Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Day of Freedom

Today marks the day that South Africa had its first democratic elections. The first day that the people of South Africa, both black and white were able to vote, a day that marked the end of apartheid. It seems ironic that Freedom day 2010 has come at a time where the racial tension within South Africa has reached a high point, both with the actions of Julius Malema and the murder of Eugene Terreblanche. The 2010 FIFA world cup is looming closer and closer and despite where the country is headed, it is without a doubt that 16 years ago, today, marked a day that has forever changed the history of South Africa.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

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.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Special kind of person

It takes a special kind of person to take in a newborn baby that had been abandoned by its parents and care for the child for almost a year as if they were their own. The type of person who has founded an organization to meet community need and even goes as far as paying the volunteers for transport costs and other business associated payments out of her own pocket. Someone who always gives and has not recieved a cent for those efforts and would not have it any other way. Marie van Schalkwyk is this person and as the founder and director of NeoBirth, her selfless generosity can be seen throughout the organization and its subsidaries. We arrived at NeoBirth this morning to find that a week old baby had been left their by her mother the day before who simply said that she could not cope and handed the baby to the NeoBirth staff. Angela took the starving child home with her, much like how Marie herself took in a baby who was born to a drug addict father and prostitute mother almost a year ago and has been taking care of the child amidst the long going court case to determine whether custody should be given back to the parents or if the child should be placed in the foster care or adoption system.
The humility and selflessness of the caregivers as well is highlighted by the fact that these women take care of about 20 children each. They hand-wash the childrens laundry, clean the households for those that a child-led, they help the children with their homework and even sometimes feed the children at their own homes and out of their own pockets. It takes a special kind of person to do the work that all of these women do daily.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

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.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

NeoBirth

I'm sitting outside feeling the moist sand underneath my bare feet and listening attentively to the distant call of the birds up in the mountains. The past few days have been filled with rain so the feel of the warm South African sunshine is much welcomed and was sorely missed.
We spent the day with Angela from the NeoBirth Care Center and even though it has been 7 days since we started working there, today I finally understood the scope of the work that they do. As a Christian organization (shown by the various biblical readings all around the office as well as the Christian messages that accompany their food parcels) NeoBirth works mainly to provide and instill basic life skills, HIV/AIDS Awareness, Pre-abortion counselling, support for abused and neglected children as well as foster-care and help with facilitating adoptions. In the previous days that we have been at NeoBirth we were mainly helping them organizationally but today we went back to both Freedom Park and Boitekong with Angela to deliver food parcels and sit in on a training session with the care-givers at both centers.

The previous days rain had turned the barren roads of Freedom Park into mud-filled tracks that we maneuvered through, arms filled with food donated by local churches to those families that needed them the most. We made our way through the neighbourhoods of corrugated iron shacks, among the multitudes of goats and pigs, to the first family. A mother with three children who did not receive any form of support from the government. She seemed a little awe-struck by these 6 strangers (accompanied by one of the care-workers) who suddenly came, seemingly out of nowhere, with food. It was the most eye opening experience of my time here because it is impossible to imagine how people can live in a 10 X 10 square corrugated iron shack, today I saw the inside for myself. Everything was neatly packed away and the inside spotless, It was easy to see that the family took pride in the little that they had.

On we went to another four families, giving each as much food as we could for the number of children in each family. One household was headed by a seventeen year old girl who took care of her three younger siblings while also holding a temporary job at the local convenience store. I've begun to appreciate what I have so much more now because of what I have seen and putting myself in the shoes of the grandmother who has 3 grandchildren to feed without government support or the teenager who has lost both of her parents and has younger siblings to take care of has opened my eyes to the luxuries I take for granted.

At Boitekong we sat in on a training session for the Child-care workers on the various social, and physical developmental mile stones that children normally reach at various year groups. I'll be writing my final report on the difference between HIV/AIDS preventative measures taken in South Africa and in Botswana and from the training session I realised that many of the initiatives taken to combat HIV in South Africa are run mainly by NGO's while the Botswana government plays a key role back at home with a lesser part taken by the NGO's. Tapologo, in partnership with NeoBirth works not only to address the issue of HIV but to combat social issues as well, such as education, poverty and basic social well being. The care-givers each visit with about 10 families (an average of 20 children) to find out how the children are doing in school, the problems faced by the family and how they can be helped. They address issues of teen pregnancy as well as transmission of HIV from a mother to her unborn fetus and look at preventative measures for both.

It is incredible to see how each woman took such pride in the families that she visited with and to hear of how appreciative the children are as well. The work that they do and the diligence with which they do it is unparalleled and Lily and I will be lucky enough to accompany them on one of their home visits this coming Tuesday. This is exactly what I came here for, this is what I've longed to do.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Home again home again

For the first time in 4 years I was home for the easter weekend!! I took Lily along with me and amongst the church ceremonies and quiet Botswana landscape she continualy said how she enjoyed meeting people and more especially the late afternoon BBQ we had on Saturday with a group of my friends...lol. I never really pay attention to specific details when I'm home so it was really refreshing to understand the wonderful simplicity of a game park filled with animals as a the perfect place for a few friends to have a 'braai'. It felt like a lifetime had passed since I'd been back, I had begun to forget how peaceful and refreshing Botswana was and how familiar it has always been to me. From the broad smiles of friends that I hadn't seen in ages to the comfort of my own bed that I had taken for granted. It seems ironic for me to feel homesick from a place 2 hours away when I spend three quaters of the year thousands of miles away!!