Champions Champions Mama Lumka and the Nceduluntu Sanctuary
Mama Lumka and the Nceduluntu Sanctuary |
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These children would otherwise have been abandoned during the day, as
very few residents could afford even basic childcare, let alone
specialised care for the disabled. In 2001 Mama Lumka began providing full-time residential care for 16 orphans and vulnerable children in her own home in Nomzamo, Somerset West. Some of these children were severely disabled, several were HIV-positive. All of them had been abused, neglected or abandoned and had nowhere else to go. The following year a group of local business people decided to help and established the Nceduluntu Sanctuary Trust. The Trust acquired land in Zola and started building foster homes in which six children and a house mother could be accommodated in a family-type situation. By September 2004 the first two homes had been built and the site was named Ikhayalethemba Village by the local community.
Currently there are three homes each housing six children, office buildings and a training centre where local women are taught sewing classes. A food garden helps to provide fresh vegetables for the children. The older children attend the local school and the younger children attend an on-site crèche. The community is thriving and the evident health and happiness of the children is a testament to Mama Lumka’s large heart and the dedication of the staff. Several severely disabled boys, who have been with Mama Lumka from the beginning, lie on mattresses close to the main kitchen, where the caregivers chat and sing to them constantly, regularly interrupting their tasks to hug, massage or play with them. One is blind, deaf, mentally and physically disabled, HIV-positive and unable to move. But the caregivers all say he knows what is going on, “just look how his face lights up when you stroke his arm”. |
Mama Lumka was referred to as the ‘Wheelbarrow Saint’ when she started collecting, each weekday morning, all the disabled babies and children in her township area in a wheelbarrow. She would then carefully wheel them back to her humble house where she would look after them until their parents or caregivers returned from work.