商品簡介
Empty Hands is the inspiring memoir of Zulu nurse and healthcare activist Sister Abegail Ntleko. Growing up poor in a rural village with a father who didn't believe in educating girls, against all odds Sister Abegail earned her nursing degree and began work as a community nurse and educator. As she watched the AIDS pandemic decimating her country, Ntelko didn't sit back. At age thirty-eight, as a single black woman in apartheid South Africa, she legally adopted her first child--at a time when it was virtually unheard of to do so. And then she did it again and again. In forty years she has taken in and cared for hundreds of children who had nothing, saving babies, many of them orphans whose parents died from AIDS, from hospitals that were ready to give up on them and pull the plug from the machines to let them die.
Empty Hands describes the harshness of Ntleko's circumstances with wit and wisdom in direct, beautifully understated prose and will appeal not only to activists and aid workers, but to anyone who believes in the power of the human spirit to rise above suffering and find peace, joy, and purpose.
作者簡介
Born into extreme poverty in KwaZulu-Natal, Sister Abegail Ntleko overcame tremendous obstacles to obtain an education and become a nurse, eventually becoming one of South Africa's preeminent community activists. She received an Unsung Heroes of Compassion award presented by the Dalai Lama in 2009. Now 79 years old, Sister Abe has built and managed two orphanages serving hundreds of young people and has helped thousands of children and families affected by HIV. She has also personally adopted and fostered more than 30 children, and her latest project, the Kulungile Care Centre in Underberg, has become home for her large family.
