'They have lived through hell'

When Hank Stelzer flips through his hefty photo album, the stories start pouring out.

Here, he pointed out on a Tuesday afternoon, is an African girl tending to the garden he showed her how to plant.

These lean young men herding cows, he said, are expert with livestock after his tutelage. A smiling girl who sits behind the sewing machine has learned to use it on her own clothes.

Page after page of children he has taken in and taught to survive, in a country where few have the option to.

Beyond that, they're children Stelzer has taught love, almost as hard won in some areas of South Africa as a hardy meal.

"Here's a girl who wouldn't speak for a month," Stelzer said, pointing to a down-faced girl as he turned the page. "And here's Bobo. He's my special kid. The first time I saw him, he looked up at me with this face, and the bond was so strong, even then."

The images would typify the life of any missionary, or a nonprofit rep.

But Stelzer, 80 next month, belongs to no group.

He is a single man, a disabled Korean veteran, who spends every day trying to bring quality of life to South African children.

Devoting all of his veteran disability compensation, as well as the winter of his life, the Coeur d'Alene resident has built, funded and managed a private orphanage in South Africa over the last several years.

Exhausting, he admits.

Fraught with obstacles, too.

But full of purpose.

"With the money I've spent, I could've traveled all over the world. But that means nothing. Who would that benefit?" the lanky benefactor said, hands resting on the album on his small kitchen table. "I see more broadly of who I am, and who they are, the people that I've helped. They have hopes and desires, but they don't express them, because if they have hope, they don't have hope it will be fulfilled. I want to give them more hope than just a sunrise and a sunset."

•••

The Tsepo-e-Ncha Orphanage sits roughly 10 miles from one of the more urban cities in the region, meaning that there is electricity and running water.

Stelzer prefers not to name the independent country in the Republic of South Africa where his facility is located. He worries if the country learns of some of his programs, it would require him to channel funds through the government, notorious for corruption and redirecting revenue from intended recipients.

"I can't have my money go through the government. Not my money or anybody else's," said Stelzer, who bought his Coeur d'Alene home 13 years ago and lives there the four months he isn't in Africa.

The country in South Africa is the size of a small U.S. state, dwarfed by a fingernail on a map.

It is a place Stelzer may have never known, had the Peace Corps not placed the Montana native there in 1979.

While many return home after stints abroad, Stelzer remained, a divorce with nothing in the U.S. to draw him from the rampant need he saw among the severe African highlands, where villagers live in huts with no running water, electricity or hope of employment.

He spent his first several years there establishing new businesses, providing job training for the blind and distributing bibles after a religious revelation.

It was during trips to the poverty-stricken villages that he was overwhelmed by pleas from families to take their children to the U.S., or at least help pay for food.

He saw herds of abandoned or orphaned children running wild, most fleeing if he approached.

"There were so many questions," Stelzer said. "I figured, 'If there's such a need, why doesn't anyone help?'"

He started constructing the small brick orphanage in 2002.

"We just did it. I didn't go through the government at all," he said.

He was boarding children long before the facility was complete, so great was the demand from village chiefs to take in children, most living in cardboard boxes and relying on villagers for food.

Every little guest comes with a daunting past, he said. Some have fathers who murdered their mothers, or parents who died of AIDS. One woman volunteers at the orphanage because she wants the facility to take her three children when AIDS takes her away from them.

"All the kids have traumatic experiences," Stelzer said. "They have lived through hell."

Although the waiting list is in the hundreds, Stelzer can only take 15.

He initially set the limit at 10, he admitted, but there were some he simply couldn't turn away.

"It's such a long list, we have to keep renewing it," he said. "During the time it takes to adopt one out, some others may have died or been injured."

•••

It would have been hard to choose a worse country to care for orphans.

Something breaks down every day, Stelzer said. If the electricity is on, the water isn't. If the telephone works, the lights don't. Neighbors tap into their electricity.

As with the crime rate - Stelzer has been mugged 13 times and shot once - local government and agencies offer little help.

"You get adjusted to it," he said.

Those are the easy problems.

He also had to build a security wall around the facility, as kidnappings became a problem with locals who would exploit the kids for child labor or mutilate them for witchcraft.

It's not uncommon for adults to come begging for food, with nowhere else to go.

"Some women fainted at our gate, no one would take them in," Stelzer remembered. "We feed them, make sure they are all right, make sure they have clothes. If they have children, we send some food home with them."

Even with poverty and obstacles at every turn, he means to make a serious difference.

To avoid the cumbersome government red tape of international adoption, and also to keep the children in their environment, Stelzer adopts out to natives only. No mean trick, as few can feed themselves, let alone an extra child.

But some are still willing.

"We adopt to elderly people abandoned by their own children, or couples who can't have children for physical reasons," he said.

Otherwise, the most he can do is give the kids all he can.

And he does.

It costs about $3,000 a month to fund the basics like meals, clothes, toys, school tuition and supplies. That comes out of the compensation for Stelzer's veteran disability, rated at 100 percent for circulatory problems and unemployability due to post traumatic stress disorder.

He also picks up a little extra from donations from Idaho friends.

When he visits the U.S., he devotedly pores through ads for yard sales to pick up more clothes and supplies.

"I mail back clothes for school, and Christmas gifts for the kids," he said, waving toward the brown boxes stacked in his living room.

Knowing few have much of a chance after they leave his care, he teaches the orphans how to survive independently.

He has developed garden plots at the orphanage where the kids raise squash and corn. He gives them seeds and gardening tools when they're adopted.

The facility has a small farm, and children become adept at milking and caring for livestock. When he can, he gives a cow to a family that has adopted a child.

"We don't want them to just sit and do nothing," he said. "We give families something materially so they can have more productive lives."

With the help of his single paid staff member, Georgina Adamo, he has also started outreach programs to teach cooking and sewing to local villagers. They have arranged for a volunteer to help cart in water from the river so locals don't have to walk three miles.

About 20 children have been adopted out so far, he said, with others leaving to live on their own.

"I look at all the lives being changed, and I think, 'If one man can do this, why not a government?'" he said, shaking his head. "They (the government) don't have anything like this going on."

•••

Why he does it is a question he chuckles over.

There's a strange satisfaction, he said, in wearing out three pairs of shoes in a year from traversing the rough terrain. He feels happy sleeping on the couch while the kids take up the bedrooms - he loses sleep anyway assuring little ones who have nightmares or need a midnight snack.

"After awhile, I'm so involved with the kids and their problems, I forget my own problems," he said.

In fact, the manifestations of his PTSD from Korea, where he served from 1951-53, are less vivid in Africa than when he visits the U.S., he said.

"It's actually harder to get adjusted when I come back (to the U.S.)," he said. "The lifestyle is so different. People have so much more than they need here. There, they can be happy with nothing."

Stelzer's friend Tom Evans, a Vietnam veteran in Hayden Lake, said Stelzer's life is driven by his work in Africa.

"It's like right now he sits in a house waiting to go to Africa," said Evans, 61, adding that Stelzer was disappointed that round-trip airfare isn't available beyond eight-month lengths. "He is a person who is totally selfless."

Evans can't explain what possesses his articulate and able friend to remain in Africa, but for the fact that generosity is inherent in his nature.

"I donated to his cause and I said, 'Use this for your flight,' and he said, 'No. Any money goes only to the orphanage,'" Evans remembered. "This man is like a Mother Teresa who literally worries about other people and what other people have before he concerns about himself."

Donations for the orphanage can be given at the Public Employees Credit Union at 1410 N. Government Way in Coeur d'Alene.

Evans admits that when Stelzer talks about walking two miles to the bus stop in South Africa, he worries for his friend.

"I have been concerned of his age," Evans said. "I ask him, 'What happens if something happens to you?'"

Stelzer said he has it covered.

Arrangements have been made for his possessions to transfer to the orphanage staff, should he leave it parentless.

Until then, he carries on.

"I'll be there until I die," he said.