WIld things

So, I saw the Movie "Where the Wild Things Are" with Olivia yesterday, I liked it, it was a very sweet and fun movie. Definitely for those of us who loved to imagine and dream as kids.It reminded me of some "wild things" that I met in Africa. I don't know what it is about naughty children, but I find them to be a tiny bit more precious than the good ones. Don't get me wrong there's nothing better than a well mannered child (and I certainly was one), but there's just something about taming a "wild thing" that is special

It specifically reminded me of this wild thing. He's Mama Marie's baby from this post. (I wish I could take credit for this photo, but one of the women on the team took it, and its definitely my favorite picture from the trip!) I love this kid! He's definitely a mama's boy and until the last two weeks of my trip he could not be pried from his mother's arms without screaming like a banshee.

I developed a three pronged system to tame him, though. It involved feeding him various fruits like he was an Arabian sheik, then never standing still, keeping him in constant motion, and finally humming several classic rock songs in succession in a low and comforting tone.

The sweetest thing, though, is when a "wild thing" after all the wild struggling falls asleep in your arms, and even though this kids was hefty to begin with, and completely a dead weight when sleeping it was lovely to hold him and kiss his chubby cheeks, and enjoy his peaceful face while he was sleeping.

I don't really have any great spiritual truth or lesson learned from this, just that a wild thing tamed is a precious thing. Until they wake up, that is : ) Mama Marie actually asked me to take him back to America with me in a fit of exhaustion, I said no mostly because I don't think there are enough fruits and classic rock songs to keep this kid calm on a 16 hour flight!

My 16 year old pregnant girl

This is "my 16 year old pregnant girl" I love her. This girl is such a sweetie, she doesn't really speak any English, but she stole my heart. She told me through a translator that she didn't know who the father was, and later on it came out that her mother was making her go out and sell herself, and then taking all her money.

Ugh...it makes me so sad. So, I gave her a supply of prenatal vitamins, but what I really want to give her is a sense of self worth. She has such a servant's heart, she doesn't go to school, but she helps Mama Bonkiwe (of the clau clau feeding scheme) with preparing food, and then she helps serve the food in the afternoons, she gets a little money from that, but her mother takes it all : ( It makes me mad, and it makes me really really sad.

My heart is especially tender towards pregnant people, I love the miracle of birth, and so many times in depressed areas the women and children are the ones who get neglected. Part of what I would like to do in the future is to train health advocates in prenatal care, and childbirth. Right now, though, at this very moment, I wish that I could take this girl home with me and spoil her, and let her know how special and lovely she is. I wish I could sit next to her again and tangibly remind her that she is beautiful and worthy of love, that she deserves more.

Back in the USA

So, I am back home, and still adjusting to living in the States. I miss all the kids. Alot. More than I thought I would. I miss the mamas. I miss this:


This was a favorite passtime of the kids in Clau Clau, me taking video of them being crazy and then they all gather around to watch it on my little camera screen. They all loved to be the one to press the "play" button.

This kid below in the blue shirt LOVES to take pictures with my camera! He did a good job too!
Here's a picture he took of me, which isn't particularly flattering, I don't think I'll every wear that sweatshirt again. So, this sounds super corny and sentimental, but when I look at this picture that this kid took of me, whose name I can't even pronounce, much less spell : ) I feel the love that he has for me. I don't even know why this kid loves me, but I know for sure that he does, and I don't know why this unflattering picture makes me feel so loved, maybe because when I handed him my camera that was the first picture he took, and kept taking pictures of me until I encouraged him to turn his attentions to the much more photogenic children and mamas.

All I know is this: those kids taught me so much about love, they also left me with alot of questions. Like why was I born in the States to two parents who love me and were able to protect me. Why have I been blessed with so much and these kids have so much to overcome. I've always felt like there is nothing I can't do, and these kids have no garuntees that they are even going to be able to make it to 4th grade, much less university. Those are questions, I'm sure, that have been asked before by people smarter than me, and I don't have any good answers. I know, though, that me feeling guilty won't solve anything, and help or "charity" given out of guilt rarely does anyone any good.

I'm not sure exactly what that will look like, but I have to believe that I've been given me these overwhelming opportunities, and blessings, and resources, so that I can make the lives of people who have been given nothing better. A lot of times people will say something to the effect that I am a special person to go and do things for other people, but you have to know that the rewards are so tangible and so ginormous, that there is no sacrifice involved for me, its not like I'm some Martyr or something (and HELLO I am enjoying all the first world comforts of America right at this very moment one of which being the iphone) This is definitely a passion, and I can't think of any other way that I'd rather be living. So, just know that I am nothing special, and I am blessed beyond what I could ever earn or deserve.
(I know this is a big relief, because you were totally thinking Michelle is Awesome and how can I devote more hours in my day to pondering her awesomeness ; )

If you are going to ponder anyone ponder Princess and her sister Bongi, who takes princesses bossing with grace and loveliness that I can only aspire to : ) Sorry this pic is so blurry, but I just love bongi's expression even though princess is hogging the shot, she's stealing the show : )

So, I have about a zillion photos and stories to tell, I hope that you will stay tuned because I am planning on keeping up with posting even after I've exhausted all my Africa adventures. I am definitely not ever going to stop having adventures, and I hope I will always be able to share them with you.

This is a short one

Hey guys! The team is here and I don't have any time to post!!! Just wanted to let you know I'm not dead, and also I will be posting some AWESOME posts once I get home! Love you all, and see some of you soon!

A better post : )

I am in Swaziland right now taking a little break, so I will try to do a few posts with pictures : ) I am working on health education posters, which I am mostly drawing freehand with some tracing, and then coloring in with my trusty crayola 24 pack. This is me with the first poster I finished. Its about dental health, the other ones that I am doing are nutrition, fire safety, baby care, keeping your body safe from HIV/AIDS, and not getting an infection when you get your head shaved....so several topics of which I am now an expert!?!?!?

Here is a picture of a chicken, this is for my mom, because before I left I told her that there were no chickens in Africa, because I wanted her to make eggs for breakfast one morning. She believed me, so just in case there's any confusion there are plenty of eggs and chickens in Africa!

Below are two pictures of my baby and my baby mama. I love them. She is due to graduate high school soon, but she needed a scientific calculator so we got one for her : ) I wish I could take this baby home. I have cried twice just thinking about leaving her.This next one is a picture of princess she is Mama Bongiwe's daughter and she's the boss of me. Don't let her precious face deceive you, this child is the boss of everyone who comes around including her own parents and her sister. She is a benevolent dictator, though, and usually allows me to hold my baby (who she thinks is her baby), and she does have a very precious face
: )I love her. I am so sad to leave all these kids, but at least I will be leaving them worm free!! I purchased 100 deworming pills and I'm going to enlist some of the team that's coming from the USA next week to help me deworm all the children!! I'm sooo excited.

This is not an exciting post

Sorry, I'm not on my laptop so I don't have any fun pictures, but on Wednesday or Thursday I'm going to try to go to the internet cafe and post some exciting stories with pictures! I am still busy checking the children at the 4 ministry sites, we are contemplating deworming the kids in Clau Clau (the feeding scheme) and Msokwaba (the church without a roof), so thats something to look forward too : ) Deworming is actually less gross than it sounds, as it involves administering an oral medication (sorry to dissapoint those who were hoping for pictures of me wrassling a worm!!)

Lets see...what else? On Sunday in one of the churches we attended the pastor complimented me for singing along when they sing in their language, so that was funny. Whats really funny is I have no idea what I'm singing....the songs are just easy to follow and I'm used to hearing them : ) Honestly we could be singing Anti-American propaganda and I wouldn't be the wiser!!! That is the church that meets under a tent, and there is a precious kid at this church who always winks at me : ) He, apparently was impressed with my willingness to talk sports with him at length when we first met, and now I can do no wrong in his eyes!!! Maybe I should try this with eligible bachelors??

I've spent the most time with the kids in Clau Clau, so they are especially precious to me, and I find myself thinking about them a lot! I can picture each of their faces and their crazy names!! My favorite crazy name from last week was Events....I wonder what it was about his conception or birth that earned him that name?? I was reading in the paper today about some criminals convicted on some crime or another, and one of the names was Innocent!! I found that to be deliciously ironic, and have already started filing away names for my own future children!

Well, this post is getting too long without pictures so I will sign off for now, and I promise I'll have some good stories in a few days for you : ) Thanks for all the comments, I LOVE them!!!

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve written a good blog! I’ve been busy checking the children in all of our projects. Mostly at Good Hope feeding scheme, which is another way of saying feeding program, I guess. This is a village project run by a woman and her husband, Mama Bongiwe. They feed over 90 children each week, one meal a day after school. Mercy Medicine brings supplies when needed and looks after the health of the children. Once weekly on Fridays the children have a bible based program which is taught by Mama Thule, Mama Bongiwe also holds services each Sunday in the small “church” building. These children are either orphaned or abandoned and from poverty stricken homes.

Here’s a picture of Mama Bongiwe, that’s not her baby, she looks after this baby while the baby’s mom is in school. Whenever we go there they say to Janice and I “Here’s your baby”, because one of us is always holding her while we are there! Here’s a picture of me checking one of the children, his name is Doctor, which I didn’t realize until they handed me his assessment sheet, and I thought people were calling him Doctor as a nickname!

There’s another boy named Surprise at this project, and a girl named “Pretty”!! I think that’s very cheeky to name your kid Pretty, especially if she ends up growing up to be ugly!! So far I’ve checked almost 100 children. This week we are going to Good Hope a few extra times so I can finish assessing all of them, and then I will have the 2 churches to finish and Msokwaba, which I’ve told you a little about already! The goal is to have a baseline assessment for Janice to build on once she gets the mobile clinic, and also to kind of know what sort of health problems she will be dealing with, and what kinds of treatments she can have on board.

On Saturday we went to Moholoholo nature reserve which is basically an animal rescue program and I got to pet a cheetah! Janice and I were in line together so I didn’t get a picture of either of us petting it, but here’s a pic of some random South Africans petting it!

Here’s a pic of a baby rhino too, he can’t poop, poor thing. It’s a very cool place and you can look it up online, the founder spoke to us, and it was really cool to see the animals that close! When the team comes we are going to take them there, and I’m already looking forward to it! Make sure to scroll down, there’s another blog under this one! I'll be adding pics tomorrow when I have a better internet connection, for now you'll just have to use your imagination : )

Elizabeth’s story

Elizabeth is an HIV+ woman who Janice has looked after for a while she has 4 kids, 2 older boys who are not infected, and then 2 younger children Sizwe and Charmaine who are infected. The picture above is her and her 2 youngest. They are 14 and 6. Elizabeth works 12 hour days 6 days a week (it used to be 7, but she has recently been able to take Sundays off to go to church.) They pay her 500 Rand a month, that’s around 71 American dollars, which is basically crazy.



She and the 2 children go to ACTS clinic, which is dedicated to the care of patients with HIV/AIDS; they have over 25,000 patients, whom they care for on a monthly basis. There are adult and children’s clinics, and OBGYN services for the infected as well as a Hospice. They also have a Home Based Care service, where they provide care for patients in their homes. They provide regular check ups, lab work, support groups, ARVs (Anti Retro Viral drugs), and testing at their facility. They have several doctors on staff, as well as nurses and social workers. Janice takes Elizabeth and the kids there every 3 months to get checked as well as to get their ARV supply. This last time they were short on ARVs, and apparently the entire nation is also short, so we’ll be going back at the end of this month to hopefully get the rest of Elizabeth’s meds.



Anyway, Mercy Medicine usually subsidizes the meds and Elizabeth gets a small stipend for the children, but still $71 is not nearly enough to even begin to feed 5 people! It’s not like she can get another job either, as basically all her time is spent on this one. We are trying to get some supporters for this family so that they Elizabeth can stay home and take care of her kids, and take care of herself!



It’s a very sad thing, Elizabeth is not an IV drug user, she didn’t go out and have crazy sex with multiple partners (I’m sure that last sentence will give some lovely sickos courtesy of Google!), she was faithful to her husband, and he gave her this disease in return for her faithfulness. He’s probably off infecting other women or dead so he’s not there anymore to provide support for the woman and 2 children that he infected. I think of Sizwe a young man who doesn’t seem bitter about the disease that he didn’t do anything to get, but whose whole existence will always revolve around his HIV status.



It doesn’t help that in Africa being HIV+ is still considered a shameful thing that is not talked about, which is crazy because the majority of people are infected. When I’m at home, I don’t really think about these things except in abstract conversation, but here it’s so present, it’s a part of almost everyone’s life and nobody is talking about it! Don’t even get me started on the PSCA (poor starving children of Africa); it is so hard to even begin to think of solving these problems because they are so vast and so common here. I just have to know that I am helping one Mama and her children who are HIV+ to survive, to have a decent life, and to not be hungry this month. While the solution isn’t Americans throwing money at the problem, because eventually the money will run out, it also isn’t we who have so much abandoning those who have nothing to their own devices. I agree with Obama that it has to be Africans gaining the tools they need, and the courage they need to do something about their own nation! I struggle with how to do this, the balance of feeding someone for a day or giving them the tools to feed themselves for a lifetime. It is impossible for me to allow someone go hungry in the meantime, though.



Incidentally, if you would like to throw money at Mama Elizabeth, please be my guest, e-mail me, and we will arrange it. She’s a good woman who works hard and is trying to help her family. I guess I will step off my soapbox now and get back to work! My time here is already half way over! I'll leave you with a picture of Elizabeth and I, she isn't so sure about having her picture taken : )

Promises promises

Hey guys, I promise I'm going to post some proper stories with pics sometime this week (maybe even later on today). The stories about church and Mama Elizabeth will have to wait until next week, as we didn't make it to the village churches this Sunday, not to worry I have some nice pictures for you with great stories!

My mom wanted me to clarify what a "feeding scheme" is, and I don't blame her as it sounds a bit shady : )

So, the Clau Clau feeding scheme is called to Good Hope Centre and its a mama who feeds the children of her community once a day every day. She has gotten some funding from several sources, and she has some ladies that work with her and helps her to prepare the meals for the kids. About 100 kids are fed there, and for most of them its their only meal. I will post some more pics of that soon, I promise!! They are hoping to buy some land near where they are now, and build a more permanent structure! They also have a little service with a story and coloring and such once a week, we are going to try to get them to do it more often, because the kids enjoy it so much!

This week and next I will be working on getting baseline assessments of all the children in all our projects, so that when we finally get our hands on the mobile clinic we will be ready to serve them! Very exciting!

Also, I lost my camera for a few days, but now I have it back, thank goodness!!! Don't worry nothing exciting happened during that time!

Love to all, and thanks for the comments and e-mails!

Have a great day, and keep your eyes peeled for more posts! (that is kind of a gross figure of speech.....keep your eyes peeled, yuck, now I have a disgusting mental picture of peeled eyes.......)

Odds and Ends

I will be posting about each ministry here, soon but I just wanted to post a little note to let you know what I've been up to! Thanks to all the commenters, I just signed up to receive my comments in e-mail, so that should make it easier to respond, but it is sooo encouraging to read your comments. Please feel free to e-mail me at michelleleebissell@gmail.com I love to hear from all of you!

It is still FREEZING here!! Sunday was a crazy day because we went to 2 churches, I'll be posting more about church next week because I will have better pictures. On Tuesday we went to ACTS clinic which is an HIV clinic that has a patient load of 25, 000 people. We were taking one of the mamas and her son there, Mama Elizabeth. I will be posting more about her story after Sunday as well because I want you to have a picture of her family and maybe her home, too!

After ACTS we went back to town to pick up some visitors, and the we drove up the mountain to Msakwaba (spelling subject to change). Msakwaba is an unafiliated church without a roof here is a picture of it

Pastor Marie and her husband are the pastors here. Pastor Marie also heads up the home based care ladies and the children's church, she does all of this with her baby strapped to her back, and he is quite squirmy. Here is a picture of her and him together

The home based care ladies go up and down the mountains to peoples houses praying for the sick and providing any care that they can. Next week I'll be going with them and I'm sure I will have stories. I'm also planning on starting a health database of all the children in the different programs so that when we get the mobile clinic running we will have a baseline for everyone.

I will leave you with a picture of the lovely coffee I can get here : ) Keep the comments coming! Oh, and I deleted the video of the children singing as you can't hear a thing! I will get a much better one for you soon!

clau clau

I went to the village feeding scheme yesterday and it was so awesome. A young woman who stayed here with Janice a few months ago, Christine, left a legacy of 4 children's "Sunday Schools", my favorite thing about these is that a local woman teaches at each of the places. Its so awesome to see African women taking responsibility for the work here! I was doing the important job of holding a 4 month old while taking the video! Below is a short one of the precious little baby.

My South Africa home

I thought I'd show you our sweet little cottage! I love it!! Above is the kitchen, tonight I'm making apple pie, pray that it bakes in our tiny oven!


This is me in front of the bookshelf modeling my sleeping bag my mom made me, I uploaded this accidentaly and its not letting me delete it, so here you go!

My toilet wears a dress, I forgot to make this go in the right direction before I posted, sorry!

This is a calla lily out in the garden in the courtyard:

This is my room:

I love it here. Its nice to come home from work in the village and have a peaceful, restful place to lay your head!

Loooong post!

Well, I am here safe and sound in White River, Mpumalanga, South Africa!

I think I said in my last post that I was overweight on both my bags, and had to repack things, and leave a few things behind! A lot of the stuff I actually had to put in my carry on, which was literally back breaking! I think my carry on weighed 50lbs!!! It was horrible to carry, and to maneuver on the plane! Stuffing it under the seat in front of me was an Olympic event! Not to mention getting it out again……

The flight to South Africa from Atlanta was looooong! Each seat had its own personal television with different movies and TV shows and music, though, so the entertainment was lovely! I watched the Hannah Montana movie, and I am a bit ashamed to say so, but I LOVED it! I think I watched, like, 5 movies, which unfortunately is not a very spiritual thing to report on my blog……I guess maybe I should have held revival services or something, but I don’t think that would have been well received by my fellow passengers. Plus, the flight attendants were unwilling to sing “just as I am” over the microphone while I held an altar call in first class ( I asked….Just kidding!)

Speaking of first class, there were no extra seats available on the plane, in fact they were bribing people to give up their seats, and offering them a seat on first class the next day! If I wasn’t so eager to get to South Africa I definitely would have taken that offer! So, I did not have an opportunity to upgrade, unfortunately, because let me just say-they have BEDS in first class on international flights now! That, my friends, is an especially depressing thought when you are crammed in coach trying to sleep 7 hours in to the flight!

Besides the normal fun things that international flights have, something slightly exciting happened! About 8 hours in to the flight there was a commotion next to me, and all the flight attendants were gathered around the middle seats across the aisle from my seat. Turns out this lady had lost consciousness and was going in and out of consciousness. So, I grabbed my stethoscope (which thankfully I had to take out of my checked bags at the gate!) and climbed (literally) over the 2 people sitting next to me, and told the flight attendants that I was a registered nurse and what could I do to help? Turns out the poor lady who was about my age had a history of altitude sickness.

A South African MD came over to help with his “nurse”, who I think was actually just his wife, because she was a bit useless until it came time to take the BP….so the doctor is going on about testing her Blood sugar blah blah…I suggested we just give her some OJ, which we did and she perked up quite a bit. Then he gave her some coffee (her BP was low and he thought the coffee would raise it…I was a bit skeptical, but I didn’t want to question him-even on the plane I have a doctor phobia!) Even though she was perking up her BP continued to be in the high 80’s, which I think as long as someone was keeping an eye on her was fine, but the doctor and his wife decided to start an IV and run a bag of fluid! Honestly I wasn’t expecting him to be able to start an IV, but he did it on one try! I was very impressed, and my respect for him raised quite a bit!

As I said I am planning on posting these first posts over a few days, because there’s so much here! I’ve almost written a novel here, and I haven’t even gotten off the plane yet! Here is a picture of my first “proper African” meal, Beef and Pop, which is basically a tasty beef stew over a starchy mashed rice tasting stuff…it was very good, although I still would prefer mashed potatoes!!


So, when I finally landed in Johannesburg the flight had ended up being an hour late due to tail winds apparently! They checked and stamped my passport without saying a peep to me, and since I didn’t have any seeds or vegetables to declare I bypassed customs entirely! I’m still a bit puzzled about that, but since my luggage was last to come off the plane I was grateful for any timesaver, poor Janice, I think, was worried that I wasn’t on the plane! She looked soo relieved when I walked through the gate!

Janice had planned for us to stay in a guest house in Pretoria; I became a little alarmed when she told me that I would have to navigate for her, as my spiritual gift is definitely not navigation! Long story short we spent 2 hours driving around Jo-burg and who knows where else trying to find our way. Between the driving around and the 15 hour flight I was ready to toss my cookies! In fact a few times, I was *this close* to asking Janet to stop so I could “cast up my accounts” on the side of the road! Thankfully we finally made it to the lovely guest house, I was never so grateful to see a bed!!! It gets soooo cold at night here, but my mom made me a lovely fleece sleeping bag which keeps me so toasty. Here is a picture of it; it’s like having a hug from my mama every night!

The next morning we headed up the mountains to White River, Mpumalanga. Its lovely scenery and Janice says that in the summer (its winter here) the hills are covered in flowers and green grass! She gave me quite an orientation to the culture and the ministries and the politics of South Africa! Honestly its all a bit of a jumble now, but I will eventually be able to formulate my own thoughts and opinions and I will share them here as I acquire them : )

Something exciting that I will be a part of while I am here is helping Janice prepare her mobile medical clinic! She has lots of resources as far as some training manuals for the community health advocates. Its very interesting to read her training manual for teaching the HIV/TB workshops! I am already learning sooo much! So, I will be coming up with something definite for a manual for the mobile medical clinic. I’m also looking into getting some basic textbooks from Amazon to leave here as references for people working at the clinic. We’ll be primarily dealing with women and children, so the references will be for those mostly.

I am learning so much about the culture here, its very interesting and the politics are crazy! Its funny because they all hate America, but looooove Obama! He is incredibly popular here! More so than in the USA! Its wild!

The coffee situation here is very nice, there is a cute coffee shop with yummy espresso drinks within walking distance of our cottage, plus I have my precious little French press, and praise the Lord Janice is one of the chosen people (coffee drinker)!! So, in case you were concerned now you can rest assured that my coffee addiction is being enabled and going strong here!

still in the states, but on my way : )

well, I'm in the Fort Myers airport and I had a bit of a stressful time! Both my bags were overweight, so I had to repack right at the check in desk. The most stressful thing was the two ladies behind the desk making suggestions............I wish they would have just let the few lbs slide! Also my dad was commentating the whole thing........so, I had to leave a few things behind and my carry on backpack weighs 5,000 lbs, but I am on my way!!!!! I am soooo excited! Next time I blog it will for sure be in South Africa!

Its South Africa time!

Well, the promised video post is not going to happen, trust me it was a painful packing experience, so you should probably be glad that I didn't video any part of it! I hate packing, and the more available space I have the worse off I am. I don't know why, I am definitely an emotional packer, when I start trying to fit everything in the bag and it doesn't all want to go in, I start to get irrational. I had a system this time, which was completely abandoned half way through for the more exciting "roll things up in a tiny ball and stuff them in, then have your mom sit on your bag while you try to zip it up". Not fun.

Now that I'm all packed and ready to fly off in a few hours I am getting more and more excited.

I'm nervous and excited! My next post will be from South Africa!!!

Leaving on a jet plane

I am getting so excited to go to South Africa. I've been packing, and I'm thinking of doing a video update once I finish packing so that you can see the beauty of my handiwork. Let me just say that I have utilized Ziplock bags in a slightly excessive manner!!

I'm also getting nervous about the 15 hour flight! I'm going to admit that most of my thoughts lately have been centered around upgrading my flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg to first class! If its less than $200 I'm going for it. I had a patient the last 2 days I worked that made me cry, so I am considering the money I earned those days as especially hard earned, and am allowing myself to get a luxury with it!

I am going to try and post on here at least every other day if not every day when I'm in South Africa, and I'm going to try to use video posting at least once a week! I'll be posting a couple more times before I go!