Metsimotlhabe - Divine Mercy Catholic Mission
Metsimotlhabe
Priest in charge: Anthony Rebello, svd
Born: 1950 in Kenya
Ordained: 1977 in Goa in India
Arrived in Botswana: 1981
1990-2000 working in Angola
Returned to Botswana: 2003


e-mail: pabalelonghospice@yahoo.com
pabalelonghospice@hotmail.com

Telephone: (+267) 3105042
Mobile phone: (+267)
HIV-AIDS        Ministry
DREAM TO HAVE A HOME OF LOVE AND CARE  FOR THOSE INFECTED WITH HIV/AIDS
REALISED IN GOD’S TIME

During the last year of my ten years (1990-2000) work in Angola, a war torn country, I was blessed to be introduced by Sister Dorothy, of the Sisters of the Servants of the Holy Spirit, to HIV/AIDS patients at the Government TB Hospital in Luanda. My experience with the patients and their sorry state wounded my heart deeply. The Holy Spirit prompted me to opt to fall in  love and care for HIV/AIDS patients.

So my sole aim when I arrived in Botswana was to give my all to the situation of HIV/AIDS in the Diocese of Gaborone. My then, Provincial Patricio and his Council agreed to release me to the said  Diocese for this special apostolate. I shall always be very grateful for the support and encouragement I received from my SVD brothers. Bishop Boniface was very happy to welcomed me warmly in his diocese.

I arrived at the Holy Cross Parish in Mogoditshane on 18th January 2003. I aquainted myself to Sr. Angela and her Home-Based Care. I began making regular visits with the Home-Based Care to those infected and affected with HIV/AIDS. I discovered that many patients were neglected by their relatives. The Home-Based made their rounds regularly from Monday to Thursday, every week, feeding, bandaging wounds, bathing and comforting the patients and praying for them. Fridays to Sundays the patients were on their own. Some of the patients were so sick that they could not even stretch out their hand for a glass of water. They were left on their own in their hunger and their mess till Monday. It is really very taxing for the Home-Based to do justice to most of the patients, especially when there are three or four patients helpless. Again I appreciate the Home-Based who walked for distances to care for the sick regularly. Again, there were no toilet facilities and sometimes no water to bathe the patients.

The sick need meals regularly. The food basket helps. But sometimes the whole family feeds on the food basket and finishes the same in a week’s time. Again families are poor to make both ends meet, as the sick need good food, meat and juices. I witnessed a number of sick die because of lack of care, service and lack of nourishing alimentation. The Home-based also help the patients to get their medication. Only when one is closely in touch to the sick, can one really experience the sorry state of the sick and the inhuman way they die. It breaks one’s heart.

I have been facing those challenges by the daily celebration of the Eucharist, and spending time before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, to break myself and give myself to be eaten by the suffering people of HIV/AIDS. I felt that the time was ripe for the Catholic Church in Botswana to act rather than contemplate about the risks involved in caring for the Sick. In my missionary experiences in difficult countries, I always relied on the Providence of God. As our Founder Arnold Janssen said: ''if it is God work it will succeed''.

The Catholic Women Association in Mogoditsane, expressed their desire to give me a helping hand in visiting the sick and caring for them. We brought some sick, about ten of them, to our Parish for Sunday Eucharist, and shared with them a meal and gifted each one of them a Setswana Bible, after the Celebration at our Parish house. The Bible, they treasure as the most precious gift and have uplifted their spirits. We continued to do this for a year or so. The youth of the Parish too began to get interested in the sick and visited the sick.

I would love to share some concrete experience that I had in the year 2003:

(The names mentioned below are not the real names of persons as I wish to protect their identity)

Mary  was pronounced as HIV positive. She was in a very critical state. She was unable to walk, unable to feed herself, unable to wash herself, unable to go to the toilet. Her own brother lived next door. He refused to care for her and even angrily in our midst said that Mary was reaping what she has sowed. Mary broke down and wept bitterly. We tried to comfort her, the Home-based cared for her daily, bathing her feeding her and cleaning up the mess in her room. This was done from Monday to Thursday. From Friday to Sunday she was on her own, hungry, thirsty, in her mess and crowded with flies. She grew worse and we transported her to the Government Hospital. She got a bit better. The Hospital authorities could not keep her. She was sent home, she became weaker and weaker and was dehydrated. We were helpless. It was a very, very sad situation. Mary succumbed to her sickness and died. Here I strongly felt a need of a Centre to love, care for the terminally sick so that they can have a dignified death. I remembered Mother Theresa of Calcutta and interceded to her and she sent me a message that we have to do something concretely for the terminally sick in Botswana.
One of the nurses in the local clinic called me to see Joan. She was in a very bad state I went to visit her. She begged me for baptism saying that she would not live long. I asked the local Catechist to prepare her and in a month time we baptized her and gave her the Eucharist. Her condition began to improve. She began to walk on her own. As time went on, she began to get weaker. Her family were tired of caring for her and left her alone crying. Her mother was frustrated and went away to drown her frustration in drinkig alcohol as she could not cope with the situation. Meanwhile we visited her regularly and nourished her with good food. But she became worse and had to be taken to the hospital, only to die there.
Jane was pronounced HIV positive. She was in bed and had no one except her mother to help her. But unfortunately, her mother slipped and broke her hand. She just used some home medicine and continued to take care for Jane. The mother was not able to cope. She did her best with her broken hand. She was unable to clear the mess of Jane. Jane became worse and died.
Dimpho was pronounce HIV positive. She was a young lady of 21, with a child. Here mother and father had taken to drinking and left her on her own hungry and thirsty. We visited her regularly and I remember taking her to hospital myself when the situation grew worse and she became dehydrated. Her Mum refused accompany her and so I  had to spend hours with her to get the drip and then return home with her. In order to get some money for milk for her child and food for herself, she satisfied her boyfriend by staying with him and washing his clothes. She grew worse, and died.
John was pronounced HIV positive. He was unable to feed himself. His sister would prepare him porridge and leave it for him and go to work only to return in the evening to see that John had not eaten. He was so weak and died.

All the above experiences prompted me to speak to Bishop Boniface and to propose for a twenty bed Hospice to care lovingly for the sick and  the terminally sick. The Bishop was very understanding and compassionate and spoke to His consultors and they agreed for the same in the year 2003. So we were thinking of having a twenty bed Hospice, at Ledumadumane.

Meanwhile in April 2004, Sisters of Nazareth, Sr.Bonolo and Sethunya were like angels sent by God. They were very much interested in this project to care lovingly for the sick and they joined me. As we waited for the project to get off the ground we continued to visit the sick. We fetched  the sick from their homes, some of them very weak, some in wheel chairs and gathered them at our hall at Holy Cross Parish once a week to share the Word of God, to exercise, to have health talk and to interact with each other. It was beautiful to see them longing for the day to be together to support one another and also to encourage one another. We concluded with a substantial meal and transported them home.

We used the cars of the mission and some of the lay people of Holy Cross volunteered to help. Two doctors were all the time with our sick namely Dr. Hypsy and Dr. Baron. Any time we called on them they were ready to help. Providence later provided a TOYOTA VAN to help transport our patients. Till today the said Doctors are helping us.

As the number increased, we were forced to have four centers, one at Mogoditshane, one at Tsholamosese, one at Mmopane and one at Metsimothabe. We gathered the sick once a week in all the centers . The Word of God and Bible sharing uplifted the spirit of the sick. Each one of them till today receive a free gift of a Bible which they treasure with love and care and pray with the Bible.We have had about 30% of the sick healed and go back to their homes and do some piece-jobs to earn their daily bread. We also equipped those capable and  trained them for sowing and after 6months of training about 15 of them received sowing machines and are able to fend for themselves, others were trained in making wine glasses, others pots, bead work, cooking cakes and others trained in computer. God allowed His work to continue among the sick and we animated the sick of these centres from 2003 till the end of 2008. We handed over the programme to Sr. Angela and the Home-Based Care at the end of 2008 as we had now to focus on the Hospice that God in His own time, seven blessed years of waiting, helped us to realise our dream.

We thank and praise God from the depths of our hearts, for helping us realise our dream for the sick of Botswana. We opened the doors of our ten bed Pabalelong Hospice to the sick on the 1st of March 2010 with the presence of Bishop Boniface and the Parishioners.

The Minister of Health, namely Mr. Seakgosing, officially opened the Hospice on the 1st of May 2010. Bishop Valentine officially blessed the Hospice on this day.

We are grateful to almighty God for helping us celebrate our first anniversary on the 1st of March 2011. So far during this year we admitted about 42 patients, of whom 10 have been called by the Lord, others are well in their homes, others are doing piece-jobs.

We are ever grateful to Bishop Bonifice for his passion for the sick and for giving us all his support and encouragement. We are thankful to Bishop Valentine who continues to give us his whole hearted support spiritually and financially. We are very thankful to the Sisters of Nazareth for taking over the Administration of the Hospice. They are very committed and dedicated to the sick.

We also thank very much Bro. Lutwin of the Divine Word Missionary who took upon himself to find benefactors to support our Hospice. We thank all well wishers all over Botswana who have helped us equip the Hospice and keep supporting us. We thank Choppies for supplying us food regularly to our Hospice on a monthly basis. We also thank our Parishioners and Parishioners of the Diocese of Gaborone for supporting us by their regular visits and bringing along gifts.

We are spending about 1,500,000 pula per year for the running of the Pabalelong Hospice and would be happy to have benefactors to support our passion for the sick and terminally ill. Infact most of our patients are destitute and are unable to pay the minimum. We  welcome anyone from any part of Botswana and from abroad. We have had sick from all over Botswana.

Pabalelong Hospic : Pabalelong means a place of Love and Care. This Hospice is the Catholic Church’s Institute of Charity in the Diocese of Gaborone situated at Metsimotlhabe, with admission facility of ten beds. It is committed to the provision of accessible high quality palliative care, love and support to people who are terminally ill, as well as to their families.

Two poems by inmates on the 1st Anniversary of the Hospice, 1 st March 2011


1.                     PABALELONG

KE EMA KGORONG KE A KOKOTA
WENA BULA DIKGORO, WA PATLALATSA
DIPUKA TSA GAGO WA NTHAYA
WA RE FEEL AT HOME YOU AR
MY DAUGHTER. JUST FEEL AT HOME
PABALELONG WELCOME
HEARD YOUR CALLING WHEN YOU
CALL ME WHEN I WAS LOST
YES MY MASTER HERE I AM THAT YOU
CAN GIVE ME HELP
YOU OPEN YOUR HEART FOR ME
AND WE BECOME MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
YOU STRENGTHEN ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU
ARE MY HOPE JUST FEEL AT HOME PABALELONG
YOUR THEME IS TO PRAY PUT OUR TRUST
IN GOD. WERE FAMILY BECAUSE
OF YOU PABALELONG, AND NOW WERE
BROTHERS AND SISTERS, PABALELONG
YOU REACH ALL OVER NORTH, WEST, EAST, SOUTH.
DOESN'T MATER WHAT COLOR, BLACK, WHITE OR WHAT,
PABALELONG
JUST FEEL AT HOME MY DAUGHTERS AND SONS, I WILL BRING
YOU OUR DAILY FOOD THAT IS THE
WORD OF GOD AND GOD BLESS YOU ALL
YOU ARE WELCOMED IN MY HOUSE, PABALELONG
I WISH YOU MANY MANY YRS TO COME HAPPY BIRTHDAY
PABALELONG GROWS AND JUST BROUGHT THE SEEDS  THAT EVERY ONE CAN FEED WITH
PABALEONG.


2.     PRAISE FOR PABALELONG

Love flows though the hospice
Like the river Nile it meanders among the occupants
Mercy, peace and love is the order of the day
Humility and dedication the way to succcess
Blessed rre the people offering their love to strangers
No discrimination against race or creed
Staff and patients are bound like one family
United Pabalelong stands
With perservance it conquers
Stand up and keep shinning like a lamp on the top of the mountain
Keep walking in the light of the Lord and people of the land will praise you forever
Live long Pabalelong
For the lives of the desperate and the sick you give first priority
You welcome burdens of sickness
Like Jesus who carried them on the cross for everyone
You give life to the hopeless
Courage to the doubting
Peace to those failing in spirit
Motivation and encouragement keeps you going.
The power of God is felt in the Hospice
May your hospitality and capability for the sick be exemplary
Let Pabalelong bear fruit and grow
May God keep you under his wings
Shower you with blessing and may God keep you each and every day to come
God Bless Pabalelong
SPEECH DELIVERED BY HON. REV. DR. JOHN SEAKGOSING MINISTER OF HEALTH
AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF PABALELONG HOSPICE
BUILT BY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF GABORONE
AT
METSIMOTLHABE
01 MAY 2010


Masters of Ceremonies;
Bishop Seane of the Diocese of Gaborone;
Bishop Boniface Setlalekgosi(Emeritus);
Your Excellencies, members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Honourable Member of Parliament;
Kgosi Raphael Mmipi;
Pastors of all churches here present;
Heads of Non-Governmental Organisations here present;
Medical Staff;
Home Based Care Volunteers;
Distinguished Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a great privilege for me to have been invited to officiate at the opening of Pabalelong Hospice: "Home of Love and Care". Please accept my most heart-felt thanks for this honor.

Judging from what I've been told, this new facility will be second to none in its bold vision and mission to transform hospice care in Botswana. Indeed, I am confident that this institution will be one on which future hospice centers in this country will be benchmarked.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you are well aware, we live in a world of daunting epidemics that have devastating morbidities. These maladies frequently strike at many a loved one, leaving them severely debilitated and in need of complex non-hospital care that the average family in our communiteis has little capacity to provide. I am talking here  of the great plagues of our time such as HIV/AIDS, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and the overwhelming disabilites of road traffic accidents, to name but a few.

As a mattter of fact, Ladies and Gentlemen, Botswana has the unenviable international record of having some of the highest per capita incidences of severe and sometimes terminal disabilitis resulting from these epidemics. With respect to HIV/AIDS and cancer in particular, the UN family of organisations estimated in 2002 that they were the cause of 610 000 and 81 000 deaths respectively in five African countries including Botswana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Complications of cardiovascular disease such as stroke and heart failure have also been reported to be similarly devastating in morbidity and mortality in the same countries. I need not convince anybody here today that the high rate of vehicular accidents in our society have been equally devastating in both scale and severity of disability and ultimately, the incidence of premature death.

Serious incapacity from any illness, whatever the cause, is invariably accompanied by personal helplessness often compounded by social stigma. Families, with even the best of affection  for stricken loved ones, are ofter overwhelmed by the burdens of care to the point of social paralysis. It is often the assistance rendered by institutional hospice care that is often relieving for both patients and their family caregivers.

Bishop, you and your flock of the Roman Catholic Church in Botswana, can therefore not have given our society a greater gift of love and comfort than this temple of compassion  you have so apppropriately named Pabalelong Hospice: "Home of Love and Care".

Ladies and Gentlemen, in 1995 at the height of the devatation of HIV/AIDS scourage, Government responded to the over-crowding of our hospitals by terminally ill patients with the establishments of Community Home Based Care Program. Today, all 29 health districts have well established programs in which stricken individuals - presently of all debilitating conditions and not just HIV/AIDS - can enrol and receive high quality care at home surrounded by those who love them unconditionally. This progam have give multitude of our terminally or chronically ill compatriots across the country the space and opportunity to deal with their misfortune in dignity and whatever little comfort that can be mustered in such trying circumstances.

We continue to invest dearly in the optimisation of this and similar programs.

Government can, however, never carry these social burdens alone. To this end, my Ministry has consistently called upon the private sector and civil society to take up the call to action and assist in providing care for the ill and infirm in our society, including those requiring hospice . Pabalelong is thus exemplary of the kind of non-governmental initiatives we have in mind when call for help as Government. The Catholic Church therefore deserves the Nation's highest commendation on this day.
Le ka moso Bagaetso!

Ladies and Gentlemen, at the risk of woefully undersating the illustrious charitable record of the Catholic Church in Botswana, let me mention among its array of contributions, the numerous pre-schools the church runs across the country giving hundreds of children in many needy communities invaluable opportunities in early education. The Church has also been a great partner to Government in the national response to the HIV/AIDS panademic by providing education, treatement and support in communites all over our vast homeland. This admittedly less than exhaustive list of charitable works is, of course, presented from within the imposing shadow of the great historical wall of social contributions that the church has made in Botswana.

It is in the light of this monumental record of charitable giving that I need not further sing the parises of the Church for once again extending its boundless generosity by giving us this house of love, that we are gather here today to christen. Pabalelong as a charitable project will undoubtedly, from this day forth, stand as yet another monument of the legendary place of the Catholic church in matters of compassion adn social righteousness in Botswana.

One could not have thought of a better name than "Pabalelong" for this "Home of Love and Care". It will hence forth stand as a beacon of hope and comfort for many of our needy loved ones. At Pabalelong, the debilitated and infirm is this community will find - care as the name suggests - as well as the solace to gracefully embrace their mortal destiny. Indeed, for the permanently suffering, the care provided here will render vulnerability and dignity no longer mutually exclusive. At Pabalelong intolerable pain will at least no longer too, also be harsh. At Pabalelong seemingly unforgiving suffering will be a little more tolerable - at least to the spirit, if not to the flesh.

Ladies and Gentlemen, to all of us the torch has now been lit and the path paved. I hope it is apparent to all that the Roman Catholic Church will not be able to sustain this facility alone.

They are going to need sponsors and contributors towards the day to day running of Pabalelong. Business must provide charitable funding. Professionals and lay people alike must now step up and volunteeer their services.

I call upon all to heed the call to this noble cause. None of us should remain spectators. When it come to Pabalelong, modest means should not be a resaon for self-exclusion from charitable giving. There can be no contribution that is too small to make
Mabogo dinku bagaetsho.

Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, with those remarks it is now my singular and most esteemed, pleasure to declare Pabalelong Hospice, "Home of Love and Care", officially open!

I thank you.

Pula







OUR VISION

Inspired by Christ, the compassionate Healer,
we would like to give hope and quality care to the sick people,
especially those infected and affected by terminal illnesses,
irrespective of their beliefs, background or situation.
We support the right of every person to dignity and love even in the final moments of life.
We will work to minimize their suffering.


OUR MISSION

To provide palliative care for people living with terminal illnesses

To integrate the patients into their families and communities

The centre will provide: medical, nutritional, psycho-social and spiritual services

To improve the quality of their life

To be a centre for counseling and support for patients and their families




OUR VALUES

Respect for life
Dignity
Compassion
Care
Dedicated Service



DONATE      ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tel/Fax: (+267) 3105042

E-MAIL ADDRESSES:pabalelonghospice@yahoo.compabalelonghospice@hotmail.com

ACCOUNT NAME:  PABALELONG HOSPICE
ACCOUNT NO:       0100153670500
BANK:                      STANDARD CHARTERED BANK
BANK ADDRESS:    MALL BRANCH, P.O.BOX 21, GABORONE
SWIFT CODE:          SCHBBWGXAXXX
BRANCH CODE:      662167