Every now and then I get to get out of the office and get to do some extra-curricular, non-nursing activities which are super fun for me. It's great to get to work with the other branches of Living Hope when I have time, as it means I get to see more of what we do and have more stories to tell you. With the summer interns here, there have been plenty of opportunities for me to literally get my hands dirty! Living Hope needed some painting done in Overcome a few weeks ago, and as I finished my work a little early, I was able to join the interns and help out.
Acquiring space inside the townships for Living Hope to do work is sometimes really difficult. The government claims that each and every one of the 60+ townships (with millions of people living in them since the 60's) are "temporary" so they won't allow anyone to erect permanent buildings or structures or take up too much space in the over-crowded areas. Most of the time our ministries have to make do with running our home-based care program, life skills programs and support groups out of a large metal shipping container. Since the government assumes that the containers can be moved at any time, most of the time they allow us at least one container per township. In fact, almost every building that Living Hope has now, started as a shipping container. Usually the more good we can demonstrate in a community, the more structures the housing authority will allow us to build. Then as we are granted permission, we add an awning, then enclose the outdoor space, or add another container to allow us more room. Over time, we've managed to acquire quite a few buildings in the townships and in one community we have 6 containers with a permanent roof! It's been neat to hear how God has worked in our favor so many times, in so many townships. In the townships of the South-Western Peninsula, Living Hope is the only "outside" NGO (that I know of) that has ever been allotted space inside of a township. Cool huh? Our day in Overcome proved to be just another part of the story of God's favor to Living Hope.
On that very unusually warm winter day, we headed to the Overcome community to paint the exterior of the container "Living Hope Blue" as blue is our standard color of designation. The housing authority operates out of another container that is directly behind the Living Hope container, and we have often gotten quite a lot of resistance from this particular housing authority. Since they are so close they can see and monitor our every move there. Overcome doesn't even have indoor plumbing yet, so you can imagine how difficult of a time we are having getting approval for more space!
As we were painting our container, we had a little bit of contact with the woman in charge next door at the housing office, but as we were finishing, she actually came out to chat. When she overheard that we had some extra blue paint, she quickly asked if we would paint her container too. We were shocked that she would even let us! Knowing that the favor might be returned to us ten-fold at some point, we quickly set to work. In less than an hour we had her whole container completed, and colored exactly the same as ours. We laughed about how people might now confuse her container for Living Hope's and she verbalized that any confusion was fine by her, and that she liked what we were doing in the Overcome community!
After all the painting, the housing lady asked us to pose with her for this photo. (Pictured bellow in front center in a blue jersey.) She explained how tough it is for her to work in these "temporary" containers everyday and how the government won't even allow them the budget for paint when the containers rust out. Needless to say we made her day and she was very happy to talk about approval for future Living Hope projects. Mission accomplished! As it turns out, a little leftover paint can go even further than we thought!
The latex paint took a lot of turpentine to rub off... but it was totally worth it.
