When John Dennen and his wife, Indrani, entered the children’s ward of St. Mary’s Mission Hospital in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, the shock was so great, he said later in a dispatch to The Times Record of Brunswick, “I just wanted to run away, go back to Maine and work on my lobster boat, get away from the horror of so much suffering.”
Through visiting with members of the six-member Rotary Club of New Germany/Westville (a suburb of Durban, South Africa), Dennen, a lobsterman from Harpswell, connected St. Mary’s and a nearby orphanage with the Brunswick Coastal Rotary, which has 14 members. Together, these clubs have helped alleviate at least some of the suffering in the poverty-stricken area of KwaZulu Natal, where unemployment is at 60 percent and presently, 600 people die every day from AIDS. Approximately half of the 650,000 residents of the area are HIV positive.
Now 57, John Dennen lived for 30 years in South Africa before marrying Indrani, who is Indian, but also grew up in South Africa. Because their marriage was forbidden by apartheid, they moved to Brunswick in 1985. John Dennen had attended Brunswick High School as an exchange student in 1963, and he always had hoped to return. He has worked as a lobsterman for the past 15 years, and he and Indrani opened a clothing and gift shop in Brunswick in 1989.
Both of the Dennens have family in South Africa, and since leaving, have traveled there at first separately, then together after apartheid was lifted, to visit and buy for their store. When John Dennen first encountered the New Germany/Westville Rotary Club about five years ago, its members asked if his Brunswick group might help them raise $6,000 to buy an incubator for St. Mary’s.
The Brunswick Coastal Rotary, then led by Tricia Hunter of Downtime, Inc., embraced the opportunity to help, little realizing this was just the first step of many the Rotary would be taking over the next five years to aid the hospital and orphanage. The group held a benefit concert (Dennen is a jazz musician), sold citrus fruit and organized other events to raise nearly one-half the money, which was matched by a grant from Rotary International.
John Dennen was present at the Mission Hospital to celebrate installation of the incubator. “It gave me a great, warm feeling to see the incubator there with a baby in it,” he says. But he adds that this euphoria was short-lived, because as he walked afterwards with hospital administrator Douglas Ross through a ward with about 50 infants in it, and commented to Ross how beautiful the babies were, Ross replied, “Yes, very beautiful. It’s a pity 60 percent of them are HIV positive.”
Dennen soon learned the full, grim reality – that the area has the highest concentration of AIDS in the world, that hundreds die daily, that hundreds of children are orphaned. Some are cared for by grandparents and surviving family, some are at the orphanage, Jabulani, but many others wander the streets. Many of the children are HIV positive because in South Africa, a drug used in the United States to treat pregnant women and prevent their babies from being born HIV positive is not available. The South African government until recently refused to sanction the drug (St. Mary’s is now serving as a pilot project for it and drug treatment for HIV positive infants and adults with HIV/AIDS) and did not acknowledge that HIV causes AIDS. “There was no money for treatment, training or education,” he says.
When Dennen took this appalling information back to Brunswick Coastal Rotary, members committed to helping in any way they could. From Ross they learned that St. Mary’s Hospital most needed funds for a hospice wing for dying patients – most of them afflicted with AIDS – with room for family members to be with them during their final days. Being able to shift AIDS patients to this wing would provide space in the overcrowded hospital for treatment of other diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera and malaria, which are endemic in the area.
The club got to work and over a two-year period, raised thousands of dollars, which they sent to Rotary International, along with contributions from Australian Rotary Clubs (organized by another South African expatriate) and the New Germany/Westville Rotary. They were awarded a 3H Humanitarian Grant from Rotary International, a great achievement for such a small club. “The 3H grant is hugely competitive,” Den-nen says. “They award about five grants a year, all over the world.”
Once the money was in place, members of the South African Rotary supervised construction of the Rand Compassionate Care Center, purchased medical equipment and organized hospice training for 564 home-based caregivers over the next three years for people who cannot reach the hospital. The South African Club, whose membership has increased from six to 20 as a result of the project, will administer the center for the first year.
The official opening of the center will be held on February 25. The Dennens and other members of Brunswick Coastal Rotary will attend.
During the excruciating nine-month wait to learn if Rotary International would award the 3H grant, members of Brunswick Coastal Rotary focused attention on helping the orphanage, Jabulani (which in Zulu means “Place of Joy”). They collected 5,000 pieces of clothing, and raised money to buy sewing machines to help the grandmothers caring for orphans make crafts to support themselves and the children.
They began to formulate a new project which they hope will raise considerable money for the orphanage – release of a CD, “Break the Silence.” The CD features internationally acclaimed African gospel artists whose only compensation will be one-dollar-per-CD royalty to divide among themselves. “We’ll clear about $12 per CD,” Dennen says, “and all of that will go directly to help Jabulani.” His son-in-law, who is CEO of Revolver Records, the largest distributor of music in South Africa, has donated his time and facilities to make the CD, and a son by a previous marriage, a graphic artist, donated all graphic work for the cover and inserts. Paul Venet, a corporate consultant from Brunswick, has offered his expertise and time to design a web site which will introduce and sell the CD. Presently, “Break the Silence” is available at Indrani’s, the Dennens’ store in Brunswick. When the website is in place, Dennen plans to contact every Rotary Club in the world and urge them to help market the recording.
Dennen is awed by the support two tiny Rotary Clubs so far from each other have been able to mobilize for the KwaZulu Natal area and what has been accomplished since his first visit with the Rotary Club of New Germany/Westville. But, he repeatedly says, “You know how our community is, how generous people are. Indrani put a box outside the store with a little sign that it was collecting clothing for orphans, and it kept filling up. I’ve been stopped by lobstermen who hand me 10, 20, 50 dollars and say, ‘Here, it’s for the hospital,’ or ‘for the orphanage.'” And further afield, he says, Maine and other New England Rotary Clubs were unsparing with time, effort and contributions to help Brunswick Coastal Rotary obtain the 3H Grant.
Dennen and his fellow Rotary members will continue to support St. Mary’s and Jabulani. Their next step, he says, is to ask Sister Marko, who runs Jabulani, what her greatest wish is for the orphanage. Then, they will step up their efforts again.
Dennen can be contacted at P.O. Box 911, Brunswick, ME 04011, or through e-mail at indranis@gwi.net.