A day in the life of a child-care worker

With very little to do today, we asked one of the child-care workers at Boitekong if we could accompany her on her home visits for the day. She readily agreed and after setting a place and a time to meet I began wondering what exactly we were going to see and do today?! The sun shone down as groups of school kids, all clad in blue, flew past out parked car, with ice-lollies in hand to cool their sun-struck bodies. The expressions on their faces as they walked past us asked who we were and why we were blocking their walk-way. A few smiled and waved and after a few minutes, Angie, the child-care worker came and we went on our way to the local kindergarten to pick up Gift, who was one of 4 children in the first family we would visit.
The first family was made up of 4 children and Angie had come to teach Tsholo, the 8 year old about being a good friend.
“Who is your best friend Tsholo?” Angie asked
“Ermm, Siphiwe,” she answered
“What would you do if Siphiwe was HIV positive?” Angie asked
Tsholo looked down at her tiny hands and answered, “I would cry!”
It was then that I understood the importance of these weekly lessons. Tsholo stated that she would no longer play with her friend out of fear of contracting HIV, a fear that has alienated many children from the community and created fear and restlessness as well. What the care-givers do is teach children about how HIV is contacted and how infection can be prevented, through their teachings they remove stigma and isolation for those children that are HIV positive and teach preventative measures for those that are negative.
The second family we visited was made up of 7 children from 2 different mothers, both of which had passed away and left the children to all live with their paternal grandmother. None of the children had birth certificates or ID documents and so they had no access to public funds and were all in the 2nd grade despite the fact that they ranged in age from 6 to 15. Their grandmother worked menial and temporary jobs to try and feed the family. She arrived at the end of the lesson and immediately settled into her chair complaining about her aching feet, she walks for many miles to and from work daily. This is probably the worst of situations we’ve seen since we’ve been here but today we have asked to go on more visits with Didimalang, another care-worker from Freedom Park. Freedom Park seems to be the worst of all the OVC areas so I wonder how the circumstances will differ there.