Less than 5 months since my last visit in November I’m back again in Lesotho. Events have conspired in a certain way that mean I am standing at the airport at the end of a long que where one official is hand writing various details from everyone’s passport and then scanning their eyes with a hand held thing which looks like a laser gun. It takes an age but doesn’t matter because it takes the ground staff the same amount of time to unload the plane, wheel the luggage inside and chuck it on the floor.
I grab mine and am thankful that somehow my bag has managed to negotiate Paris and Johannesburg and arrive unscathed in Maseru. The next hurdle is to get through luggage search, and I decide to act innocently and see if I can avoid it, and head straight out the door. A plane clothed security man points crossly back to the baggage search, while another man studies my passport. He sees all the previous Lesotho stamps and the word “voluntary work”, decides I’m legit and finally I get the all clear to leave the building.
Outside I look for the taxi driver, Sabbath, and find him standing on the pavement looking rather magnificent in a day glow green shirt and beret. “Mme Jan how are you?” he says with a big beaming smile, giving me a hug.
“Great thanks, I love your outfit. What happened to your car?” I ask him, staring at a rather battered grey vehicle he’s piling my luggage in. Sabbath fills me in on a rather alarming episode he had in Bloemfontein when he was chased by potential hijackers trying to steal the former flash taxi he owned. After that he decided discretion necessitated getting rid of his stand out car and to seek the safety afforded by grey anonymity. I can’t say I blame him, and his clothes certainly make up for the motors drab appearance.
After some shopping for some supplies, we pick up Justice from town and head back to my accommodation at his guest house. It’s undergone a revamp and now has all mod cons and is a very comfortable abode. I have a meal with Justice and his wife, Thato and discuss the state of the nation, the state of his family and the state of Saint Angela’s.
Since I first came here in 2016, I have been disappointed with the organisations ability to sustain the work I have done. I am now going to run a 3-day training course, with a follow up day in May, called “Introduction to working with children with disabilities in the community”. The intention is to try and instigate some community support for Saint Angela’s and look at ways the community can become involved and contribute towards the children’s welfare. I feel it’s the last roll of the dice in trying to sustain physiotherapy here.
It’s a small pilot course with 4 teachers, a local parent of a child with disabilities and Thato, Justice’s wife, who has qualifications and previous work experience in the community. I’ve been trying to organise it from back in Wales with pre course questionnaires, schedule and reading. The course starts the following afternoon and I spend the morning running around trying to organise the set up and check the arrival of the equipment which I sent out with Action Ireland last November. It all seems to have arrived safely, except a filing cabinet, which I suspect is still back in the warehouse in Ireland.
The course starts, nearly on time. We are two teachers down but have gained a retired physiotherapist, the first physiotherapist I have ever met in Lesotho! She tells me she thinks there are probably only 7 qualified physiotherapists in the whole of the country, mostly based around the capital Maseru. The two teachers that have turned up are from the adjoining high school, and one is the Principle. The other two candidates are Nka, who is the mother of a child with disabilities and Thato. I am happy, better to have 5 enthusiastic candidates than 20 indifferent ones. Workshops are a bit of a culture in Lesotho, normally with nothing to show at the end except the consumption of a free lunch and refreshments.
At the end of an afternoon of classroom teaching we go across to the physiotherapy room to look at the facilities and meet the children. There are 32 children at Saint Angela’s and most of them are trying to get into the physiotherapy room at the same time…its chaos! At one point there are 3 children balancing on therapy balls in the parallel bars and 6 sitting astride rolls, another 6 on the floor building Lego, while others are lifting weights and playing floor football.
The retired physiotherapist looks in shock and even I am a little taken back as I realise I’ve never met half the children before. Anyway, I roll with it and at least the course delegates get to meet most of the children and get an idea of the range of disabilities the children have at Saint Angela’s. It’s been a day of learning for us all.
The next morning, I call on Nka and meet her daughter Khothi and her aunty. The three of them share a typical Lesotho one room shack, with a tin roof. Everything the three of them need to exist is piled high around the walls of one small room. Their home is just around the corner from Saint Angela’s and aunty looks after Khothi when Nka is away.
Khothi has an engaging smile and can crawl and sits outside with me on the step enjoying the sunshine and watching the herdsman tend his cattle. She can’t talk but can understand what her mother says. Nka prepares some food to show me the problems she has feeding Khothi. Before she eats Khothi presses her hands together, indicating we should all pray before she eats her meal.
I am amazed how Nka has overcome so many problems to provide for her daughter over the last 25 years. As a single mother living in poverty the quality of care she has provided is astounding and something I doubt something I could provide living in her circumstances. There is little professional advice I can add to what she already provides, except to tell her what a great job she is doing.
We meet up again for the afternoon training session which is mostly physiotherapy orientated. Two more teachers who were supposed to be on the course turn up, but I tell them they are a day and a half too late and there is little point in them joining us, especially as one says she must leave early to go to the bank!
We carry on without them and have a rather amusing session with me trying to teach basic core stability, joint range of movement, and stretches, before the trainee’s test drive their knowledge on a few students. Over a dozen disappointed students wait hopefully outside the physio room, but I simple can’t let them in while I am trying to concentrate and teach. It’s such a short time to pass on a lot of knowledge but the trainees are enthusiastic and picking up things fast.
The third day dawns and starts with a brief look at epilepsy. It turns out the teachers sometimes have children fitting in the class but don’t know what to do. People have heard theory’s ranging from putting a spoon in the child’s mouth to calling a priest. It’s not uncommon in Lesotho to think someone having a fit has been cursed.
We go through simple do’s and don’t and everyone practices the recovery position. I suggest to the Principle that she does training with her teachers and every class teacher knows who is epileptic in their class and what to do. Also, that the children are encouraged to tell their teacher if they feel a fit coming on. It is very useful that the Principle is on this course and can train the rest of the school. She is very grateful to have the information, as she is supposed to be the lead on this matter, and up to now hasn’t known what to do.
After this we take the hazardous journey to school using wheelchair and crutches. The ground is very rough and the ramps too steep and everyone is amazed at the hard work the children must do every day, maybe several times as they have to go back to Saint Angela’s if they want to use the toilet.
The Principle thanks me for the experience just before she has an accident and tips backwards out of her wheelchair and hits her head on the ground. It could have been a lot worse but fortunately she is wearing a thick hair piece which absorbs most of the impact. After lunch and two paracetamol she’s ready for the afternoon session.
I decide to go easy on them and do some diaphragmatic breathing and relaxation therapy. A ten-minute chill and its back to working with another student, trying to assess her difficulties and come up with a plan. It’s a tough one as the girl said she could walk up to the age of 12 then had a fall, broke her arm and can no longer walk. The doctors say its arthritis, which I doubt, but I have no idea why her ankles are fixed, and someone has operated on both her achilles tendons.
We come up with a simple plan and then I call it a day. It’s been a course of information overload which is why I won’t review it with them until the follow up date of the 14th May. In the next few weeks I challenge them to action their knowledge and run some physiotherapy sessions. For now, I’m happy with the way things have gone and the candidate’s response. In May I’ll find out if they’ve learnt anything and what happened after I left.
Now its time to pack up because I’m going to Phelisanong tomorrow. Another children’s centre, another challenge.
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