Cape Town - Habitat for Humanity SA will be assisting a doctor who has been putting away a portion of his retirement savings in order to build a house for his domestic worker of 20 years.
Together with international volunteers, Habitat for Humanity will be building a house in Delft for Lulama Gomana, 54, a single mother of two, who lives in a shack with her children, two grandchildren and her late brother’s two children in Delft.
Construction work will finally begin this week and will see Global Village volunteers from Thrivent, based in the US, the Path to Health team and Habitat for Humanity come together to make Gomana’s dream of living in a brick house a reality, at the request of Dr Raoul Goldberg.
“Habitat for Humanity SA believes that a home is the foundation for a family to achieve strength, stability and self-reliance. This project is so close to my heart. May it inspire transformational conversations between domestic workers and their employers.
“We need to partner and bridge the divide in order to see a real generational change in SA,” said Habitat for Humanity’s communications specialist, Lyndall McCarthy.
Gomana joined Dr Goldberg’s clinic in 1995 as a cook and cleaner and today, she manages the dispensary and “is the only one who can read the doctor’s handwriting”.
The shack that she has lived in for the past 21 years has three rooms, but due to limited space, the children have been forced to sleep in the kitchen.
“Living in a shack is not safe at all because it’s very dangerous…so scary all the time with shootings and so much thugs around. There are sometimes taxi shootings. Then you don’t sleep at all during the night cause you are too scared of bullets coming through the shack,” said Gomana.
In 2016, Gomana’s shack was uprooted due to strong winds. Although neighbours assisted in getting the structure up again, there remained several holes due to hammering to fix it, leaving the structure at the mercy of severe weather conditions.
“How can I rest peacefully in my home when I know that others are sleeping in a wet bed? There is no holier than thou. We are all humans,” said Dr Goldberg.
The organization has encouraged employers to find out more about the living conditions of their domestic workers and engage in discussions around this.
To find out more about the Domestic Worker-Employer supported Housing Project, contact [email protected]
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