Siyabonga

I first glimpsed him one day as I was walking through one of the hospital wards -- just a flash of a young boy's smile behind a closing door as I passed, a big toothy grin that made me smile too. A week later I noticed him again, same big smile, worn by a boy of around twelve years old, who was also wearing a blue hospital gown. I greeted him as I passed by: "Unjani, bhuti?" (How are you, brother?) "I'm fine," he responded in English as he kept walking the other way. Evidently we both had places to go and people to see.

From then on I saw him often around the hospital hanging out in his hospital gown. He was always in good spirits and seemed energetic and full of life. It was clear the hospital staff -- nurses, doctors, and orderlies -- liked him too. He was clearly a favored patient. One day I asked him his name. "Siyabonga," he said, which means "we thank you." I asked him why he was in the hospital, and he simply said "I'm staying here." That sort of vague answer is not uncommon, and I assumed he must not know or understand his diagnosis and that he was a long-term patient being treated in one of the wards. Whenever I saw him I'd say hello and have a brief chat, always exactly the same: "How are you?" "I am fine." "Sharp!" (pronounced more like "shop!"). Sharp is the all-purpose word of approval used by boys and young men here, sort of like "cool" is used in the U.S.

Scott got to know Siyabonga as well, and one day he came home from the hospital and said "You know that boy Siyabonga with the big smile? He's not actually a patient at the hospital -- he's been abandoned there." It turns out that Siyabonga had come into the hospital several months before with his sick mother. Siyabonga was sick himself with some relatively mild malady, for which he received treatment and was quickly cured, but his mother had died soon thereafter of T.B. They lived a long distance from the hospital, and no other family member ever showed up to claim Siyabonga or his mother's body. After making some rudimentary efforts to locate some of his relatives, the hospital eventually buried his mother in a pauper's grave, and allowed Siyabonga to stay on at the hospital indefinitely, sleeping in a bed in the male ward. Siyabonga said he didn't want to go back home anyway; there was no one there who wanted him, and we later learned from one of the nurses that he told her he'd been beaten and abused at home. He always wore a hospital gown because the only the clothes he had were the ones he walked in with, and the hospital had no other boy's clothes of his size.

Maybe it's an indication of how much we've grown used to such sad cases that even after learning Siyabonga's story, we made no special efforts to help him. Of course, I continued to greet him and to feel happy at seeing his smile, while simultaneously feeling a little tug at my heart for his strange life as a ward of the hospital.

One day, about a month ago, Scott and I happened to be in the administrative wing together. Sitting on a bench outside the personnel director's office was Siyabonga, wearing new street clothes with a small grocery bag containing the few possessions he'd gathered since coming to the hospital. He was clearly going somewhere. "What's going on, bhuti?" we asked. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. The look on his face was scared, brave, and excited all at once, and his smile quivered a bit.

"We'll find out for you," we told him as we headed into the personnel office.

The very good news was that he was being sent to Bulembu, the city of orphans I've written about previously. But I couldn't help feeling sad for this young boy when we went back out in the hall to tell him where he was going. As we explained to him what Bulembu was, and told him not to worry, that he'd be happy and well-taken care of there, I thought to myself what a strange, hurt existence this boy has already had: to leave his home with his sick mother, to watch her die in the hospital, to have no family to claim him or to return to, to live for months in a hospital ward surrounded by sick and dying people, and then to be moved again to place filled with other lost children like himself -- what sense of stability, or human relationships, or love must he have?

And yet his face is rarely without a big smile -- that brave, excited, cocky smile we've all seen on the faces of boys the world over. His smile endures without the things that bring smiles to the faces of other young boys. Scott and I walked him to the social services van that was to take him to Bulembu. As he drove off, he waved at us from the back window. His smile was bigger than ever. Siyabonga, young man.

Swazi Houses

These pictures should give you a good idea of the different types of Swazi homes we see every day. The poorest Swazis, who comprise a good percentage of the population, build their homes of mud, rocks, sticks, and reeds. Those who can afford to, build with bricks and cement, although as you can see, not always of the best quality.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Thabiso loses a shoe

On the surface this little tale may seem entirely insignificant, but it exemplifies in a concrete way the heightened importance of things we would hardly think about in the United States, and the complexities involved in resolving even small problems here.

About six or seven weeks ago, when Thabiso was still living with his aunt, I ran into his teacher one day in town, and she mentioned to me that Thabiso had not been in school that day. He'd had a perfect attendance record ever since we'd insisted on him going to school as a condition of his being able to visit us. So later that day I called his aunt to see if she knew why he hadn't been to school. "Oh yes," she told me, "his shoes don't fit him anymore. They are too painful to wear, but the school will send him away if he doesn't have shoes." I recalled seeing his feet squeezed into a pair of shoes he'd probably had for a couple of years -- a long time for a growing boy -- so after I picked up Scott at the hospital that afternoon, we took Thabiso into town to buy a new pair of shoes. He got the basic black leather lace-up dress shoes which are a part of all school-boys' uniforms here. The shoes cost about 155 rand ($22) -- very expensive for many families here.

Thabiso went back to school the next day proudly wearing his new shoes, and we considered the problem solved. It would seem that the story would end there, but nothing is ever that simple here. About ten days ago, Thabiso showed up "to greet us" one afternoon. It seemed as if something was on his mind, and eventually he told us that one of his new shoes had been stolen. He fingered his erstwhile friend and partner in crime, Senzo, as the culprit. "But why would Senzo steal just one shoe?" I asked. Thabiso just shrugged and insisted that Senzo had stolen his shoe one night when they were at a mutual friend's home watching their current favorite movie "Spiderman" on DVD. (The mechanics and intricacies of how they manage to watch these bootleg DVD's on homesteads with no electricity will have to wait for another entry (it involves a car battery). The thought of these kids having "movie nights" together amused my mother no end while she was visiting. The reach of American pop culture is truly astounding.)

In any case, once movie night was over, Thabiso discovered that one of his shoes was missing (the Swazis remove their shoes and leave them at the door before entering someone's home). One of the other kids said they'd seen Senzo making off with the shoe, so he immediately became the prime suspect. Senzo gets blamed for lots of things that go missing or get broken around here -- some of it deservedly so, but at other times he gets blamed simply because he's already got a reputation as a trouble maker. By the time Thabiso told us about his missing shoe, a couple of days had passed. Neither Scott nor I were inclined to run out and buy him another pair of shoes. Scott went as far as going to visit the homestead where Thabiso had been watching movies the night his shoe went missing. He talked to the mother of the home, as well as several of the children who'd been there that night, and he had the brilliant idea of offering a reward (10 rand, about $1.30) for the missing shoe. On the way home, he ran into Senzo, who vehemently denied stealing the shoe, but Scott wisely offered him the same reward if he should come across the shoe.

Scott and I shared a laugh that night at the thought of these kids scouring the neighborhood for a missing shoe. Thabiso hobbled to school for the next week or so in his old tight shoes, and I seriously doubted his missing new shoe would ever show up. But this past Saturday, I ran into Senzo waiting on the road that leads to Mabuda Farm, and he told me that he knew where the shoe was: he didn't have it, but it was back at the home where they'd all been watching movies the fateful night the shoe disappeared. One of the kids at that homestead had found the shoe and was ready to claim the reward. The only problem was, the family was away and the shoe was locked up inside their home. Senzo promised to come and get us when the shoe was available to be claimed.

The next night, Sunday, Senzo showed up at our door to lead us to the shoe. As it happened, Thabiso was there as well for his daily visit "to greet us." Scott bundled both of them into our car and took off into the dusk in search of the shoe. He returned a short while later, minus the two boys, but with a smile of success on his face. He'd given rewards to both Senzo and the boy who'd found the shoe. He'd then taken Thabiso home to make sure the shoe was a perfect match for the one he still had, and it was. We both hope that this Swazi school-boy Cinderella story is truly at an end, but don't be surprised if there's a sequel. You never know around here...

July Update

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to see and experience all that we do, especially some of the more sad and painful situations, and then to relive it by writing about it. Often I just want to forget it all with a good book, a cocktail, or by watching a movie on my laptop. But I've heard from enough of you that you enjoy and/or get something out of reading my entries that I promise to try and write more often. Following is an update on some of the people and situations I've written about previously, along with one or two new ones:

THABISO

Thabiso is the hardest to write about, so I'll start with him. After his mother's death, he went to live with an aunt, Make Sacolo. His aunt seemed genuinely to care for Thabiso, and with eight other kids of various ages in the family, it seemed that he would have companionship and a good support structure at her home. We had high hopes that he'd fit in with his new family. Unfortunately, things were rocky all along, mainly because Thabiso is used to running wild and doing his own thing. On the bright side, he has been going to school almost every day for a few months now. He seems to realize the importance of that minimum amount of structure in his life. On the down side, he simply didn't like living with his aunt, and he often ran away when required to do simple chores like fetching fire wood or tending the family's goats. A couple of weeks ago, he left for good and simply refused to go back to his aunt's house at all. He returned to the empty hut where he had lived with his mother, and is now living there alone. An older male cousin and his girlfriend live in a separate hut on the same compound, but they provide little real supervision or support for Thabiso. Essentially he is now an eleven-year-old boy living on his own. Sadly, this is not uncommon here. I feel very sad about his situation, but I have begun to distance myself from much further involvement with him, as I am not sure we will be able to do much more for him in the four months we have left in Swaziland. (You can read more about Thabiso here and here.)

ORPHAN FAMILY

I first reported on this family of seven children living on their own in this post. Unfortunately, since then, not much has changed. The social worker who had promised to help us, has turned out to be even more severely mentally disturbed than I first thought, and she now refuses to see me when I go to see her to check on their status. On the bright side, it appears that an adult female relative from another town has moved in with them and is now providing some supervision. Our ultimate goal remains to get them moved to Bulembu, the old mining town that is now a well-run "city of children," where hundreds of orphans just like them are receiving caring supervision, a secure roof over their heads, regular meals, and good schooling.

KHULILE: "FOUR LOLLIPOPS WOMAN"

I wrote about our wrenching experience with Khulile here. Since then, Scott and I have been regularly providing her with food for herself and her family. Khulile has gained weight and seems to be doing much better than when we first met her. It is amazing how just a little food makes such a big difference especially for people on HIV medication. Scott and I spend less than $50 a month to provide her with basic food supplies, but this has helped her to tolerate the drugs much better, giving her a whole new lease on life. Unfortunately, on a visit to her just over a month ago, her young six-year-old son, Ndu, who had been looking sickly, tested positive for HIV. Since then we have been trying to work through the truly Orwellian system of trying to get him initiated on anti-retroviral drugs, but even with our help it is taking a long time. It is amazing that anyone gets started on the drugs given the bureaucratic obstacles and incompetence we have encountered at every turn.

ELSIE'S NEW HOUSE

I think it's time for something more uplifting. I haven't written about Elsie and her family before. They are Home-Based Care patients who Scott visits each month, and whom we have come to know and like. Elsie is a strong, intelligent, independent, and very likeable woman in her 40's. She lives with her six-year-old daughter Siphesihle and her 18-month old son Thembenkhosi on a very poor, rocky homestead. Two of her adult sisters live in separate huts on the same homestead. As they will be the first to tell you, they are a family of sick women: everyone on the homestead is HIV-positive. But Elsie is doing well on ARV's and is seemingly strong as an ox. She wants to work to support her family, but there are no jobs. Her daughter Siphesihle is an adorable girl and one of Scott's special favorites; we call her his "girlfriend."

Elsie has long needed a new house. The mud hut she lives in is literally falling down, and the thatched roof is disintegrating such that it provides no shelter from rain or wind. On her own, Elsie had begun work on a new hut made of sticks, stones and mud, but she had stopped half-way through because she had no money to buy nails to continue building the frame. When Scott's good friend John visited us a few weeks ago, he generously volunteered to pay for completing the structure Elsie had begun. That new hut is nearly complete, but as Elsie was finishing it, it became apparent that it would only be a stop-gap building; what was really needed was a more permanent structure to house her ailing family. Scott and I decided that we would help her build a one-room brick house with a tin roof. My parents are now visiting us, and when we took them to visit Elsie, they fell for her infectious good humor and hardy work ethic. They are now generously funding the entire project, which is also now well underway. For about $1,500 Elsie and her children will now have a well-built, warm, and dry new home to shelter them for years to come. Again, it is amazing how just a little money goes so far in helping such a needy and deserving family.

MOM & DAD VISIT

I'll end this post on a happy personal note: my parents are visiting us right now. They arrived in early July and will be here until the end of the month. This is their first return to Africa since they served as lay missionaries in Kenya from 1969 to 1972. They have immediately taken to our life in Swaziland and are as moved and impressed by the struggles of the ordinary Swazi people as we are. They have visited the various families we are engaged in trying to help, have spent a day making Home-Based Care visits with Scott, and, as noted above, are helping build a new house for a particularly deserving family. We just got back from a few days in Kruger National Park, where we had an extraordinary number of great encounters with the big game there. All in all, it is being a very meaningful experience to witness them reconnect to this continent which played such a big role in their lives many years ago.

All the News That's Fit to Print

Sorry I haven't posted anything on here in a while. I've been busy catching up on the news... or what passes for news in the Swazi press. Following are some of my favorite recent headlines (and, yes, they're all real). More of my own news to follow soon.

Social Work in Swaziliand: "Do you believe in demons?"

For a few months now we've been very concerned about a family of seven orphan children living on their own, without any apparent adult oversight. The oldest child in the family is a girl of fifteen, and the youngest is around three years old. Scott first visited them with the Home-Based Care Team about three months ago. He came home shell-shocked by what he'd seen: seven kids fending for themselves, living in squalor, with no food. The team had examined the children and left them some food, but, unfortunately, such families of orphans are not uncommon here, and the team had felt there was little else to be done for them other than to keep an eye on them each month. After Scott told me about the dire situation of these children, we both felt that we had to do something. Unfortunately, as is all too common here due to the extreme need we encounter at every turn, every day, we did nothing at the time.

Two of the children in front of their house.

After the Home-Based Care Team visited the children again about a month ago, we made a renewed commitment to help these kids. We had heard of a place called Bulembu, an abandoned mining town which is being converted into a non-traditional orphanage -- a sort of "city of children," in which small groups of eight children live together in refurbished homes under the care of a Mage (pronounced MA-gay, and meaning "mother"), who runs the house, provides emotional support, and teaches life skills to the children. Siblings are kept together in the same home. In addition, Bulembu has an excellent primary school, which students attend free of charge. The whole operation is supported by a consortium of Christian groups, and there is no charge whatsoever for children to live there. (You can read about our recent visit to Bulembu on Scott's blog.)

As good as Bulembu is, there are some obstacles to getting children accepted there. Approval is needed from a government social worker to take children from their families. Though this would seem to be relatively straightforward, since these children have no parents and no one at all looking out for them, it's not quite that simple. Due to the way the extended family structure works in Swaziland, permission is still required from some member of the family, no matter how remote, and they may not always be willing to send the children away. It's a sad fact of life here that some adults benefit from having vulnerable children at their disposal -- perhaps to help them in the fields, but often for more unsettling reasons. For example, when the children receive food donations from Home-Based Care Team, relatives and/or neighbors will often descend on the home to take the food for themselves, leaving only a small portion, if any, for the children. You can also imagine how the children are vulnerable to other serious types of abuse, including sexual molestation and rape.

Two more children on the homestead.

After we visited Bulembu, and found that they had the capacity and were actively seeking to enroll more children, we decided to make a concerted effort to get this family of seven children accepted there. In the process we found out that there is only a single social worker for the entire eastern region of the country, comprising a population of around 250,000 people. Consequently, she is only in her office in Siteki on Mondays and Fridays, spending the rest of her time in other parts of the region. This past Monday (May 11) I went to the social worker's office with Deborah Maphosa, one of the Home-Based Care nurses, to act as translator.

I was immediately impressed by the efficiency of the social worker. She wanted to know all about the children -- where they lived, how many of them, what ages, their family situation, their health status, were they in school or not? Deborah and I filled her in on their situation, and then, without prompting from us, she declared that she knew the perfect place for them: Bulembu. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, however, she announced that she could do nothing further for us that day, since she had another pressing appointment: she had to go and pray over some of her other clients. "I hate to tell you this, doctor (she, like so many others here automatically assumes I'm a doctor), but pills, injections, operations, medicine in general just don't work. It's all about demons, and until you get rid of the demons you will never cure anyone."

As I was processing this pronouncement, she looked me in the eye, and said "You do believe in demons, don't you?"

"Yes, there certainly are lots of demons in this world," I replied, not wanting to risk her help with the orphan family. She then proceeded to tell me that she is a prophet, sent by God to help the poor. Like all prophets, she has been marked by a special sign from God; in her case, she has had nothing whatsoever to drink in four years -- not a single drop of any kind of liquid, including water.

She didn't seem to expect any response to this as she went on that she is "still awaiting a sign from God to begin my own radio show so that sick people can call in and be healed over the phone." I wished her luck with that, and then asked when I might return to take her to see the orphans. She immediately snapped back into business mode and asked me to return the next day. As Deborah and I drove back to the hospital, Deborah said with classic understatement "That woman has two sides to her personality -- but she's wonderful at what she does."

The next day, Tuesday, Deborah and I, along with Scott this time, returned to the social worker's office. She was ready and waiting for us to go. At the orphans' homestead, we found the children preparing their breakfast, a small pot of maize meal. The social worker quickly surveyed the homestead and then began gently interviewing the children, focusing on the oldest girl. I couldn't understand most of what was being said, since they were speaking in SiSwati, but the social worker was taking copious notes, and seemed to put the children at ease. After about 45 minutes, the social worker came out of the small house and said to Deborah, Scott, and I, "These children must go to Bulembu." She then began explaining to the children just what Bulembu was, a place where they would live together in their own home, and receive food, clothing, education, and health care all free of charge. One of the little girls began jumping up and down and clapping, and all of them had big smiles on their faces. Scott said it was the first time he'd ever seen any of them smile.

I had another appointment that day, but Scott spent the rest of the day with the social worker, trying to track down an adult relative of these children to sign off on their referral to Bulembu. In the end, Scott came home and informed me that, amazingly, the children are not orphans at all -- both parents are alive and living in different parts of Swaziland -- they have simply abandoned their children. Despite the horrible implications of such a situation, the good news is that, based on their abandonment, the children are still eligible to live at Bulembu. If all goes well -- that is, if one of the parents who have abandoned these children will sign a piece of paper releasing them to Bulembu -- they will be transferred there by the end of May.

One of the orphan boys.

This entire experience is, to me, indicative of the way things run in Swaziland, for better and for worse. The situations we encounter here daily are often quite stark and dramatic -- a family of seven children living on their own, for instance. But our attempts to help can be stymied by the most mundane bureaucratic procedures -- getting a permission to help such children from an over-worked social worker and a relative who has already abandoned them. On the other hand, Bulembu exists, and will help improve the lives of these children exponentially. Even our interaction with the social worker was generally positive; while I may not share her views on modern medicine, she acted quickly and efficiently to help these children.

Just for the record, I do believe in demons -- we encountered clear evidence of them throughout this experience. The demons I'm referring to may not be the same ones the social worker believes in, but nonetheless she helped these children immensely in beginning to exorcise the demons from their lives.

Young Heroes: One Way You Can Help

Young Heroes is a non-profit organization in Swaziland which provides direct food and clothing aid to over one thousand children orphaned by AIDS in Swaziland. These are children (like these ones) without mothers or fathers, who are now living on the generosity of their relatives, who are themselves most likely severely financially stretched by their own needs. I have been providing some administrative assistance and consulting work to Young Heroes since I've been in Swaziland, and can vouch for the excellent work that they do. 100% of your donation will go directly to supporting these vulnerable children; all administrative & overhead costs are covered by the Swazi government.

Below is a message from the president of the Young Heroes Foundation, U.S.A., outlining a fun way to help this worthwhile organization. Please consider hosting a party as described below. The Young Heroes Foundation in the U.S. was established to channel support to the Swazi organization, and all donations are tax-deductible in the U.S.

* * *
Friends:

Every year, the Day of the African Child is celebrated on June 16th. But all too often, it’s just another day of empty promises for many children.

This year, Young Heroes Foundation would like change that by turning it into a day of action on behalf of the AIDS orphans of Swaziland, the nation with the world’s highest rate of HIV/AIDS.

Our goal: To encourage 100 people to hold house parties on or around that day in order to raise funds for children who have nothing. Already, people from Montclair, New Jersey to Bellingham, Washington have responded to our call. We hope you’ll consider joining them. Doing good doesn’t have to be hard work – it can be fun, too.

The kind of party you hold is up to you. While we ask that each party have a goal of raising $500, any amount you raise will go directly to helping children in need. Young Heroes now supports just over 1,000 children, but we have many more who need our assistance. We guarantee that 100% of donations we receive will go directly to supporting the orphans in our program. (Young Heroes Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation based in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. All U.S. donations are fully tax-deductible.)

You can find full information about this effort – and about Young Heroes – at http://youngheroes.org.sz/dayofaction.asp. Or check out our video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nrzNdNDsSg.

If you join us, we’ll feature your party on our site and on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/causes/41443?m=5ce60ecc&recruiter_id=10757026. And we’ll send you material to help you spread the word.

There’s one more way you can help the cause: Please consider forwarding this email to your friends and colleagues who might be interested. We’re a small organization that has grown person-to-person from the grassroots because we believe in the power of individuals helping one another.

If you have any questions or comments, please send an email to dayofaction@youngheroes.org.sz.

Thank you,

Steve Kallaugher
President
Young Heroes Foundation


Help the orphans of Swaziland -- become a Young Heroes sponsor at http://
youngheroes.org.sz.

Farewell to Summer

It's been cold and rainy here for the past couple of days. Scott and I spent last weekend in Durban, South Africa, where it was warm and sunny, but when we returned it seemed as if the seasons had definitively changed. The seasons here are the opposite of those in the U.S., so we are well into fall here. I didn't expect it to get quite as cool as it has (in the upper 50's F right now), and I miss the warm weather already. We live on a high, windy plateau, and everyone tells us it will get even cooler over the coming months. Before summer becomes too distant a memory, here are some photos from around the farm where we live taken this summer.

Scott on the road leading from town to Mabuda Farm.

More of the 1 km road leading to the farm. You can see some of the farm's vast cornfields to the left.

Walkway leading down to our house on right.

Scott standing in front of our house. Kitchen windows to right, living room/Scott's room in middle, and bedroom/my room (w/chimney) to left.

A view of one of the farm's pastures taken on one of our evening walks. The farm is huge -- about 10,000 acres -- and we still haven't explored all of it.

One of the grass pastures where the farm's dairy cattle graze. The old bathtub is used as a trough.

A view of the main house, where our landlords, Dr. & Mrs. Pons, live. In the foreground is one of the two dairies on the farm. You can also see some of the Pons's horses grazing in the field in front of their house.

Another view of the main house. We live several hundred yards distant in the farm's old "lodge."

Me on one of the dirt roads on the farm.

Scott in one of the pastures they started harvesting for hay back in late January (mid-summer here).

Another evening view of same pasture.

Karen Wong and I at the farm's lily pond, which also serves as a source of drinking water for the farm.

Scott on the way home from an evening walk, gorgeous African sunset in background.

Scott and I walking through some cornfields ready for harvest. Much of the corn is used to make corn meal, so they leave it on the stalks to dry completely before harvesting and grinding.

It feels odd to be heading into winter as everyone at home heads into summer -- another mark of the great physical distance between us. Remember us as we settle into the winter months here!