Swaziland
The Kingdom of Swaziland is Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy. Landlocked and almost completely encircled by South Africa, it is a small, mountainous country. Swaziland is home to 
about 1,2 million people, 40 per cent of whom are under the age of 15. Over half of the population lives in extreme poverty.The country ranks 140th out of 187 nations on the Human Development Index, a tool that measures a country’s level of development using factors such as life expectancy, education and literacy.
Swaziland is particularly underdeveloped with the majority (close to 80 per cent) of its people living in rural, isolated and impoverished communities where homesteads are scattered across large distances.
A glut of young men have deserted their communities, driven by unemployment to seek work elsewhere. Nearly 40 per cent of the Swazi people are HIV-positive, rendering Swaziland the country with the highest HIV prevalence rate in the world. Children particularly suffer the brunt of the pandemic: An estimated 15,000 households in the country are child-headed and about 125,000 children have lost at least one parent to AIDS. Chronic hunger is common amongst vulnerable children. Government schools provide meals for the 60 per cent of school children who are orphaned and vulnerable, but schools are inconsistently operational due to frequent shortage of funding.
Since 2006, Hands at Work has partnered with local Christian leaders working in the rural mountainous areas east of Manzini. In 2010 work began in North West region of Swaziland in communities straddling the border with South Africa. Vulnerable Swazi immigrants crowd this region, seeking to leave their country in search of work and often living in illegal and unsafe conditions.
No Longer Alone
Six-year-old Mdeni Dlamini is a quiet boy who lives in Kaphunga, a remote and isolated community in the mountains of Swaziland. He stays with his 14-year-old cousin, Banele in a mud hut left by their grandmother. Their 25-yearold uncle stays in another hut on the same property. Neither child is in school.
Mdeni and Banele have no one to look after them. Banele’s parents have both died and Mdeni’s mother lives in the city of Manzini with his stepfather. The boys’ uncle, an orphan himself, is illiterate and does ad hoc jobs around the area when he can get them. But such work hardly brings in enough income to support the three. There is often no food in the house and water is scarce. The boys’ only source of water comes from a trickle of a dirty stream, likely to be infested with waterborne disease. The mud wall of the one-roomed hut has an enormous crack, and the unstable structure is threatening to fall apart completely.
The boys don’t have a bed, but sleep on the bare floor in this bitterly cold region. Mdeni tried living for a time with his mom and stepfather, but was treated badly and eventually returned to live in the rural village.
Hands at Work supports the local community- based organisation, Asondle Sive Bomake, working in the hills of Kaphunga. The community’s elderly women have banded together to bring the love of Christ to transform the most vulnerable children in the area. These women cross enormous distances on the mountainsides to identify and serve the area’s most vulnerable children, like Mdeni and Banele. Hands at Work supports them with mentoring, train-ing and finances to provide basic services. Maize seedlings and food supplements have helped to lighten the burden off Mdeni and Banele, giving them enough strength to start attending school in hope that an education will open doors for the future