ShawneeDispatch.com

There's a farm near the tiny South African village of Theescombe, and police, struggling parents or relatives of orphans know it's a place where children can get help. Because that's where Mama Gladys lives.

"They know about me," says Gladys Panda, the orphanage mother who runs the Oceans of Mercy Children's Village there. "They just come in and drop the child off."

"Mama Gladys" Panda is the woman in the trenches for Oceans of Mercy, the charity Shawnee businessman and South Africa native Schaun Colin founded to help AIDS orphans in his native country. Panda is in the middle of a two-week visit to the Shawnee area, where she's shared her thanks and lively spark with many people whose contributions helped build and support her orphanage.

Today, there are 12 youths living at the Oceans of Mercy orphanage, located in a rural area near the city of Port Elizabeth. Panda's newest resident is a 2-month-old boy, who was dropped off at the orphanage a month ago.

Most of the children's parents have died of AIDS, or expect to. Some children are HIV-positive themselves.

Panda also harbors teenage girls turned out of their homes after getting pregnant and HIV-positive children who have been shunned from public schools.

"Those kids, they need to be counseled, talked to, loved," Panda said. "They become very sound-minded people in the end."

Panda has devoted her life to helping them because she knows what it's like.

"That has helped me to understand the plight that these children are going through," she said.

Panda said she grew up "rejected" by her mother and father. Her parents separated, and when Panda was 4 years old, she and her younger sister began a childhood of moving from distant relative to distant relative.

They were poor. Panda began earning money by working in cornfields when she was in first grade.

But Panda did well in her studies and eventually went to a boarding school. However, she said, without loving parents to help guide her, she made bad choices. She fell in love, got pregnant and married an alcoholic.

When she was older she lived in shacks on the outskirts of the city, where she saw many children who were very needy. She gave them leftovers and helped with their schoolwork. Eventually she began taking some in and caring for them herself.

When AIDS was still relatively unknown, Panda was introduced to the disease in a difficult way. One of her daughters contracted HIV. At first, Panda was terrified.

"I had to deal with that -- it was horrible," she said. "It was if I was looking death in the face. Every day I would think ‘She's going to die, she's going to die.'"

However, her daughter's illness has stayed in the HIV stage and she is still healthy and active in promoting education on the disease in South Africa.

Colin said Panda had been working with orphans for many years before he met her and learned they shared the same dream.

"She's had up to 15 children in her home at one time," Colin said. "She's always struggled financially."

When Panda met Colin, she was overburdened financially with the children she was trying to care for and didn't know what to do. When he helped her link with Oceans of Mercy, then a budding idea, Panda likened Colin's help to Noah's ark.

"When he came he was like a rescuer," Panda said.

In Panda, Colin found a mother, a director, an educator and an activist. He pointed out that in South Africa, not every woman is called "Mama." The unofficial title is bestowed upon only the most respected women in the society.

Colin said Panda was loving, caring, comforting and full of life.

"Her eyes are alive," Colin said. "She lights up the room wherever she goes. People meet her for the first time, and they feel like they've known her for a long time."

With Colin and other Oceans of Mercy board members overseas, Panda puts things into play.

"She's absolutely essential and crucial to what we're doing over there," Colin said.

Colin said Oceans of Mercy's next goal was to convert a garage at the farm into more living quarters and possibly begin a school there, too. Some day, he hopes to add a health clinic.

After a 31-hour plane trip -- her first-ever flying experience -- Panda arrived in Kansas City June 7. She's scheduled to go back home Tuesday.

On Monday, Panda helped lead a closing session of Vacation Bible School at Colin's church, Johnson County Christian Church in Overland Park.

This year's Bible school happens to have a safari theme -- Serengeti Trek -- and a sanctuary full of Johnson County children squealed and cheered when Panda presented some authentic African praises.

She danced, clapped, whooped and hollered: Halalaaaaaa! Ngo Jesu!

In Xhosa, one of South Africa's native languages, that's like saying "Hey! Praise be to Jesus!"

Panda admitted her dancing was freeform.

"When you are excited, sometimes your feet can be put to dancing," Panda said.

On Friday, Panda traveled across the state line to one of Missouri's Show-Me Christian Youth Homes, where she spent a day in informal training, Colin said.

Panda said she was in awe of what she saw in Johnson County -- a far cry from home, where her country still deals with after-effects of a civil war and poor children sleep in the streets covered only by newspapers. Little government or good-Samaritan help is available.

"They say Africa is beautiful, but to me, this is like paradise," Panda said. "I was so surprised. People here, they live as if they're enjoying the first heaven."

Furthermore, Panda said, people were kind and smiling. And she'd never seen a pharmacy so big in all her life.

Most of all, Panda said she was happy to thank in person the groups and individuals who have supported her mission financially.

"I'm so glad to see the people that have been helping us," she said. "When you've got to see the hand that is feeding you ... give it a hug