It's Monday morning and we are visiting the boy with the terrible pressure sores who has returned from hospital (blog 54). I have brought him blankets, clothes and bandages using money I have been given in donations. The mother proudly displays her handiwork in dressing his wounds. She has used sticky plaster to hold the bandages together but unfortunately has also stuck it down to his bare fragile skin. It takes twenty minutes of the boy screaming for us to remove the plasters so we can examine the wounds. They look about the same as they did a week ago when we took him to hospital, but he seems better in himself now he is on a course of antibiotics.
We dress the wounds, position him as best we can, and leave for our next visit. A few days later we return and examine the wounds again, they are very deep, some of them down to the bone, and they are not drying out. We decide not to dress the wounds and leave them exposed, covering him with a sheet to keep the flies off. The boy is emaciated, and I find out that the family only has sorghum to eat, so it’s little wonder his body doesn’t have the resources for him to heal. It doesn’t help that the water source is miles away, so supplies for cooking and washing are limited. We go up the road to the nearest small shop and I get some UHT milk, Weetabix and some tins of corn beef and peas for him. At least he now has some protein, which is soft and easy for him to eat and may help his body to start to heal.
Before we leave Mme Maja tells mum to remove the traditional medicine charms from around the boys neck, which are cutting into his skin. I would never dare to ask such a thing, but Mme Maja has had enough of the whole witchcraft thing and is giving mum short shrift. Mum looks scared and says that the boy’s aunty gave them to him, a traditional medicine woman. In the end it appears Mme Maja is even scarier than aunty and mum removes the charms reluctantly.
On Saturday I go to Phelisanong children’s centre to take a boy I know there a wheelchair. We go back to my first visit to Lesotho to work with children with disabilities in 2016 (Blog 8 No Happy Endings). He has been through a lot and risen above it all to go to mainstream schooling. He still lives at Phelisanong and has messaged me several times to ask when I will visit. Finally, the time came a few weeks ago and I found that he has turned from the small 8-year-old boy I first met into a fine young man. His voice has broken, and he is now at secondary school.
His smile and enthusiasm still define him despite the huge broken wheelchair he is tying to get about in. I immediately put him on the list of children that I am buying new wheelchairs for in South Africa the following week. Now he climbs into it and its fits him well, he is comfortable and better than that for a young man, it goes fast and gives him new independence. He no longer has to rely on others all the time to push him and he is made up. He spins on the spot, zooms up and down the path before disappearing to do a lap of the centre. I drive back home with a small glow inside me as I nostalgically flick back through the years and everything that has happened since I first met him six years ago.
Now its Monday morning again and we are back bringing more supplies to the boy with pressure sores, huge cabbages, more tins of corn beef, milk, soap, nappies. Mum tells Mme Maja she spoken to the village counsellor and hopes to get some food supplies from the ministry of social development. She then drops the bomb shell. She has also spoken to aunty and told her she has removed the boy’s charms. Aunty has said she wants to see us (yikes I will be right behind Mme Maja on that occasion) but also that she is going to buy the family cement so they can finish the building that they are working on and bring the boy out of the hut to give him more room.
I am astounded. Cement and more living space are definitely of more practical help for the boy then a bunch of charms. I wonder is this represents a small victory over the witches. (See blog 42 Battle with the witches) I’ll definitely take it but we still have to meet aunty and I’m sure she’ll have something to say on the matter.
