Gevuld - vervuld
Miranda, my local colleague, already knows what it means when I call her on Thursday morning: it is time to go shopping again. I pick her up and drive with her to PickNPay, the local supermarket.
We are already a familiar face to several people there. The people who do not yet know what we are doing here look a bit surprised. We go into the store with two large shopping carts and they are quickly filled: forty kilos of cornmeal, twelve large cabbages, almost thirty kilos of potatoes, four large bags of chicken legs and so on. Although I do not yet speak the language, I usually understand a little bit of what people ask Miranda, ‘Is all that food for yourself?’ Miranda explains again and again that this food is not for her, but for the people in Phumzile.
A full car takes us to Phumzile, a few hundred meters away. There we unload the groceries. At the moment, we do this in the small kitchen in the neighborhood. A little further down, people are working hard on a new kitchen… This old kitchen is owned by one of the women of Phumzile. When we enter the small kitchen shack, we see a simple stove (consisting of some iron bars and a gas connection for cooking), a table and a cupboard.
Although the kitchen does not meet the Dutch standards of a kitchen, this is not noticeable in the quality of the food! Every Monday and Friday a delicious meal is prepared for the people in Phumzile, and every Tuesday and Thursday another team prepares a meal on the other side of Phumzile. Both kitchens are sponsored by Bethlehem and led by people from the local community.
In large pots the cornmeal porridge, vegetables and meat are prepared. Around twelve o'clock many residents of Phumzile come towards the kitchen. There they often have to wait a while until the cooks have put the large, full pots outside on the pavement. Once this has happened, there is some jostling. Everyone wants a full bowl, and preferably as much food as possible.
With the full bowl, the ‘Phumzilians’ walk back home. A few glance to the right. A little further down, the new accommodation for the kitchen is being built. The cooks are already looking forward to continuing their work there.
Not much later, everyone is sitting on the doorstep of their own shack, eating their meal. While eating, they hear ‘the walking church bell’ of one of the missionary workers who goes through Phumzile asking if they are hungry for different food and are coming to the Bible class. Although the turnout there is not as large as at the soup kitchen, we often have good hours together under the canopy.
Phumzile: a place where bread and Bread is distributed, with the heartfelt wish and prayer that the hungry may be truly filled with goods and with Goodness. That they may by grace eat to the full!
Lianne de Baat
