Extension 13

Today the wild African sun beat down like a Zulu dancer’s drum. My head was spinning from the sudden onset of a migraine brought about by the heat, I took some pills and watched as we snaked our way through Boitekong’s Extension 13 accompanying the child-care providers on one of their weekly home visits. The area was filled with tiny convenience stores at every corner as residents tried to make a living by selling various fruits and vegetables. Almost all of the houses were small; mainly one or two rooms while others were the same shacks that we had seen before.
We made our way into the first household, headed by an old woman whose daughter had passed away and left behind her two children for her mother to look after. The child-care worker who had been visiting with the family had decided to leave the position, Angela had told us last week that many of the woman had about 10 households to care for and the work that they did impinged a lot on their own family lives so that might be the reason why she left. Lebo, the OVC co-ordinator reassured the old lady over and over again that they had not forgotten about her household and would continue to send over as many people as they could until they found someone to take over the position permanently. “We have not forgotten about you,” she said over and over again in Setswana to try and lift the spirits of the old woman who said that she was disappointed by the departure of their previous child-care worker. It became evident, the extent to which Boitekong’s child-care workers are respected and needed in the community as Lebo reassured her that they would still go and check on how the kids are doing in school and would still walk them back from school when they could.
There must be thousands of families living in each settlement but the households visited are chosen according to the criteria of the OVC (Orphaned and Vulnerable Children) programme. Mainly those households where children are orphaned and have lost both of their parents or those children who have one or both of their parents infected with HIV fit the criteria and are included in the programme. From the other families we visited it became clear that a lot of the households were headed by grandparents, many of which were old and had their own debilitating illnesses. I also found that many of the college aged children stayed at home because they either had not done well enough in their high school leaving exams to secure a place in university or could not afford to go and so they ended up staying at home because there were no other alternatives. That alone could lead to increased prostitution and HIV infection as they may not see any other ways of making money for finding employment. Hopefully the government will find way for this never-ending cycle to end.