Humanitarian trip proves eye-opener

Makoura College student Mikayla Vegar has returned from a humanitarian mission to South Africa with a new view of her world.

Mikayla, 17, is fresh back from three weeks helping build a hall, offices and feeding station for orphans, and working with the elderly and the dying at the Nhlengelo and Khomelela community centres in Bushbuck Ridge, a region located about six hours' drive from Johannesburg.

She went to South Africa and worked eight-hour days with her grandmother Robin Greenfield and a group of 30 Kiwis from the Papatoetoe Seventh Day Adventist Community Church (Papsda).

Her grandmother had first gone on a church mission to the region in 2009 and the group return every two years to expand and upgrade facilities in the poverty-stricken communities.

Mikayla said she had worked mostly on the building site at Nhlengelo with the group, which had volunteers aged from 12 to 60, and had used bricks to sand walls ready for painting and helped builders in clearing, cleaning and construction.

She also accompanied care workers on support runs through the communities, helping supply new mattresses to an elderly blind man, and helping an older woman who had lost all her belongings when her home was flooded.

She said the poverty and small corrugated iron shacks most people called home had been an eye-opener and during her runs with the care workers met a young girl who had lost a sister to AIDs and was herself fighting the disease and near death.

Mikayla said the group also went sightseeing that included trips to God's Window on the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve, a night safari in Kapana and a visit to Kruger National Park.

The church group completed several tasks on the three-week July mission including demolition work, building a new community hall, class rooms, kitchen and meal serving area, the Kid's Club programme, support and training for health care workers, and support and training for pre-school teachers.

In 2009 the Papsda group had helped to establish a preschool in Khomelela for younger children to allow their older siblings, who usually looked after them, to attend school while the young receive early life skills training. There are today 120 preschoolers who daily receive care, support and education at the preschool.

In 2011 the church group returned to expand and upgrade the Khomelela Community Center and multi-purpose hall, and provided additional class rooms, income producing craft workshops, a dining hall and meeting rooms.

The next Papsda mission will be made to South Africa in 2015 and Mikayla is hoping to again return with the group.

"I really enjoyed the building work and helping people who needed it.

"The whole trip gave me a new lease on how to look at life and I'd definitely like to do another mission," she said.