Location: Estcourt, South Africa
Contact: kee.ryan@gmail.com
Some memories stick with a person a lifetime, and perhaps even longer. Set at the foot of the breathtaking Drakensberg Mountains, Estcourt is a small, rural town in the KwZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. Despite a colourful history, the town is nationally famous today for the same reason as my home town in Northern Ireland: sausages…
In the summer of 2005, I travelled to Estcourt as part of an Exodus team, where we were comissioned to the capable guide of Erlo Driemeyer, the coordinator of ‘Hearts of Compassion’ – a ministry of our host church, the Midlands Christian Centre. Erlo’s mission is one of reaching out to those families who have desperate needs, with little or no source of income, offering food, clothing, and practical help in an attempt to “minister to the needs of the whole person – spirit, soul, mind, and body- and to give people, who have no hope, a sure hope in Jesus Christ.” In rural South Africa, this means the man has his hands full…
Put simply, Erlo changed my life. Due to the events of those 3 weeks in Estcourt, I still find myself scribbling his name onto my knuckles whenever I’m lost in thought.
On our first day, before there was even time for orientation to our new surroundings, Erlo took us out into the wasteland wilderness of rural South Africa. He had recently heard of a new family in need; everything else could wait.
We eventually stopped at what can only be called half of a house, and that’s by rural South African standards. 5 children occupied this home, cluttered with scraps of nothing, and the remains of junk; infested with dust and dirt. In places, the clay walls had simply crumbled away, natural air conditioning. The children never really knew their father; he barely existed, and had disappeared a long ago. Their mother had recently taken off – either with a new partner, or simply due to her inability to cope with the family’s dire situation. The eldest child was 17.
Our team stood there, stunned. None of us had seen poverty like this before. None of us had seen anything like this before. This was Erlo’s first visit to the site also. After looking around for a few moments, his assessment was complete. “Right”, he said in a very usual and normal tone. “Let’s get to work”.
Over the course of the next afternoon, and under the direction and encouragement of our fearless leader Erlo, we removed everything from that house – and I mean everything. The remaining single room, no bigger than my bathroom, was then thoroughly swept and dusted from tip-to-toe. All pots and pans were cleaned with water and soap that Erlo carries permanently in his truck. What little toiletries, food, and school supplies that the kids had were collected, cleaned, sealed, and secured. The single bed – the only bed the family had – was removed and cleaned. This included careful disposal of the debris stored underneath, including the ream of barbed wire that had begun cutting through the mattress from below, and which was sprawling out into the room. We all struggled to come to grips with how anyone, never mind parentless children, could live in this place.
The clothes were put into a large tin basin, filled with soap and water – but cleaning them was proving difficult. Erlo ushered us aside, removed his socks and shoes, and hopped into the basin. He began stomping around, churning the clothes with his feet. This medieval method made him look like as if he was taking part in ‘La Tomatina’ – Spain’s annual tomato fight festival. Although amused, we were amazed. This man was on a mission; willing to get his hands dirty for the cause. 
The clothes were dried on tree branches, and eventually everything was reorganised back into the house. The palace was complete. Relatively speaking, a palace is what it was. Of course less than nothing by our glutinous standards, but the improvement was honestly remarkable.
It was the most emotionally draining day of my life, and that feeling was widespread throughout our team. We wouldn’t have been physically empowered or emotionally capable of doing any of it without Erlo’s constant guide and supreme example of willingness and desire. The man was an inspiration.
We all learned a great lesson that day; the lesson of dirty hands. My dad used to tell me of grandpa’s ‘working hands’ – dirty, scarred, and calloused from a lifetime of hard work on his farm. Erlo’s hands were something similar. More than that, Erlo’s life and attitude was mirrored in his willingness to jump into any situation, ready for action, prepared to get his hands dirty in doing what must be done. For that moment, nothing mattered more than getting those clothes clean; there was no greater meaning in life than getting the children’s house ship-shape.
The youngest of the children was about 7 years old; at first somewhat scared of the intruders. She eventually warmed to our presence, and soon scurried around the house, watching and helping us clean. At the end of the day, as adrenaline ceased to flow, and as the sun set behind the mountains, we began to recall the dire situation of these children. Our achievement for the day held so much importance in the moment, but we were all becoming emotionally afflicted with what the future held for this family.
Then this little girl, notably unaware of her precarious situation, waved at us and smiled from the door of her home. It was one of those smiles. Several hearts were broken in that moment, and hope seemed to reside in the palace once more. I tried to snap a quick shot of her – she began to giggle and hide her face from the camera. I beat her to it and obtained my Kodak moment.
For the remainder of our time in South Africa, Erlo guided us through a programme of organising school assemblies, teaching at nurseries, visiting children’s orphanages and hospitals, preparing and distributing food and clothing packages, operating home visits, ministering to spiritually ‘traditional’ rural villages, and whatever else simply needed to be done. Erlo doesn’t care much for logistics; if something needs done, then it needs done. In his schedule of priorities, he himself is at the bottom of the list.
Erlo is constantly ‘getting his hand’s dirty’, if not always literally. Dirty hands are a mere consequence of caring enough to get off our backside to do something about the need surrounding us. Thank God for people with dirty hands.
Notes:
The Midlands Christian Centre is a church community in Estcourt, deploying the vision of fulfilling God's strategy for the area, requiring ministry to the 'whole man'; spirt, soul, mind and body, including responsibilities in social and educational spheres.
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