By Louise Batty | Managing Director
Dear Friends,
Today I want to share something personal and a bit different.
Two weeks ago today I was urgently called home to Australia, my mother had taken ill and the doctors had decided to discontinue active treatment. She was dying. They thought it would take 3days maximum. Within an hour of being notified I had 3flights booked and bags packed and was on my way to the airport to travel the next 24hours praying I would get there in time.
I am sharing this because life as a leader is a series of juggling acts and commitment to what I care about. I care deeply and passionately for the children I serve is Greater Tzaneen but I also have to hold that in tension with being a daughter to my parents and sister to my two brothers back here in Australia.
I am very fortunate that the team I have trained is able to continue on strongly in South Africa and release me to come home and be the daughter my parents need me to be at this stage in their lives. The work for Keep The Dream196 has continued on under the ever present watchful eye of Elizabeth Mabuza and Nkulu Mabuza. They have freed me to come home and do what I need to do here without having concerns for business back in South Africa. We are in contact daily.
It has now been two weeks and my mum has been transferred to a step down unit, she is on no medication and appears to have “Woken up” from the coma she was in when I arrived. I am so grateful to have this special time with my mum. I have slept in the hospital every night and have stayed in the hospital for most of the day barring going to the family home for a shower.
This intensive period of care was much like when we started, working in KTD196 every hour of the waking day, nurturing, caring, encouraging, and sacrificing not knowing if we were going to succeed. We had risked everything; given up our own paying jobs to start up something that we weren’t sure was going to make it.
During both times I was able to draw on a faith which sustained me, a faith which has enabled me to survive the highs and lows of starting an organization from scratch in a strange and foreign land, of leaving my family and starting another family in South Africa with over 12,000 children.
A faith which has sustained me through the difficult process of watching my mother lose contact with this world and transition to the next only to be pulled back from the brink literally. Her hold in this world is tenuous, she is not through the woods yet, she is still gravely ill but she is still here 2weeks later.
Thank you for your patience, this report is going out a few days later than normal, my ability to write thank you letters to new donors is also hindered because I couldn’t write them in the hospital where I was.
Be that as it may I want to thank you all for your continued support of KTD196. We would not be able to continue without you, you make it all possible. I cant explain how much that means to me especially during this period, I know that KTD196 is in good hands not only with the staff but also with our friends and partners
Yours sincerely
Louise
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