Far from home, I find a family

Helen Grace Lescheid

Now, as I watched the last child from my teacher daughter's school scoot toward her homestead, a shiver went through me. Here I was, the only white woman--alone--thousands of miles from home. Had I been rash?

Some Swazi children had asked if I would accompany them to their homesteads. It seemed a good way to start my adventure. As we walked a dusty trail winding up a hill, I chatted and they grinned. I taught them English action choruses, and they taught me songs in Siswati. Their eyes danced and their lithe bodies swayed with the rhythm as they sang and clapped and stomped their feet.

The children showed me their play house on Lizard Rock shaded by scruffy trees. Then, as each child reached his/her home, the leader, who knew a little English, instructed me, "Now, say good bye." I did. Soon I was all alone. The feeling of isolation hit me hard: Whatever made me think I could do this?

Safely back inside my daughter's house on the school compound, I didn't feel much better. "Nothing familiar here," I muttered. The house had the absolute basics within cement walls--no electricity, sporadic running water (one hour a week), a small propane camp stove, an outhouse. . . .

"Like camping," earlier I'd told my daughter. "No problem."

But now the strangeness added to my sense of isolation.

I don't know a single person in all of Swaziland, I worried. Whom do I contact in case of emergency?

"Me." The still, small Voice was unmistakable, "You still have Me."

Yes, indeed. No matter where I live, I'm in Christ, and Christ is in me. That part hasn't changed. I reasoned with myself. If I have Him, then I do have a refuge. I'm not abandoned. In all of Swaziland, I do have one Friend.

This comfort helped me formulate a plan of action. I grabbed my daughter's small photo album and marched up to a woman sitting beside her house, minding a small child.

"Hi. I'm Elizabeth's mother. You want to see pictures of my home in Canada?"

The woman, a teacher at the high school where my daughter taught English, could speak English. Soon I learned that her husband, like so many Swazi men, worked in South Africa and came home seldom. She was pregnant and worried. She'd lost many babies. "This will be my last," she said. "It's just too hard."

The following days I spent reading in the backyard, walking over hills dotted with giant aloe vera bushes and homesteads (accompanied or alone) and talking to people outside their homes. A smile and the photos worked every time.

One day, a young woman called from the house I had visited earlier: "Hi, there." I walked over. "My housemate's gone to hospital." (Of course! I hope the delivery goes well.) "But I'm not staying here alone."

I saw the fear in her eyes and understood all too well.

"Come to my house," I offered. "I have a sleeping mat. . . ."

"I'm leaving on the early bus," she continued.

She invited me into her house. It was immaculate and artfully decorated. Her grey cement floor shone. (Later I found out why: At six every morning she washed and waxed it.)

In her bedroom I saw a Scripture on the wall.

"I like that," I said.

She studied my face for a moment. "Are you a Christian?"

"Yes," I smiled.

She look puzzled. "Do you drink?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour?"

"Yes, I do!" I smiled at her earnest face.

"Oh, then you're a real Christian." Her black eyes sparked with obvious delight, and her face broke out in a big grin.

"Yes, I am," I said, wondering at her surprise.

"It's just that I never met a Canadian Christian before," she mumbled. "The Canadians I know don't like Jesus."

Mkonta taught home economics at the high school. Soon she hauled out a half-finished garment she was sewing for a friend. Proudly she showed me her Singer sewing machine with a handcrank. She'd devised her own pattern.

"I can send you patterns," I said.

She seemed as thrilled as if I'd promised her the moon.

As I prepared to go, I repeated my invitation for her to sleep at my house.

She declined, explaining, "Now I feel better."

At five-thirty the next morning, a soft melodious tooting awakened me. As I peered out the door, I saw a bus, as big as a Tonka toy, cresting over a distant hill. The tooting became louder as the bus neared the school compound.

"Helen! Helen!" an excited voice called.

Mkonta, my new friend, came running toward me. In one hand she carried a small suitcase. She stretched out her other hand. "Please keep my keys till I get back," she said.

I took the key ring from her and turned it over in my hand. As I watched her sprinting toward the bus, a feeling of awe enveloped me. Yesterday we were strangers, I mused. Today she trusted me with her prized possessions.

I smiled as I read the red lettering on a tag dangling from her keyring. "Jesus loves you," it said.

Throughout the weeks I stayed with the Swazis, this scenario, with slight variations, repeated itself. The mutual delight of finding a Christian brother or sister never waned. Soon after our discovery, the sharing became deeper, the fellowship warmer. In a mysterious way, the strangeness of a few moments ago would fall away, and often we'd talk like we'd known each other for years.

Like we were family.

Helen Grace Lescheid is a writer and a member of South Abbotsford MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C.

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