Lion and Elephant Motel (on the Bubi) and on to the border crossing …

Monday, January 5th

Mandy had an opportunity to visit with a woman in distress that morning at breakfast.  

"During breakfast, I was alerted to an elderly lady sitting on her own on the other side of the dining room. After hearing about the sad circumstances she was facing, I felt drawn to go over to her to chat with and pray for her. She was a recent widow.  She had traveled to the border with her son the day before to enter South Africa in order to see her sister who had only a short time left to live. She’d been denied passage through the border and after finding a rideback to the motel, had parted from her son who’d continued on. Now she was waiting for a friend from her hometown to come and get her. The toll of the stress of the past nine years showed on her face and in her eyes. She’d lost the family farm to the government, she’d lost her husband, she was living as frugally as she could to make her limited resources stretch. She was about to lose her sister, and here she was in this moment, all alone. I was so glad that I could encourage her to trust in The One who would never leave her alone, nor forsake her."

After a lovely breakfast in the open-sided dining area on the riverbank, we loaded the vehicle and made our way toward Beit Bridge and the experience commonly referred to as, “crossing the border.”   


It was just as well that we had steeled ourselves for the lengthy stand-still interludes, under the wonderfully hot Africa sun, that interspersed occasional tentative footsteps in the direction of the air-conditioned interior of the Customs and Immigration building. Shuffling our way in the queue through the necessary formalities at the border gave me two great opportunities! The first: to feel and absorb the heat of the African sun on my skin again, and the second: to engage in conversation with folk around us.

Mandy had an interesting conversation with a young African man in his mid-twenties. She writes, "He was on his way to Messina in his ‘bakkie’ to shop for clients living in Zimbabwe. During at least ninety minutes of conversation, he opened window for me to see life from his perspective and as my heart ached for him, I was amazed at his ability to laugh and keep going despite his incredibly stressful challenges. Challenges such as:

* having to close down his two general dealers stores due to: the shortage of fuel, the empty shelves at his wholesaler suppliers, the devastating lack of buying power of his clientele, the unpredictability of government edicts, the unreliability of workers who either steal because they’re so hungry and desperate or are absent more often than not due to illness.

* having to move to the border town, away from his wife and children in order to try to make a living any way he can.

* being the sole provider for his wife and children, and for their combined extended families at his rural home.

* having to keep applying and paying for a valid visa to enter South Africa that only lasts for a couple of months at a time.

* Having to pay for the school fees, uniforms and books of his younger siblings despite the fact that most of the government school teachers had stopped reporting for work due to the non-payment of their salaries for months on end."

After finally breaking free from officialdom, we made our way into Messina. The welcoming embrace of the little town, at one time a perennial reminder to our family of our arrival for holidays in South Africa, was different to what we recalled.  Once a lazy border town, Messina was now a crowded bustling boom-town, populated for the most part by Zimbabweans who had managed to make it to the place where they could purchase supplies of the unobtainable basics intended for the gauntlet that would transport them back to waiting families and businesses back home.

Mandy describes her re-entry into the land of her birth this way; “As we approached Messina, we were confronted by a huge billboard that boldly stated, ‘Zimbabwe is starving for Democracy,’ with the picture of a child entrapped inside the rib cage of an animal carcass.  How poignant, how real, how tragic, how humanly helpless and hopeless the message is.  It hit me hard.’

After purchasing a few basic supplies, we embarked on the final leg of the journey that would take us to Tshipise, a quiet oasis of green dotted here and there with shaded thatched chalets and the warm waters of the mineral pools that are its central attraction.  It was here that we were to meet up with TEAM-mates who would gather from Zimbabwe and Mozambique.  Later in the week, the area leader and his wife from South Africa joined us for the time that had been set aside to talk about the challenge of a proactive response to HIV/AIDS in the ministry areas represented.