After being in Maseru for the last two weeks I finally manage to escape and dash back down to Leribe to pick up the pieces there. Top of the list is to see the boy with terrible pressure sores, Sello, who has deteriorated further and has been in hospital for the last week. It’s a long day as we go via South Africa to fix the car and pick up more wheelchairs. We get up at 4.30 am and must negotiated customs, a power outage, and some unpleasant lorry drivers, who are shouting at us and telling us we are in the wrong line to present our custom documents. It is the only line to present papers, but we are the only car, and the lorry drivers seem to think they can intimidate us and move up one place in the queue.
Mahlomola is half the size of the aggressive fat lorry driver leading the pack. I feel myself getting angry and am tempted to confront the bully but don’t want to be crushed by the juggernaut he is driving. Just as we reach the front of the line, the vitriol psyches Mahlomola into turning around. Fortunately, the custom officer in the booth sees what’s going on and waves away the lorry drivers away and processes our documents. We are saved but by the time we get back to Leribe it is dark, and we are both shattered.
I am up first thing in the morning to go to hospital and visit Sello. He has the heart of a lion, but from Mme Maja’s reports it sounds like his body has finally given up. He has pressure sores everywhere and has stopped eating. As I get ready, I receive a message from Mme Maja, Sello passed away around 6am and I am too late. He went through terrible suffering, and I feel relieved I don’t have to witness it anymore and he is finally at peace. We go to hospital to see how we help mum. Dad was working in South Africa and tried to make it across the border a couple of days ago, but his passport was out of date, and he was arrested and sent to prison. Now mum must do all the things that he would have organised as the head of the household.
When we arrive, she is seeing someone from social development to arrange paying the hospital bill. We go to the ward. Sello’s small body lies on the bed under a hospital blanket. The ward doctor is tamping because she says his body has been there too long and that he should go to the mortuary. Mum wants him to go to the town mortuary, not the hospital mortuary, which takes a bit longer to organise. We leave the grumbling unsympathetic doctor and go into the room to spend a few quiet moments with Sello. I tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t do more and I’m glad he is now free to fly away from the body that tortured him. I imagine his spirit soaring into the blue skies, making beautiful patterns as it glides into infinity.
We come out the room and mum appears, clearly running on automatic pilot. She still needs to organise the mortuary, so we go on an outreach visit and deliver a wheelchair to a girl and her delighted family. It’s all a bit surreal. By the time we get back Sello has gone to the mortuary, and we pick up mum to take her home. I park and our sad procession walk down the familiar overgrown path to the hut, mum marching resolutely in front, Mme Maja with her umbrella up to protect her from the sun, still wearing her fluffy carpet slippers that she ran out in this morning, and finally me.
Outside the dilapidated hut an old man dressed as a cowboy sits on the grassy bank, I think he is the local pastor. Mum and Mme Maja pass by the large bolder outside the hut, under which the first child is buried. As soon as they are inside Mum starts to cry and wail. She has held herself together up to this point but now she let’s all the torment come out. I try to walk away but there is nowhere to walk to and both I and the cowboy man stare at the distant mountains. The powerful smell that has accompanied Sello’s disintegrating body over the last couple of months is everywhere, despite his absence. It was at the hospital, in the car and now even outside in the fresh air. There is no escape for any of us.
Eventually mum spends her immediate anguish and comes out of the hut with Mme Maja. The next problem presents itself. The small hut is no longer the main homestead, the small breeze block building next door is, but the key has been lost during the flight to hospital last week. Mum finds a knife and the cowboy unscrews the door handle to no effect. I persuade him to use the knife to prise open the top window. I am the only one small enough to get through it and cowboy man holds the window open while mum give me a bunk up.
Fortunately, I land on a plastic chair the other side. Now I am standing inside the locked room looking at the three others on the outside. “God will help” cowboy man assures me. God duly sends help in the form of Mme Maja carrying my tool bag from the car. It is passed through the window, and I extract a flat headed screwdriver, chip away at the mortar and prise the metal door frame wide enough so that the locked bolt has enough room to slide through. The door opens. There are three surprised faces the other side and I can’t resist a little “Da Da” at them causing a ripple of laughter.
Mum thanks me for everything I have done, and I really don’t know what I have done. I have spent more time with Sello on home visits than any other child in Lesotho, but maybe all my efforts just caused Sello to suffer longer. What killed him in the end was the years of confinement in the hut and the resulting bed sores as mum hid him from the witches and tried to protect the family from the stigma of a child with cerebral palsy. Mme Maja tells me that at cerebral palsy clinic the previous week they had taken all the mums in the clinic into Sellos room to see what happens when you hide a child away and leave them in bed, not changing their position. Everyone was in shock and in tears as they see the terrible testament in front of them. Perhaps this is Sello’s ultimate legacy, and he will save other children from his fate in the future. I pray to God that I will never have to witness such torment again.
