round to the end of the queue and comes round again for another bag. Again, they know all the children by name and manage to keep them in order, ensuring that the bigger and more boisterous of their little charges don’t get to overwhelm their smaller companions.


It is impossible to describe how moving it was to witness the work of these three women, and the small group of other women helpers who volunteer their time and efforts, often giving up their own portion of food to someone in greater need. The pictures we took do scant justice to the plight of the people who live in Sir Lowry’s Pass village, or to the amazing efforts of these neighbours who spend so much time and effort in bringing some help to the poorest and weakest of their community. Truly can it be said of them that they ‘give others this day their daily bread’. Not just this day, either, but five days a week, this week, next week………………………

( Much of the above text has been plagiarised from the original article in the Helderberg Sun, with added material and pictures based on our visits and conversations with Emily, Joyce and Barbara ).