Let’s stop the time for a while

Once you reach a place where you are completely at ease and experience that the things you do are of essential human interest, then the feeling for time disappears entirely.
Regularly I hear myself say: “I should update my weblog, I must keep in contact with friends and family …” and each time “I make a plan” to start writing.
At last I can stop the time for a while and concentrate on writing out my experiences.

Today we are Sunday, 13 januarie 2008 (as my computer indicates in African). Summer here and winter at the other side of the earth.
Strange to hear that friends are going skiing or that people let you know they had to scratch the ice of their car window.
Temperature here is climbing above 32 degrees and we all walk around with as little cloths as decently possible.
A plunge in the water is welcome at every moment of the day.
Christmas period was very special. With temperatures of 25 degrees, Father(s) Christmas walk(s) around in terribly warm costumes to welcome the kids in their bathing cloths.
Through the corridors of shopping centres sounded “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” .. weird … very weird.
I have tried to create a Christmas feeling at home, a Christmas-tree with Christmas-balls and small lights … cosy but still no real Christmas sphere … on Christmas-day we sat with our feet in the swimming pool and the Christmas-tree stood lonely in the house.

While the festive period passes unnoticed, we are confronted with things that happen outside this Christmas-sphere:
again a rape
again a child disappeared
again a funeral
again a family ripped apart
again a maltreatment
again an infection
again a …

One could say that life goes on smoothly, again another …
This HAS TO stop, we cannot accept that people are abandoned to their fate and disappear in anonymity.
We have to use our energy in a different way, we must be woken up and realize what is all going on.
Het leven gaat weer gewoon zijn gangetje zou je kunnen zeggen, weer een zoveelste...

Fortunately I experienced over the last year that more and more people put their shoulder to the wheel to support their fellow-people.
Daily I meet people that take action to help other people.
Generally, these actions are small-scale and people keep control over their activities.
These people meet regularly to share their experiences.
This trend, i.e. that organisations and individuals meet and build links, is rather new.

It has meanwhile been proven that smaller aid organisations or even individuals work much more efficient than large groupings.
The involvement is much more intense and help is sooner offered thanks to this involvement. During these meetings, the various smaller workgroups get an idea of who they can contact when they encounter a problem that is not immediately part of their knowledge area.
From my own experience I learnt that one does not have to gather all knowledge within 1 organisation; you simply share the knowledge of all organisations.
This way, assistance is given much faster and more smoothly.
The last two months were pretty heavy with a lot to think about and give a place. A few people that came into my life with a request for help, died of the main disease AIDS/HIV.
Since I was so involved in the families, I helped them with the preparations for the funerals; a completely new experience to me: to discover how difficult the procedure is to organise a worthy funeral, the coldness with which people are treated though they just heard that their daughter/son/father/mother … has died; of course with a daily average of 10 patients dying, well … it gets a habit.

To lose people is always painful but the reason why they disappear can help to accept it but for me it is unacceptable to accept this reason. People do not have to die of AIDS/HIV, and we, all, point at the government. It is frustrating to hear that the ANC still (JANUARY 2008) denies that AIDS/HIV is a main problem in South Africa while every day thousands of people die of it.


But we may not give up. The individual needs our support, our understanding, our compassion, our help very hard.
Because we tell our stories, share our experiences, people get more conscious of the reality.
When I hear the stories of the volunteers I become very quiet, each time, but also happy that these stories will in the end reach people that are also willing to help.
I am convinced that more and more people are concerned about the situations in poorer parts of the world. The more this is known, the more help will be offered.
I also believe that governments are waking up and meet more and more with opposition because they want to smother up certain situations. More and more people in “high” positions are willing to make known what happens “behind the scenes”.
I don’t want to talk politics, but just want to inform that indeed things are changing.
And in order not to stop this improvement, we have to keep everyone alert.
Still much has to happen and there is still a lot of work to do to make the gap smaller.

When we all do what we feel we should do, then I am sure that a lot of problems will be solved in the near future.

Gunter