Three years ago, KwaZulu-Natal resident Teddy Gabriel visited Makhanda for the first time and was horrified to see the living conditions and poverty in Sun City. This week on Christmas Eve, Gabriel and her family lived up to their angel namesake and handed out home-cooked meals and cold drinks to nearly 80 families living in the informal settlement.
It’s become a Christmas tradition for the family. Gabriel is a caterer by profession and brings the ingredients for three huge pots of biryani, all the way from their KZN South Coast home.
Teddy and her husband Jewa came to the Eastern Cape for the first time in 2017 when their son Nathaniel married.
“We said to ourselves, God willing, one day we want to be able to do something for this community,” Teddy told Grocott’s Mail. Now, every year, Nathaniel, his wife Tammy and her mom Roseline Grobbelaar join Teddy and Jewa preparing the Christmas meals at the family’s Makhanda home, packaging the fresh home-cooked food and handing it out to families in need.
Outside the Sun City Creche, residents queued patiently as each received some of the 243 packs of delicious biryani, matched to the number of family members, along with a two-litre bottle of cold drink.
“On se baie dankie vir wat die familie vir ons doen,” said one grateful recipient, Irene Brown. “Ons se dankie dat hulle dink van ons wat geen inkomste het – dat hulle vir ons iets so mooi gee.”
