Where does the money go?
Fr Jack Gillick Writes, to tell us how your donations have been spent in his part of the world.
Fr Jack Gillick visiting the staff at Nazareth House, Cape Town
It’s a long time since I dropped you a line to let you know how the money from the generous donors of Jesuits and Friends has been used. I’ve been in and out of hospital in the past year and have emerged from the last bout to be able to greet Alan Fernandes (assistant director of Jesuit Missions) and take him to visit Nazareth House.
Apart from a donation to the Missionaries of Charity for their AIDS hospice in Khayelitsha, I have concentrated on two projects:
First-Nazareth House. There has been a real expansion of this AIDS work and it has now become their major concern. A benefactor has provided the babies with ante-retroviral drugs. This is a wonderful blessing, but brings new problems: the administration of the medication is very complicated and, as the children will live longer, the whole pattern of caring for them is changing. Already more and more are living longer. Thanks to the tender loving caring from nursing and ‘family living’-one girl has just died and she was only eleven. Now with ARV therapy, more and more will be growing to adolescence and maturing, with all the new problems this will present in providing for them.
LJSO Nobandal the AIDS day-care they started a couple of years ago among the shacks at Khayelitsha, now has 62 children each day. They are now building a hospice for dying babies so that their mothers can be with them. Nazareth house itself was falling apart and has had to be totally gutted and reconstructed at enormous cost. So the Sisters have taken the opportunity to turn one wing into a beautiful AIDS hospice for the dying. In three months they have had 13 deaths. The patients came to die, as they were discharged from hospital as there is nothing more that can be done for them.
As the Sisters trust totally in Providence, every cent has had a blessing. They are filled with gratitude. The second project is way up in the north east on the borders with Swaziland and Mozambique. I went to stay with Rollo and Inky Grenville, on their large fruit and vegetable farm, to convalesce after surgery.
My experience of AIDS in the past 12 years has been mainly in the western Cape, the least infected province in the farm they employ 650 workers-Over 60% are HIV. It’s a nightmare! There are thousands of orphans. Rollo, who has retired from running the farm, spends days collecting food from their own land, neighbouring farmers, Woolworths, Pick & Pay, the Army etc. To try to help feed 2,000 orphans each week-and that is only in their immediate neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, Inky, his wife, tries to look after the farm workers. Their policy is that none will be dismissed because they have AIDS. So it is important to try to keep them healthy so that they can provide for their children and remain productive on the farm.
For years Rollo and Inky have both been battling with ill-health-He with ME and she crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. She heard of this Rife machine and inside of a year most of the debilitating effects of ME have been cleared up for Rollo, and Inky is free from the effects of arthritis!
So she has got a few more machines and uses them for the farm-workers. The results have been remarkable-for Cancer, TB, HIV (it appears to boost the immune system), burns, wounds, bronchitis, sinusitis, flu (gone in 3-4 days) etc. She is trying to obtain some more machines for use on the nearby Home Based care clinic that Rollo helps with food, plus some 12 little sub-clinics for AIDS orphans, babies and their parents.
I was deeply touched by this response of an ordinary family to the tragedy around them and was very happy to be able to help a little with some money from Jesuit and Friends. As you see, the need is limitless. So a thousand thanks to all the generous friends whose every penny is treasured here.
God bless,
Jack Gillick SJ
Fr Jack Gillick visiting the staff at Nazareth House, Cape Town
It’s a long time since I dropped you a line to let you know how the money from the generous donors of Jesuits and Friends has been used. I’ve been in and out of hospital in the past year and have emerged from the last bout to be able to greet Alan Fernandes (assistant director of Jesuit Missions) and take him to visit Nazareth House.
Apart from a donation to the Missionaries of Charity for their AIDS hospice in Khayelitsha, I have concentrated on two projects:
First-Nazareth House. There has been a real expansion of this AIDS work and it has now become their major concern. A benefactor has provided the babies with ante-retroviral drugs. This is a wonderful blessing, but brings new problems: the administration of the medication is very complicated and, as the children will live longer, the whole pattern of caring for them is changing. Already more and more are living longer. Thanks to the tender loving caring from nursing and ‘family living’-one girl has just died and she was only eleven. Now with ARV therapy, more and more will be growing to adolescence and maturing, with all the new problems this will present in providing for them.
LJSO Nobandal the AIDS day-care they started a couple of years ago among the shacks at Khayelitsha, now has 62 children each day. They are now building a hospice for dying babies so that their mothers can be with them. Nazareth house itself was falling apart and has had to be totally gutted and reconstructed at enormous cost. So the Sisters have taken the opportunity to turn one wing into a beautiful AIDS hospice for the dying. In three months they have had 13 deaths. The patients came to die, as they were discharged from hospital as there is nothing more that can be done for them.
As the Sisters trust totally in Providence, every cent has had a blessing. They are filled with gratitude. The second project is way up in the north east on the borders with Swaziland and Mozambique. I went to stay with Rollo and Inky Grenville, on their large fruit and vegetable farm, to convalesce after surgery.
My experience of AIDS in the past 12 years has been mainly in the western Cape, the least infected province in the farm they employ 650 workers-Over 60% are HIV. It’s a nightmare! There are thousands of orphans. Rollo, who has retired from running the farm, spends days collecting food from their own land, neighbouring farmers, Woolworths, Pick & Pay, the Army etc. To try to help feed 2,000 orphans each week-and that is only in their immediate neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, Inky, his wife, tries to look after the farm workers. Their policy is that none will be dismissed because they have AIDS. So it is important to try to keep them healthy so that they can provide for their children and remain productive on the farm.
For years Rollo and Inky have both been battling with ill-health-He with ME and she crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. She heard of this Rife machine and inside of a year most of the debilitating effects of ME have been cleared up for Rollo, and Inky is free from the effects of arthritis!
So she has got a few more machines and uses them for the farm-workers. The results have been remarkable-for Cancer, TB, HIV (it appears to boost the immune system), burns, wounds, bronchitis, sinusitis, flu (gone in 3-4 days) etc. She is trying to obtain some more machines for use on the nearby Home Based care clinic that Rollo helps with food, plus some 12 little sub-clinics for AIDS orphans, babies and their parents.
I was deeply touched by this response of an ordinary family to the tragedy around them and was very happy to be able to help a little with some money from Jesuit and Friends. As you see, the need is limitless. So a thousand thanks to all the generous friends whose every penny is treasured here.
God bless,
Jack Gillick SJ