Meet the TREE PEOPLE

In rural South Africa, I was introduced to the 'Tree People'. In this region of South Africa, there are fields and fields of trees grown to make chip board and paper. It's an amazing and beautiful site to see these man-made forests. They are a little peculiar though because the trees are all planted in perfect rows.

There are many groups of rural peoples that live amongst these trees. As a matter of fact, in the several acres of area that our contact works with, there are over 5000 people that live there. They are called "squatters". They don't own the land, but they can't be pushed off it either. They build simple mud huts with dirt floors and no electricity. If you follow the path through the trees you'll find groups of people in little clearings.

I took these photos. The child in the dirty sweater is a typical rural South African child. The woman in the photo isn't the child's mother, but is an aunt who is taking care of him. We had the privilege of praying with this woman.

This lady's brother (the child's father) had died several days before, most likely from AIDS. The picture of the mud hut with the muddy smudges on the windows is something they do when someone has just died. This lady was showing that her brother had just passed.

These are the people that we are wanting to get the flax lignans to. Before our trip, the contacts we were working with had only been giving the flax to orphans. We now gave permission to extend giving the flax into the rural areas, and this lady's area will be one of them. Because more and more people are buying flax hull lignans in the U.S. for their own immunity boosting and health reasons, it is enabling us to donate more and more of the flax lignans to people like this! It is truly exciting!