Our first assignment centers on infant mental health. AKA: Tando. She’s our very own baby for 4 days and nights!! We feed her in the morning and drop her off at daycare, then bathe her, feed her, play with her, and she even sleeps in our bed with us! If you’re familiar with Attachment theory, you’ll find it very interesting that Tando was born to a teen mom who gave her to Botshabelo at 3 days old (right out of the hospital), so she has literally been raised by the community. Therefore, when she was given to two strange (although quite friendly-looking and cute) girls, she went without fuss (normally, babies would scream their heads off if they were separated from their caregivers). Also, Tando is 8 months, so we are working on tummy time so she can crawl already.
She also has a mysterious boil/rash/burn situation that today expanded from her face to her shoulder. She is now covered in some sort of purple iodine something something on the lower half of her face. In her spare time, baby Tando likes making out with everything she can get her face close to. This includes a serious smooch session with the kitchen floor, her friend’s butt in the bathtub, and all other manner of body parts.
Our second assignment was helping the older kids (aged 16-23) register for college. Botshabelo is trying to add a satellite college to its campus, so the kids don’t have to travel far away to learn. 13 students filling out a three page form took 3 hours! It is not that they are stupid, but maybe have a different pace of life and different understanding of “urgency.” A lot of the kids had no form of identification, and no living or locatable family members.
The big project that we will be working on for the next week or two is called the Poverty Alleviation Campus. We are interviewing the villagers about their level of income and subsequent amount of nutrition they receive (most of them are living on around $70 a month for three or four people). We are going to help them budget and figure out the most amount of food they can buy, and if possible some food with nutritional value. Right now they are living on corn porridge, soya, and potatoes, and they usually run out of food by the middle of the month.
We have only been here a few days but have already seen an incredible depth in the issues facing Botshabelo and the villagers (they live just a 2 minute walk in a small village of 75 homes outside of Botshabelo). Just one of the many stories we have heard: today we interviewed with a village woman who cannot afford to feed her two children, and one other child whose mother abandoned her, has traded food from another village man for sex. This man is also known to have HIV, and his wife died of AIDS a year ago. If the woman can’t afford to buy food, she clearly can’t afford condoms either. Another concerning thing about this particular village man is that he began sexually abusing his daughter once the mother became too sick to meet his sexual needs. Now that this new woman and the three children are living with him, we can only imagine what is taking place. Each day we hear many new first hand stories of poverty, starvation, and both sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Through this project we have gotten closer to an older student who has been working as our translator when meeting with the village people. He shared his own personal story with us, and while we were talking we asked him the best part of living at Botshabelo. He told us that it is belonging to a big family that is open about everything and really care for each other. Next we asked him about his least favorite part, and couldn’t think of anything. Comparing this response to that of an American child who probably would have a list of 20 complaints (i.e. “My parents won’t get me another Wii and 25 games”), we were astounded.
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