backpage
inspiration
the power
of love
M
kids go
“intoThese
designated
wards at Bara
where they
sing, dance,
bake, cook,
play, read, love,
and hug the
children there
who so badly
need it.
”
80 JEWISH LIFE n ISSUE 46
arilyn Bassin, dynamite
in a Johannesburg-Jewish suburbia package, wishes that
everyone she knew who complained about their coffee
at a coffee shop, the service at their favourite
restaurant being slow, or the maid who talks too
much on the phone, would spend even half a day
with her. This isn’t to say she thinks she is grand,
although I can tell you that after meeting her, I sure
do. Rather, she knows that even one hour with her
will help them to learn about priorities and how
blessed they really are.
This is a tall order; I for one am particularly irked
when my phone bill arrives and it’s through the
roof. But Marilyn teaches a sound lesson. This selfproclaimed “African soul”, whose house is full of
African art and crafts, sits with me wearing beaded
shoes, while the entire time we spend talking, her
phone rings non-stop with calls of mazeltov for her
son who was just awarded City Counsellorship at
King David.
A multifaceted woman whose depth and capacity
to change lives, and through this, the world, is
belied by the friendly, unassuming burst of life,
which generates warmth, love and kinship within
five minutes of meeting her. My eyes brim with
tears the entire time we speak, as she tells me story
upon story of the last 20 years of her life spent
working on a volunteer basis with disadvantaged,
terminally ill children. She speaks about a life spent
“humanising death”, making the life of the dying
more comfortable, and offering untold and singlehanded support to their families as well.
Three years ago she decided that she had to do
more, so she founded her own NGO, ‘Boikanyo’
(which means to have faith), operating out of the
Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, in Soweto. There,
her reputation precedes her, and I would have
thought that this is how the children and their carers
find her. But I was wrong. Marilyn goes from ward to
ward and finds disabled children, children maimed
by their conditions or burnt beyond recognition,
mostly squatter camp kids who have very little, and
she teaches them the meaning of the word Boikanyo,
despite it being in their very own language.
She collects clothes, blankets and bottles, and
takes home washing for abandoned babies with
heads the size of footballs in the neurosurgery ward.
She tries to bring the outside world in to children
‘living’ in the ENT ward, who have all but forgotten
where food comes from. She collects prams and car
seats for profoundly disabled children, and spends
hours modifying them to enable brain-damaged
children to sit, some for the first time ever. She
revamps old wheelchairs single-handedly, and
out of desperation, even makes equipment out
of cardboard boxes for the orthopaedic ward. She
buys pressure mattresses for unconscious children
and suction units with nebulisers to ensure others
get a weekend pass out to go home, spending every
cent and then some. She never takes no for an
answer when it comes to improving the lives of the
disabled infants who live in squatter camps, and
has found herself in all sorts of predicaments while
fighting the system at Bara. But none of this is the
piece de resistance.
For Marilyn, along with the faces of the mothers
smiling at their children who are profoundly
disabled, with all the love and the care imaginable,
the best part of what she does is the ‘BABY Project’
(Bara Alliance of Blessed Youth). Every Friday,
Jewish school pupils meet Lenasia Muslim School
at the hospital and they team up to get to know one
another through acts of kindness and compassion.
These kids go into designated wards at Bara
where they sing, dance, bake, cook, play, read,
love, and hug the children there who so badly need
it. Not only has this help become indispensable
to the wards, this outreach project, an exercise in
religious and racial tolerance, brotherhood, giving,
and selflessness, has become for the students an
integral part of who they are and how they see
their lives. JL
For more information on Boikanyo, go to
www.boikanyo.org.za or contact Marilyn on
083 617 7520.
photographS: supplied
By c h a ndr e a se r ebro