Yesterday morning we went into the more rural areas of Swaziland to visit a medical clinic.  There are 17 medical clinics that serve as extensions of the Nazarene hospital in Manzini.  The clinics serve the very poor who live a meager existence in villages scattered around the valley.  Most live in very small one or two room houses made of concrete blocks, with no electricity or running water; some live in nothing more than shanties or stick and mud huts.  They are without transportation and means.   Last year these clinics had over 138,000 patient visits.

All but three of the clinics have a primary school.  All of them have a church.  They are staffed with nurses trained at the Nazarene Nursing College, a very respected training school throughout Africa.  People come to the clinics for minor medical needs, wound treatment, prenatal care, baby deliveries, medicine, AIDS testing, and antiretroviral drugs (ARVs).  These are the same clinics that our church helped provide diagnostic kits for in October.

We visited the Ngculwini Clinic.  The clinic building was a very small structure, not more than 500 square feet, carved up into small rooms.  It had a reception area (that also served as a record keeping room), a consultation room, and a delivery room about the size of a walk-in closet.  It was staffed with two young nurses, neither of whom looked like she was over twenty-one.  They told me that 80% of those who are treated in the clinic have HIV/AIDS.  When I saw the line of people waiting to be seen, spilling out of the clinic and standing under a shade tree in the front, I thought to myself, these nurses are unsung heroes of the Kingdom.  They work every day on the front lines of misery and need, with compassion and care.  I prayed for God to give them strength for their task.

There are 279 children in the Ngculwini primary school.  Some of them walk as far as eight kilometers each way to school (around 10 miles per day).  They walk through fields and mountain trails for one hot meal and a simple education.  Some had shoes; some did not.  They crowded around us in the courtyard to see what their pictures looked like on a digital camera.  A group of twenty or so five-year-olds sang “Joy to the World” to us in English.

The needs of the clinic were great.  Some of the buildings were dilapidated and falling down.  Every building needed a paint job.  They have no water for the clinic, school, or church.  The school principal told me that they have to truck in 10,000 liters of water every week.  What they really need is a well, but they can’t afford to dig one right now.  A Work-and-Witness Team from our church could make a big difference here in one week’s time.