Week 9 Blog: Ups and Downs (27/3/16)

On Sunday, I was picked up from Maseru by the Sentebale driver to take me to a new guest house so I could start at my next placement, Morapeli, on Monday. He doesn't speak much English and from the amount of times he stops I gather he doesn't know where he is going. Neither do I, but we eventually arrive at a very nice lodge and I spend the night there. When I meet the manager the next morning he tells me I've been brought to the wrong guest house. I have to pack up my stuff and walk down the road to Lindy's guest house and unpack again. For once, I am glad that Imperfect taxi's failed to pick me up on time, but an hour and a half later I am starting to get a little annoyed.

At last the lovely Sabbath arrives, who I have shared many a journey with to Saint Angela's, and we set off to Morapeli. Unfortunately, neither I, Sabbath nor any of the locals know where it is, and eventually I call Manyanye who points us in the right direction. When we arrive there are no senior staff because they have gone to meetings in Maseru, and no children, because they are in exams. Not only that, they are all going on Easter break on Wednesday. There is little point in hanging around, so Sabbath takes me back to Lindy's.


While I wait for things to be sorted I visit the oldest church in Lesotho, then climb the local mountain and play my sax on top and watch the sunset. It is spectacular. The climb is equivalent to the climb up Cadair Idris and done by the primary school children every day to get back home from the primary school at the bottom of the mountain to their village at the top. I join them as they trail up the mountain and wonder what a seven-year-old in Wales would say if they had to tackle it.

I get back in the dark, glad that I took a torch and a young local girl, Caroline, with me as guide. We get back to Lindy's and the night guard unlocks my accommodation and comes in to sort the keys out. We exchange pleasantries and Caroline leaves, but the night guard stays on and plugs in his phone. I am not happy. I am the only guest on site and he is the only member of staff. I suggest that I bring his phone out to him, but he doesn't seem to understand me. He is making me feel very uncomfortable and in the end I make coffee and ask him to drink it outside. He finally gets the message and goes. 

Unfortunately, I have been told not to lock the house because there is supposed to be another guest arriving that night. The key to my bedroom door won't lock and the bolt is misaligned and also doesn't work. I improvise with a chest of drawers and breathe a sigh of relief when an hour later I hear the other guests arrive.

Transport fails again the next day and Manyanye sends in the Chief. A local and reliable driver who reassures me and takes me to Morapeli. The staff that attended my workshop at Saint Angela’s are there and are very helpful. We get loads of work done and I assess a lot of the youngsters in my new physiotherapy room, which is a floor with some blankets on it. Morapeli is like Saint Angela's with teenagers who are basically physically disabled. They do not have the young children with the severe learning difficulties that Phelisanong had.

I see a range of things from spinal cord injuries resulting from gunshot wounds, to hemiplegia's, a girl with thalidomide, a boy with severe scoliosis, burns, birth defects and very deformed feet. I don't have any medical notes and I have long given up on any help they can provide me with anyway. I see an eighteen-year-old boy who was a normal boy up to five years ago before he started getting tired and weak, and is now in a wheelchair. Neither his parents or the staff at Morapeli have taken him to a doctor. The staff tell me he is lazy. I look at his severe muscle wasting and think it is more likely he has muscular dystrophy.

I see another boy who had an operation on his foot three years ago and the wound has been weeping ever since. There has been no money for a follow up appointment and that's the way he has been left. I despair of the health care in this country, but the people's resilience is amazing. I meet John as I look around the school. He is my age and the Sisters have built him a small house to live on site.

His paralysed arms hang down by his side and he sits with his virtually useless legs out in front of him. With the help of some friends he has designed a cart which he manages to get on and off using a washing up bowl, and punts around with the aid of a stick. Even though he shows me how it works, it still seems totally impossible given the very limited movement he has.

I'm constantly uplifted by people like John and feel that every battle for better conditions is worth fighting. I have less than two weeks left now and hope I can still make some small differences in this time. Tonight, I have received the fantastic news from Ma that she has visited Phelisanong and found the children in the physiotherapy room being supervised by the staff. She was so impressed that Sentebale are going to fund three more care workers from today. This makes it more likely that the changes I have tried to bring about there will continue. The week is certainly ending a lot better than it started and the ups have definitely made the downs worthwhile.