20/08/2026
A beautiful memory from 2 years ago!
This is what Carolyn Steyn wrote about her visit to Hotel Hope yesterday. The visit was a memorable and very heartfelt occasion. We are so grateful for Carolyn's love, compassion and generosity.
The post didn't share, therefore copied here:
After two very successful launches of our gorgeous glossy 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day coffee table book at Exclusive Books in Durban on Monday and in Gqeberha on Tuesday night, we arrived in Johannesburg this afternoon and hightailed it to the orphanage Hotel Hope Ministries in Melville where Oliver Quambusch houses and looks after 44 children including babies from as young as two months old who have been abandoned.
Our visit was twofold. We wanted to deliver blankets (made with love) by our 67 Blankets ‘KnitWits for Madiba’ as well as bicycles and hula hoops. I have a particular affinity with orphanages because my late mom too was raised in an orphanage called Nazareth House.
When I engaged with the babies and toddlers today as well as a few older children, I imagined my mom in her childhood having been shipped off by Social Services to a place of safety and refuge and I thought of her confusion and bewilderment at being without a mother or father. I must admit that I was teary eyed for some of the visit.
Hotel Hope is a happy place. Oliver is a father figure to all 44 children. He feeds and clothes them, plays games with them, nurturing and providing an education for them. He knows all their names. The house is similar to the home I grew up in. Modest with pressed ceilings, wooden floors, the smell of delicious cooking in the kitchen.
Oliver has in place house mothers to look after the children tending to all their needs at all hours of the day and night. There is love and laughter and a real sense of joy, a sense of family in that home. (To accommodate all the children, Oliver has purchased several houses in and around the Melville area.)
I take all my hats off to Oliver for the valuable work he does every single day to improve the lives of these abandoned souls.
I am left with so many questions. Why? Why would a mother abandon her child? What horrible situation was she faced with to be forced into an act so brutal? How difficult was the decision to cast an innocent soul aside? Was it a difficult decision? Is there remorse? How does the mother cope knowing that her child is out there somewhere? Will she ever try to find her child? What about the fathers?? So many sad, sad stories. And… What if?…What will become of these children? Will some become reunited with their mothers one day in the future? How will their lives play out?
All we know for certain is that right now 44 children are in a place of safety with Oliver and his team who are clearly devoted to raising these innocent little beings…
