By Janet S. Parrott
In the midst of a health tsunami and widespread poverty, "South African hospice professionals have found ways to respond effectively to the whole person with life-threatening illnesses," says Catherine Chapin Kobacker, Executive Producer of Song of the Soul. With Kobacker and five other American women, filmmaker Janet S. Parrott had access to hospice facilities, day care programs, support groups, and a school as well as accompanying nurses on home visits with patients and family members. They visited urban and rural hospice activities in four South African cities and towns in order to share this model of community-based compassionate care.
Their stories are compelling and hopeful. In their own words, we hear the heartbreak of a grandmother whose children have died and left her to raise her grandchildren. We feel the pride of people now living active lives with HIV. We see promise in the faces of orphans and the words of a teacher who is passionately committed to their better futures. We share the frustration over the lack of good nutrition and the impact of prevalent poverty. We meet a young man whose food allotments intended only for him to support his medication are shared with eleven other people living in his household. In the face of all of this, we see the power of love in the gentle touch of a caregiver, in the encouraging words of a nursing sister. We see great joy in the faces of children. We see life in the end-of-life. We see hope.
|