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Ndlovu, Sithabile (d. 2010)
Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2010 May 24 p. 3
Birth date:
text of obituary:
By Ferne Burkhardt
Mennonite World Conference
Sithabile Ndlovu, a 2008-09 Anabaptist youth exchange program participant from Zimbabwe, died May 9 in Johannesburg, South Africa, after a brief illness. She had been admitted to the hospital the previous night. Her age was not available.
Ndlovu completed a year-long term in Bolivia last August with the Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network, of YAMEN! Pumula Brethren in Christ Church in Bulawayo, an MWC-member church she attended for 15 years, sent her. YAMEN! is a joint MWC and Mennonite Central Committee South-to-South exchange for single people aged 18 to 30.
"What a life!" said Danisa Ndlovu, MWC president, also Zimbabwean but not related to Ndlovu. "What potential! we still expected and looked for more, but it was never to be."
Andrea L. Geiser, YAMEN! coordinator, recalled how Ndlovu and another YAMEN! participant spoke easily in Spanish at MWC's Assembly 15 and Global Youth Summit in Paraguay last July.
"It showed how she was eager to meet people in Bolivia and obtain the tools she needed for communication with them," Geiser said. "She cared about others who were struggling."
In Bolivia, Ndlovu worked with Centro Menno programs in Santa Cruz, which provides services to Low German-speaking Mennonites who live in surrounding rural areas. Centro Menno workers help with Canadian citizenship documentation as well as providing agricultural advice, operating a library, a small store and publishing a monthly newsletter.