Blog 19: The long road

As I approach Phelisanong on Saturday morning there is a pile of rubble outside the gates that looks familiar. Puzzled I continued past it, and it is only when I get to the physio room that I realise the rubble use to be the retaining wall which had Mahali’s boxes stacked behind it. Without this wall these boxes are now precariously balanced in the corner. “Hey what happened to the wall,” I ask Mahali I ask as he comes in. “I don’t know,” he smiles brightly “the men just took it down.” I decided to seize my chance for more space, “do you think it would be a good idea to put your stuff in the container?” Unfortunately, there’s no deal, Mahali says there’s no room in the container. 

   

The morning continues and by the time the kids go for lunch there is a distinct buzzing sound, accompanied by a growing posse of bees in the room. “What’s with the bees Mahali?” I ask him as he passes by “I don’t know, he replies cheerful, “I’ll fetch the Doom.” He arrives back with a can of Doom which is empty. He squirts it anyway just to pacify me, as I’m getting a little hysterical about the bees. By now there must be over a hundred in the room and the focus of their attention is Mahali’s padlocked wardrobe, which he opens several times a day to get things out of.

“They’re building a nest in your wardrobe, I tell him.” Mahali denies it and opens it to show me I am wrong. I point out where they are entering a hole in one of the boxes, and insist he takes it outside. Mahali open’s it to show me they are merely interested in some bees wax he has stored there. He agrees to hang the wax in a bag in the trees and the bees gradually start leaving, following the intoxicating smell of the wax out into the garden. By the time children come back there is only a dozen disorientated bees flying around the room and the only person who’s been stung is me. I mention this aside to show how quirky life can be here, and how you just have to roll with it.

On Monday morning, I spend a ridiculous amount of time getting cross over one of the few remaining wheelchairs whose seat won’t fold out. I haven’t got the right size alum key for it and resort to my hammer. Even this technique does not bring results and it is only when Nelson brings some calm to the situation that I notice two supporting bars that should slide, don’t, and some grease greatly improves the wheelchairs behaviour. The moral of the tale being that brains frequently trump hammers.

On Tuesday I walk some of the children to school and then go down to house 8 to find Keneoue is sick again. Mamello says she must go to hospital as she has a chest infection and diarrhoea and is not feeding. I go and do some physio until disturbed by the sound of horns and ululating. The noise announces the arrival of a convey of trucks stacked with wardrobes and cupboards and a ceremony of thanks giving. I go over to watch the ceremony where the school choir are singing in the midday sun and the principle is in her best orange dress, so it’s a serious affair. The man in charge of the wardrobes gets up to give a speech which goes on for so long if the children hadn’t been African they would have all have passed out with sunstroke.

I decide to go and see if Keneoue has gone to hospital and find she is still waiting. I notice a small boy who looks very sick lying on one of the beds and who I haven’t seen before, and when I uncover him to find he is desperately thin and has a fever. Upon further investigation, I find he has come from the baby house where three children have died in the last few days, possibly from the measles vaccine, but it is not clear. They just suffered fever, rapid weight loss, went to hospital and died soon after.

This boy had only been at Phelisanong a couple of weeks. His mother evidently went mad and ran off with him and didn’t feed him, which is why he has malnutrition. He was deemed too sick to have the measles vaccine, which might be a blessing for him, but he has still come down with fever and now is in house 8, waiting to go to the hospital with Keneoue. 

I am concerned because who knows if he is contagious or not and he’s lying in the middle of a packed house surrounded by two dozen children. I go back to see Mamello and find the wardrobe thing still going on, which is a very difficult occasion to interrupt.  The wardrobe man has evidently decided to become a politician and seek election, and is practicing his skills on a captive audience. Eventually the message does get through to Mamello and she comes to house 8 and the boy with malnutrition and fever is taken outside to wait outside on the door step with a house mother.

I manage to find a packet of rehydration salts and mix them up with some water. He gulps down a couple of cups full. I try to get Keneoue to have some in a baby’s bottle, but she is coughing too much to drink anything. We are told the car is on its way to take them to hospital but this doesn’t give much of a clue of when it might arrive. The wardrobe people leave and the children are given left over snacks while they wait for a late lunch. Someone has put two biscuits in Keneoue cot and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, trying to imagine her suddenly start munching on a biscuit. The taxi finally come at three and feels like it’s already been a very long day and fortuitous that I am doing hygiene training tomorrow.

At the training the next morning there are care parents from each house, and representative from the school and kitchen. I start by asking if the children get sick very often and they all say “yes often.” I ask them why they think this is and how they think sickness might spread between children. They suggest bad water and bad food, but there is no mention of germs or how they might be caught.

I think something invisible is difficult to explain. The glow dust on the doctored pen and paper that everyone signs their name on, helps illustrate the concept of how diseases might be spread when the UV torch reveals its trail. From our discussion, it is agreed that that hand washing is a good thing and I give out the last two plastic water containers I have for a hand washing facility for the outside toilets. The teachers and care mothers also say they will supervise lunchtime hand washing and I will do some further training with the children in school next week.

The following day I am in house 8 helping with the feeding. Once again Keneoue is back as the hospital said she was too complicated for them to admit. She returns to defy the odds with paracetamol, multi vitamins and another batch of antibiotics. The boy with malnutrition and fever remains in hospital. Malineo has had to stay with him and Sylvia has had to go home for the week so I have lost both physiotherapy assistants for the time being.

On the bright side, it is now possible to open and close cupboard doors in the houses, without them falling off, since the advent of the wardrobe man and his gifts. I am also pleased to watch the able children diligently washing their hands before lunch. After lunch I am called upon for the placing of the water containers for hand washing for the outside toilets. The ground around the toilets is a mess of rubble and junk, and as it turns out shit, which I discover as I try to assemble the water containers on a pile of rubble, an old tin can and table with broken legs. Surprisingly these feats of engineering work quite well and the children are soon using the taps. I flick away the encroaching piles of poo so nobody walks in any while they are cleaning their hands.

When I go back inside and watch from the window the house mother standing next to me assures me the water containers will survive less than 24 hours.  Well, we shall see but you have to start somewhere. Hopefully all the training I did on the hygiene and feeding will not be lost, as notes have been made and will be translated in to Sesotho to make a short training video which can be used to induct future staff.

Mostly the work I am doing here is building on a long term accumulation of consistent input, things do not change suddenly, however on Friday I am blessed with a moment where a simple thing brought an immediate result. It actually goes back to Monday when I was walking up the track with the social worker, Nthaza, and she stopped to talk to a teenage girl who comes up behind us. The girl was upset and spoke with her hands in her mouth, Nthaza was also stressed. The conversation finished and we continued, leaving the girl standing on the track crying.

I ask Nthaza what the problem is, she explains the girl is an orphan, very poor and lives with her grandmother. She is a good student, but has had to change schools and has no school uniform. Without school uniform, she can’t stay at school and will not be allowed to return after the Easter break. She has begged the social worker for a uniform several times, but all the bursaries have been used up and Nthaza has no money left to buy her one.

I tried to imagine what life must be like for this girl with no one to support her. There are probably thousands of children like her in Lesotho, but only one of them standing on the same track as me at this moment. It’s a no brainer, I tell Nthaza I will buy what is needed. It is such a small price to pay to give this girl a chance of a future. Nthaza goes to town and gets all the necessary things and on Friday the girl comes to get them and puts on her brand-new uniform, and yep, the look on her face... priceless.

I wish all fixes were as easy, but they are not. I watch Garry’s film the same morning, and the ten-year struggle that Mamello has dedicated herself to at Phelisanong. Against all the odds she has built something here that gives disabled children hope, a community and a chance of a better life. It’s been a long road, and with a bottomless pit of need, there’s no end in sight.  I walk out the gate, past the pile of rubble that use to be a wall in the physio room, and back up the track. Tomorrow’s another day.