I just wanted to say a little more about the work that is going on here. The hospital has recently started an Orphans and Vulnerable Children project. The name is fairly self-explanatory but in general it seeks to help children who have lost their parents (often this means losing their mother as many fathers are absent) or who are at risk of losing their parents (often because the mother has HIV). It is also for those children who have become heads of household and those who are not accessing eduction.
The project is backed by The Donald Woods Foundation. Some of you may remember Donald Woods as the white anti-apartheid activist portrayed in the film Cry Freedom. It is not a doctor focused project and in many ways not a medically focused project so I have only been involved in some of the planning stages. It runs on a kind of 'Soup Kitchen' model which means that rather than targeting individuals and visiting their homes there is one day set aside each week at a local clinic and the word is spread that any children who might fit the criteria should come along. They are assisted with transport as much as possible and are given food during the day. School children come along when school has finished.
The day is staffed by the programme co-ordinator along with two nurses, a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist each with an assistant, a social worker and various community health workers. The feedback I have had so far has been really great; the physiotherapy and occupational therapy team have done a great job with them. Thankfully not many of the children have been sick and none so far have tested positive for HIV. Many of the problems have been social, particularly that the carers of these children are not receiving the appropriate funding from the government. This is often because of a lack of documents or other red-tape. It has not been easy to solve these social problems but it is a learning curve for everyone and hopefully things will soon become a little easier.
Thursday 18 October 2007
Friday 5 October 2007
About parenting.
I'm in no position to make judgements about parenting but I'd like to share a few observations from my time in the Transkei.
My idea of parenting is to plan a pregnancy, read all the books, go to the scans and the classes then attend the birth. Take the baby home to a freshly painted nursery and basically put a lot of time and effort into the process.
It is no surprise that the reality in the Transkei is quite different but I didn't expect it to be this different. Firstly, girls tend to get pregnant very young and they are getting younger. Fourteen seems to be common and it is unusual not to have a child by twenty. There is some debate about why teenage pregnancy is on the increase, some say that the girls need to prove their fertility before a man will marry them, others that the girls are after the social grant money that comes with having a child and others that girls are just growing up faster and having sex younger. To be honest I wouldn't like to say what the reason is but it is a worrying trend.
These girls are all unmarried and the interesting thing is that because of this the child belongs to her whole family rather than to her. This means that if she has two or three children and then gets married she doesn't take those children into her marriage, in fact she may not even count those children when you later ask her how many children she has had. Instead the children stay with the family which often means the wife of her eldest brother. Therefore if a woman marries a man with several disorganised sisters she might end up having to raise a whole group of children who are not even blood relatives.
I can imagine that most maternity wards in first world settings these days are full of pround men weilding video cameras and mobile phones. I've yet to see a man within 50 yards of our maternity ward (except the doctors and nurses). The area we use to care for the sick newborns is also much quieter that I would have thought. I don't think the women are uncaring for their infants, perhaps they just want to let the medical staff care for them until they are ready to be nursed by the mother but I seldom see them camped out beside the cot.
My idea of parenting is to plan a pregnancy, read all the books, go to the scans and the classes then attend the birth. Take the baby home to a freshly painted nursery and basically put a lot of time and effort into the process.
It is no surprise that the reality in the Transkei is quite different but I didn't expect it to be this different. Firstly, girls tend to get pregnant very young and they are getting younger. Fourteen seems to be common and it is unusual not to have a child by twenty. There is some debate about why teenage pregnancy is on the increase, some say that the girls need to prove their fertility before a man will marry them, others that the girls are after the social grant money that comes with having a child and others that girls are just growing up faster and having sex younger. To be honest I wouldn't like to say what the reason is but it is a worrying trend.
These girls are all unmarried and the interesting thing is that because of this the child belongs to her whole family rather than to her. This means that if she has two or three children and then gets married she doesn't take those children into her marriage, in fact she may not even count those children when you later ask her how many children she has had. Instead the children stay with the family which often means the wife of her eldest brother. Therefore if a woman marries a man with several disorganised sisters she might end up having to raise a whole group of children who are not even blood relatives.
I can imagine that most maternity wards in first world settings these days are full of pround men weilding video cameras and mobile phones. I've yet to see a man within 50 yards of our maternity ward (except the doctors and nurses). The area we use to care for the sick newborns is also much quieter that I would have thought. I don't think the women are uncaring for their infants, perhaps they just want to let the medical staff care for them until they are ready to be nursed by the mother but I seldom see them camped out beside the cot.
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