"I just do this."

Million-dollar mountainside views peppered with wildflowers and sweet, sweet baby smiles take our breath away every single time we drive into Dwaleni. A very different reality surfaces when you enter the homes, stories and lives there. Dwaleni has an incredibly high level of violence, abuse, a version of Christianity that is confused with ancestral worship, and a reliance on witchcraft.

 Ten ThousandHomes has built two houses there for young ladies who’ve overcome more than they should have ever known. Busi has been on her own since she was 12 years old, living in a shack and raising her 8-year old brother. Now she’s 21-years old with her own child. 

Busi in October 2011 in front of her former home.
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As a teenager, Neli was left to raise her three younger siblings and her own child in a house the size of a queen-sized bed. Both Busi and Neli, children left to lead adult lives, dreamt only of going to school. They both had to drop out when they had babies.

Neli's family at their Welcome Home party.
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School is required by law in America, and there are a thousand theories on best educational policies for our children. School attendance is required in South Africa up to grade 10 as well… but you’re not actually welcome if you don’t have a birth certificate. Or if you can’t afford to buy the uniform.  If you don’t have enough food, medicine or supplies to physically get there, you just don’t. There are certainly no truant officers or repercussions.

You go until you get pregnant, and then you stay home and do what everybody else does. Nobody dreams of what they will be when they grow up because they already live grown up lives.

Last year, thanks to good love and generous donations, TTH was able to send Neli and her family back to school with new uniforms and pay preschool tuition for her baby. This year, we sent Busi back too with her baby in preschool. They are the most motivated, committed students I’ve ever seen because they need something to hold onto. They need life to look different than this because they are barely surviving this.

This past Sunday, Busi came to me covered in stress. “I can’t pass, Kacy. I try soooo hard. And I failed two subjects last term. I can’t pass. I don’t know what to do.” She meets with Neli’s family to study together, and we try to give them study tools and help with homework as often as we can. But they can’t pass.

I started to ask Busi questions to try to grasp the root of the problem, and, in true high school fashion, she threw Neli under the bus. “I failed two, but Neli failed FOUR!” A secret part of me smiled that they were acting like real sisters, and Busi was not alone in this anymore.

Yesterday, we gathered together in Neli’s dirt yard around a chocolate cake and report cards. Four high school girls and two primary school boys – one was Neli’s little brother Mpendulo and one was Macbeth, who is from Dwaleni but lives on the base with us now because his mom is on staff with TTH.

They showed me their overwhelming school exam schedules – exams start today! Busi had followed my suggestions, but said her teachers refused to give her study tools or exam reviews. The overwhelmedness sat heavy in that circle – even on me. I didn’t know how to help. What could we do before tomorrow if they didn’t even know what to study?

 

Neli and Phepile's exam schedule. 

Busi and Thully's exam schedule.

So… we ate cake.

And sat together.

Until what was really going on started to pour out.

Neli and Busi started, with clouded eyes and shaking hands. And then the other girls added in.

“There’s demons. The teachers tell us we have demons in our minds.”

“My eyes hurt so bad. I can’t see when I get to school. I open my books, and I can’t read. It looks like there’s nothing there.”

“My head hurts when I try to study or go to school. It makes me not think. I can’t understand.”

“Me too. My head hurts too much.”

“They are taking our books to the sangoma (witchdoctor) and calling our names out (casting spells or curses).”

“I don’t sleep at night. It sounds like there’s baboons banging down my house. I’m so scared. It’s my enemies. I wake up and try to pray.” 

“It’s the demons.”

I’m sitting on the ground with Busi’s baby in my lap. And the girls are all up pacing, fretting, with fountains of fear flowing from their mouths. Both their normal worlds and their deepest secrets finally being aired out. Macbeth and Mpendulo say they hear and see they same things, “but not too much”.

I ask everyone in the yard what they do when these horrible things happen. The pacing girls say they pray, but “it’s not working”. Mpendulo shrugs.

Macbeth, with all the innocence and childlikeness a little boy should have, puts his fingers in his ears and says, “I just do this.”

I was suddenly so aware of the chasm. It had nothing to do with geography, upbringing, language… Macbeth was coming from the same place and same schools as they were. But Macbeth has a family of faith. He lives in a community of people who know the power of the name of Jesus and the perfect love that drives out fear.

Everyday, handfuls of people at Ten Thousand Homes ask Macbeth how his day at school was, are willing to help him, and will celebrate his victories – and amazing dancing and lip sync skills.

I looked at the girls who were parenting, running a household, battling oppression, prejudice and their own bodies just to stay alive.

I said, “Your life is hard, isn’t it?”

Shoulders dropped. Heads nodded.

I said, “You’re raising families, and you need someone to raise you.”

Eyes filled with a longing even stronger than the fear that had just been there.

I said, “It’s hard not to have a mom or dad to talk to when you’re scared.”

Decompression. That was it. That was the epicenter.

Remember the monster under your bed?

Or, in my case, Count Dracula in the closet with dynamite?

Remember the bumps in the night?

And remember when your mom or someone came in and turned on the lights?

Remember when you told someone about your bad dream, and then it wasn’t so bad or so vivid anymore? Remember when somebody reached for you and it helped you reach reality?

What if no one had ever turned the light on for your little kid self, and all of that fear, all those monsters, and all those bumps grew up with you and became the head of your mind, body and household?  

We all need someone to turn on the lights for us.

Because where there is light, there can be no darkness.

Macbeth put his little fingers in his little ears and said, “I just do this.”

We prayed over each person, read Scripture, taught them the power of speaking the name of Jesus out, helped them understand that, through Jesus’ blood, they are overcomers and darkness has no dominions over their minds. We spoke Truth until their eyes weren’t so cloudy and they believed they would be able to think clearly the next day.

And then I asked Neli, “So what can you do when you go to school tomorrow and the teachers or students are talking to you about demons?”

Neli put her fingers in her ears and said, “I can just do this.”

A little boy from the same neighborhood put his fingers in his ears and cast out the boogie monsters.

They just needed someone to hear the stories of the nightmares they live in so they could open their eyes and wake up and know the Father of Lights has never forsaken them.

They just needed to hear a little voice say, “I just do this” to remember how much power in within them.

We’re up against a big battle here, y’all. School exams and the end of the year amp everything up. Please pray for Neli’s and Busi’s family fervently – as well as all the students taking exams.

And then go turn on the lights. Remind them of Who is real and Who has won.

You can change the world with two fingers in your ears. Just do that. 

Macbeth