Smiles and laughter in Middelburg: working with children infected and affected by HIV and AIDS

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The last port-of-call on my 2006 trip to southern Africa was the Eastern Cape. As I mentioned at the end of my last blog, I’d met the inspirational Dianne Lang on the train from London to Edinburgh in June this year and was so overwhelmed by her work with AIDS orphans and abused children that I’d arranged to visit her Children’s Home for a few days at the end of my trip with a view to seeing whether or not I could “handle” coming back to work there for a longer period next year.

First stop was Port Elizabeth where, for a number of reasons, I really did stop and wonder what on earth I was doing. The fact that PE had yet to switch on its summer weather didn’t help: the cold, grey, wet skies may have been useful in starting to acclimatise me for the return to the UK at the end of November, but it really wasn’t what I was expecting in that part of the world. Then, in common with every time that I have stayed with friends in South Africa, I had to accept that, to all intents and purposes, I was marooned in the estate where my host lives as I didn’t have a car. (I did find out ten days’ later that there’s a great coffee shop round the corner, within walking distance (notwithstanding the ill effects of the Toe Incident - another story that I won’t bore you with now), but that knowledge hadn’t yet percolated through to me during my first stay in PE.) In all honesty, it couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the sunshine and space of Namibia, nor to the family warmth and cosiness of chez Brown, the friends I’d stayed with in Johannesburg for a few days before coming south. I contemplated bringing my London flight forward and getting out of there: not an option that had even dared to step a toe over the horizon at any other point during this trip. Yet, I’m so glad that I didn’t. It would have been a dreadful “low” note on which to end an otherwise stupendous trip, as well as a cop-out for which I would have found it hard to forgive myself later on, not to mention that it would have deprived me of the incredible experience of meeting the children at the Home in Middelburg in the Eastern Cape.

Statistics and stories about the children vary, but all are harrowing to a greater or even greater extent.

There’s X who was living with dogs when Dianne found him: he could only bark and growl, and couldn’t walk properly on two legs.

There’s Y whose mother used to force her hands and feet into boiling water, and whose father and uncle repeatedly raped her. Y asked Taryn, one of the other volunteers who was in Middelburg at the same time as I was, “So, who beat YOU?” Taryn tried to explain that no-one had ever beaten her. “What about your father? What about your boyfriend?”, Y asked again. The concept of not being beaten by your nearest male relations was simply alien to her.

Z’s foster mother refused to continue to feed her when the child support stopped coming through and locked her in a cupboard before “selling” her to Dianne for Rs50 (approximately £3.60 or US$7). Z was so ill by this time that Dianne refused to pay the Rs50 until she’d seen whether or not the child would last the night.

Q, in common with some of the other girls, was sold into prostitution before her tenth birthday by her own father.

R is quite lucky by comparison: she was “only” abandoned by her parents.

S’s mother was shot by the security services: yes, even post-1994, the South African security services do not always answer to the law that they ostensibly uphold.

There’s T whose young teenage mother was an alcoholic. He was born with foetal alcohol syndrome and was paralysed when, at the age of eight months, he was brought to Dianne by his own mother who couldn’t cope any more. That he can now walk and is starting to talk is a great achievement.

U was repeatedly sent away from the Children’s Home by the authorities to the “home” where she had been, and continued to be, abused. Finally, she ran away from that “home”, back to Dianne.

V’s mother died of AIDS in Johannesburg and he was sent to live with his grandmother in Middelburg. He didn’t speak the dominant local language of the Middelburg townships, Xhosa. When he was repeatedly abused by his grandmother, he intelligently telephoned the police to tell them to take him to the Dianne Lang Foundation Children’s Home.

One comment I’ve heard is that every child (there are currently 40) in the Home has been raped or sodomised. I think that, actually, that’s not true for quite every child (though I haven’t read their files) but it’s certainly true of the vast majority…. yet how can I even stop to make such a lawyerly point in amidst all this?

W lived on the streets, quickly learning that permitting himself to be sodomised would earn him money and/or food. He was one of the many street children that come to the Children’s Home for meals during the day but, as Dianne’s permit is limited to specific children and then only after the completion of certain formalities, he had to spend the nights out on the street. One evening Dianne turned up late, unexpectedly, at the Home and found W in his pyjamas. He danced gleefully round her: he’d been spending nights at the Home for the last couple of months - she couldn’t, he said, chuck him out now.

And I’ve only told you, in outline, about ten of the children. Such unspeakableness is replicated, enhanced, varied in their friends’ histories.

Yet, believe it or not, after I’d met the children, for 99% of the time, this awfulness, this horror of what each of them had been through, simply wasn’t in my mind, wasn’t anywhere near my conscious mind. They say that children are resilient: these kids are the living proof. They are truly wonderful: warm, affectionate, resourceful, creative, imaginative, generous… I was amazed at how they would make their play out of anything: a few pebbles to do magic tricks, a sadly deflated football kicked around in football practice, a plastic crate nailed high up on a tree for playing hoops, dust fights pursued in the same manner as we might snowball fights, a song on a tape played back repeatedly so that dance moves could be perfected; even handstands, cartwheels and other acrobatic manoeuvres practised time and time again until the move was, in the view of the child, as good as their friends’ (they’re very competitive). Often the volunteers, supposedly tasked with entertaining the children, would simply stand at the side of the playground watching: we weren’t needed in their play unless a grubby hand dragged us to join them, broken English demanded that we “push, push” them on the swings, or a rare burst of tears moved us to comfort the injured soul.

The staff and the longer-term volunteers work on a shift-pattern but, as I wasn’t there for long, I settled myself into a daily routine of supporting the secretary in the office in the morning, while the majority of the children were at school, and minding the office over the lunch-hour, before going over to the Home for the afternoon. In the late afternoon I’d take a break and go back to the house round the corner which I was sharing with three other volunteers for a very little “me” time, before heading back to the Home in the evening to play with the children either side of their evening meal.

My office-based tasks were somewhat different to any office duties I’ve had before. My first job was to go through the three boxes of Christmas decorations and assess what was there. Miraculously, all three sets of festive lights that had plugs worked first time (that NEVER happens in my home!) and I investigated how we could get the necessary connections for the other sets of lights to enable them to be used. I (reluctantly, it must be said, but I had checked this with Dianne in advance) threw out some of the home-made decorations that hadn’t really survived eleven months in storage, and mended some of the baubles and other tree decorations so that they could be hung up again this year. Finally, I went through the 35 Christmas hats left over from last year and checked their state of repair. For a couple, I had to create new pompoms (which, to be honest, won’t stand much pulling about, but at least they look complete now), and, for a few others, I stitched up their seams.

Otherwise, I spent the mornings supporting my main afternoon activity: bangle-making. Dianne has got the children making bangles - threading multicoloured beads onto short spirals of wire to form bracelets/bangles that can be sold to raise money for the Children’s Home. For each bangle, the child gets Rs1 and there is fierce competition for who makes the most. Even the boys join in! The older girls were also making angels - pretty tree decorations where the angel’s body is made out of 100+ strands of gold thread, nipped in about a quarter of the way down to form the angel’s waist; the head is a wooden ball glued on to the top of the thread, marked with eyes and mouth and with beads forming a crown; the wings are formed of lace, and the thread “skirt” is decorated with strings of beads. For each of these, the girls (we hadn’t got the boys interested in this more complex exercise!) get Rs1.50 although the amount of work each takes is considerable. I was hugely impressed to see the girls making these on a conveyor-belt basis: half a dozen or more of them would be involved in making each angel, each girl doing whatever part of the process was her strength. (However, this group-method did occasionally make the sums difficult for recording who was owed what!)

In the mornings, I’d sort out beads that had got mixed up the day before (a frequent occurrence when we roped in the smaller children at the end of the afternoon to pick up beads that had fallen on the floor), finish any part-made bangles from the day before (taking care to ensure that the right child was credited with the Rs1, of course), and re-make any bangles where I hadn’t had the heart to ask the child to try again the day before. In one case, a small boy had spent most of the afternoon making one and still hadn’t quite followed the instructions for the colour scheme. In another case, the stubborn jaw had gone out in a pout when I’d asked one young lady to remake hers and it really wasn’t worth pursing the issue with her. Sometimes, we could give the children relatively free rein when it came to colours - in particular, when we were using the pretty semi-transparent glass beads - and it was rewarding to see their creativity. However, we were also at the mercy of the purchasing public, and Dianne knew which designs were most popular. If all else failed, I’d make bangles myself, which became an oddly addictive, therapeutic activity!

Discipline was much less of an issue than I’d expected. Dianne had instructed us not to make any allowances for the children: they were to be treated as “normal”. Yet it wasn’t easy to do this the first time that one of the girls burst into tears in front of me. Thinking back on it now, I actually think that this particular girl is prone to spoilt-brat- and prima-donna-ness - which seems a harsh comment to make when you think about her background, but, nevertheless is the prevalent view. Anyway, convinced that there was something deeper than simple petulance that I’d made her re-make a bangle, I took her on a walk with me. Eventually, she perked up, but, having treated her like this once - indulged her attention-seeking - I found her more and more difficult to discipline.

I felt infinitely worse about Ben. I sent him to the “time-out room” for ten minutes after I’d caught him hitting Mary and apparently unrepentant about it. Granted Mary probably over-reacted (in general, it took an awful lot before any of these children cried as the result of any physical injury: they tended to bounce back from their injuries remarkably) but a point had to be made. Watching the seconds creep slowly past, I thought that, perhaps, ten minutes was too long and went to chat to him after only seven. He was in tears and, off his own bat, apologised to me which earned him a hug. While my Xhosa is improving (all thanks to the efforts of Nombasa, the oldest of the children who frequently “minded the shop” in the office with me), it doesn’t stretch to comforting a child; nevertheless I thought he’d understood that I was leaving him to dry his eyes before he could follow me out. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the stoep outside the time-out room’s window with Mary about to plait my hair (my hair was almost as much a fascination to the girls as the other female volunteers’ blond locks!) when Ben’s face appeared at the window asking what time it was. It didn’t click with me why he might be asking, but then he asked if he could come out yet. I was horrified he was still in there, that he’d so misinterpreted my parting comment, and I rushed through the house to comfort him and explain. We agreed that, football-like, we were 1-1 when it came to apologies, but, despite such a miscarriage of justice, Ben thereafter sought to glue himself to my side at every opportunity.

The children’s singing is one of the most vivid memories that I’ll take away from Middelburg. Having heard them sing as they did their homework one day, I suggested that they sing during a bangle-making session one afternoon. How they know the songs, who breaks into which solo, and when to move on to another song or anther part of the same song, I really don’t know, but their voices would ebb and flow around me. When it was Taryn’s birthday, she made mini-muffins which the children had as a rare dessert. In response, they sang the most incredible version of “Happy Birthday” that I have ever heard, with lyrics in at least three languages and more than a dozen repetitions of the main verse. Taryn wasn’t the only person in the room with tears in her eyes.

Jackson cooked for the volunteers on one occasion. Jackson is a stalwart senior staff member. He has been with Dianne since the first orphan was dumped on her doorstep five or six years ago. To our enormous embarrassment, he produced a beautiful meal for us completely out of the blue one evening. Taryn had to come back to the volunteers’ house to find me as the others waited patiently with their plates piled high with grilled chicken, rice and three vegetables in front of them. This was a VERY long way away from what the children were generally fed: a roast meal happens once a week, but, otherwise meat is a bit of a rarity. Samp and pap are commonly served either alone or with beans. Occasionally, meals comprise only bread and butter. We were sat at the “babies’ table”, the large table in the middle of the dining-room and left in splendid isolation. We’d never seen the room so quiet. While I appreciated that, in order not to offend Jackson, I had to bite the bullet - or at least the chicken - I felt incredibly guilty afterwards when Beverley took my plate…. not in a fit of politesse or tidiness on her part, but to eat the remnants, including chewing on the remaining chicken bones.

Joe, one of the Canadian volunteers, had to be restrained from running off to SPAR then and there to get some sausages to braai for the children. Instead, we planned a proper meal for the children the next night, one that we would prepare for them: it would be our treat. Thanks to the Toe Incident (OK, the short version: a manhole cover fell on my toe. For future reference, this hurts. I won’t bore you with the further - very gory - details…), I was unable to do much other than contribute wonga and help serve out at dinner-time, but, by the time I crawled over to the Home that evening, the others had done a stupendous job. Joe was braai-ing pork chops and boerwers like it was going out of fashion, with Bill running to and from the kitchen with further supplies. Because of the quantity of meat involved, Lewis was having to support this huge operation by grilling meat in the kitchen. Taryn was making enough potato salad to sink a navy of battleships, and Sarah was dispensing industrial quantities of sliced tomato, cucumber and, one of the Home’s staple ingredients, grated beetroot.

[An aside. Believe it or not, the South African Health Minister is on record as repeatedly urging people to eat beetroot… because it will prevent them from contracting HIV…. This is NOT why it forms part of the children’s diet. And, while we’re on the subject of official-sponsored lunacy when it comes to AIDS… South Africa’s deputy president was on trial for rape earlier this year, the rape of an HIV+ prostitute. A prominent member of the AIDS Awareness campaign, he was asked in court why he’d had unprotected sex with an HIV+ woman. “But I had a shower afterwards”, he replied. Even more chillingly, child rape statistics are through the roof: sangomas (witch doctors, for want of a better expression) advocate raping a virgin as a cure for AIDS.]

Back to the braai. When I reached the Home, the “babies” were being fed. (This term is somewhat inaccurately applied to the eleven youngest children, aged between 18 months and 7-8 years, who eat earlier than the other children and sleep in a house down the road from the main home. This separate accommodation is so that Dianne can comply with the legislative requirement that each child must have five square metres of space - a lunatic suggestion as government-built housing does not come close to complying with this.) It was a wonderful sight to see them all, silently bemused at what was in front of them, and then quietly hovering it up. Then we served the older children, bringing the plates and cups of “pop” to their places, in contrast to the usual, Oliver-Twist-like procedure whereby the children line up in the kitchen to be served.

Once again, silence fell as the children devoured what was in front of them, though many of them found the fried onion and pepper (capsicum) a little too alien to eat. Then we were thanked in music, first, a stunning rendition of “You Are Wonderful”, and then a number of other songs. Once again, we were overwhelmed by their warmth and gorgeous voices. They truly are remarkable children.

On my last evening, I’d bought some packets of mini-chocolate bars, Milo being the preferred variety after my road-testing this idea the previous week. As the packets yielded far more bars than there were children, staff and volunteers, I came up with the idea of a prize-giving ceremony, carefully ensuring that nearly half the children would qualify. We hadn’t yet been able to pay the children their dues for angel- and bangle-making, but I had worked out who was owed what, so the first sets of prizes went to the girls who had made most money overall (they’d been involved in an earlier bangle project, so had earned significantly more than the younger children), the girls who had earned most making bangles alone and, to be egalitarian about these things, the boys who had earned most from making bangles. In addition, the goal-scorers from the weekend’s football match (our lads are pretty “hot stuff” on the football pitch!) and the boy who had graduated from school the previous week qualified for prizes. Once again, the children burst into song with “Goodbye”, “You are Wonderful” and various of their favourites, ending, at my request, with “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”, the South African national anthem.

I will go back and work there again next year. That became a “no brainer” very soon after I’d first met the children. I felt guilty for having thought that whether I could cope with them should be a consideration in my taking this decision; this factor would be an indulgence on my part, a luxury after what they’d each been through. Admittedly, I did go on and think, in common with some of the other volunteers, whether we are actually HELPING the children by turning up in their lives for such a short time because we leave them again so soon, any emotional ties that may have been formed broken like strands of a spider’s web. But the children are getting used to the idea of volunteers. Yes, most of us were asked at one time or another by particular children whether we would be their “mummy” or “daddy”. One girl even wrote me a letter before I left, and the number of children in tears when I left wrenched every heart-string I have. But I believe that these children move on quickly, other volunteers come, and, in any event, there was the excitement of Christmas and the school holidays in prospect when I left.

Yet I can’t wait to see them again.

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Photos

Clayton's shoes and socks for his graduation
Nkosinathi had borrowed my camera that day, and I was taken aback that new clothes are such a rarety, they merit the immortality of a photograph