Baphumelele

Keketso, Big Lukholo, Me and Baby Lukholo. 3 of the most 'needy-for-attention' kids

Keketso, a cutie with beautiful eyelashes
Kid-kid interaction: Ntsikelelo and Nenana

little hands: anita and i think baby lukholo playing with my kara

We are volunteering in an orphanage in Khayelitsha, sometimes referred to as the Cape flats. Lonely planet says not to go there unless you have a trusted guide or to never stop there. We stay there 3 nights out of every week. But as the weeks have gone by, and i have not kept up with my blog, I feel quite safe sleeping there. Not any more or less unsafer than staying in obs. But of course, we are not without our rules...we are not supposed to leave the orphanage premises since there have been incidents, such as when one girl walked to the local market with 2 of the children from the orphanage and a man threatened to kill her in Xhosa if she didn't pick up the younger child. The older girl told the girl to pick up the kid. Although confused, she did..and later she found out why the girl wanted her to pick up the kid. Color is very obvious here. I have never felt so 'brown' or colored as I would be called until I came to South Africa. I have spoken with a few volunteers who feel that being white has such a negative connotation to it. That they feel blamed for the apartheid, even though they are from a different continent.

Anyways, the children's home where we are volunteering was started by Mama Rosie. I have only seen her a few times, and she seems like a really sweet lady. Baphumelele is now quite well-funded, government as well as by Elton John and other celebrities. So it is better off than most orphanages. Although my first week, I was overwhelmed by the "America house" or baby house. It had an overpowering stench of diapers, it was loud and chaotic, the careworkers were yelling in Xhosa, there were 35 kids ranging from 0-7 with no structure in one room... I'm glad I went there with expecting things to be just as or worse off than they were. I found that sanitation, nutrition, diaper changing, nose-wiping, punishing and many other things were a problem. It's hard because you want change. But change does not come easily. We also have our rules, such as no diaper changing or bottle feeding because that is mother-baby bonding experience and since we are short-term volunteers..the admin don't want us doing that. That is all fine and nice on paper, but when you have a premie baby in your arms who has puked 5 times and you have changed her clothes that many times and realizing she needs a diaper change and after asking the careworker to change the diaper and being told "fine then, just change her clothes" in other words, having the careworker say, either you do it if you care or just leave it...you just can't help but breakdown emotionally. Thankfully Vicky, one of the volunteers came and we ended up changing her diaper. Such a sweet baby too. But we were horrified to find her belly button swollen. She was later taken to the hospital when we alerted the Germans, who are long term volunteers in charge of medicine and hospital visits, that Nokutola had been throwing up milk for no reason.

So you can see, the experiences here have been roller coaster. You go from loving and cuddling kids, to just wandering what on earth you are doing and what are the careworkers thinking! Leaky diapers need to be changed...otherwise, the kids will get ridiculous rashes. It's hard to communicate as well with the careworkers, since most of them speak Xhosa. I have learnt a few words in Xhosa such as Kaka..which means dirty diaper or Suka, which means Move/Get out or Saloponzi, which means sit, or Isa, which means come here. Quite minimal really. I am still learning how to do the clicks properly. There are three different clicks for the letters X,Q, and C. I love listening to Xhosa-speakers. The clicking along with the strong and confident speech manner is very cool. Often, one kid, Pisa, who loves to play soccer, will come up to me and start speaking Xhosa as though I understand it. I really wish I could! We, also, found out just before we started our shift that he has full blown AIDs. I would have never guessed it because he looks really healthy and is very active. There are a few others that we know have it for sure. And one of them, although I said I wouldn't have a favorite, has become somewhat of a favorite. I don't want him to know that though, because it's just to hard when you have to leave them...

Anyways, its almost 2 am and I'm leaving for my shift in 6.5 hours. So good night and I'll try and blog some more about some interesting experiences, such as being followed, taking the minibus...

take care!