Cato Manor to Amatikulu...

Sanibona Everyone!

We apologize for the lack of posting in the past week; we have been spending a lot of time in the rural areas of South Africa and with no plumbing and electricity there is obviously also no internet access…

However, we still want to share our experiences from the past week with you all because we truly have had some amazing experiences.

On Monday we moved out of our home stays in Cato Manor (the five weeks we spent living there really flew by!) and then we were off to Amatikulu! Both of us wanted to share our different experiences in each of our rural home stays so provided both of our notes for each location…enjoy!

Kristen’s Amatikulu Adventure…

We drove about an hour and a half north to Amatikulu/Wangu and spent the morning listening about Community Health Workers. We then had a quick lunch at Steers (SA’s McDonald’s equivalent) and then drove all over Wangu to our home stays. My friend Alexa and I were the last ones to be dropped off, so we spent 2 hours in the van while everyone else got to their home stays- all of the houses were about 20 minutes apart. Our home was definitely the most rural of all the ones I’ve been in- it had just 3 tiny rooms with 7 people living in it! Our mama lived there with her two sons, Mthoko (11), and Bongani (7), and her two nieces, Noxolo (12), and Anele (6). Noxolo and Anele’s parents had both died five years ago, and lived permanently with our mama. There were also 3 other kids that spent the night with us, Banele (3), Nonto (3), and Wandile (4). Needless to say, it was pretty crowded! That night, we all packed into the bedroom that had three beds, and we ended up sharing one with Anele (and quickly found out that she punches in her sleep….). We woke up around 5:30 on Tuesday morning; everyone else was getting up and since we were all in the same room, that means we got up too. After the kids headed off to school, we went with mama to visit some houses in the community. We visited all kinds of people with all kinds of ailments- from arthritis to TB to diabetes. The last woman had to have her leg amputated from diabetes and had a large necrotic patch on her other foot. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many people to see that day, so we ended up heading back to the house around 11. Since it was pretty rainy and gross out, me and Alexa ended up spending the rest of the day in the house and got bored pretty quickly. Although we had electricity and a TV, we didn’t want to waste it so we spent most of the day reading in bed. I’ve already made it through 5 books since I’ve been here- we’ll see how many I get through by December! After the kids got home it was a little bit more entertaining, but we were both ready for the day to be over.

Alyssa in Amatikulu…

After we were paired up with our Mamas at the local Amatikulu clinic (they are all also community health workers) then we piled in the van and were off to our new homes. My friend Sally and I were the first ones to be dropped off at the bottom of a giant hill that we climbed to get to our home. Our home was really nice it was about three rooms in total with no plumbing or electricity but it was still a comfortable place to stay. The house was in a grouping with several other small homes and round houses (huts) where the rest of our Mama’s family lived. It essentially was like living on a family compound which is quite a common practice here in South Africa. We helped our Mama with dinner (for all 15 people living on the compound) stayed up and chatted for a while with our family and then headed to bed. Once the sun goes down around 7:30 there isn’t much else to do without electricity so bedtime is pretty early. Unfortunately it stormed the entire night, and sleeping under a tin roof was quite noisy. There were also a lot of leaks in the roof but luckily my sleeping bag was waterproof, otherwise I would have been soaking wet by the morning. In the morning we got up around 6 with our Mama ate breakfast and left with her on her rounds as a community health worker. We first visited a man with TB who had already defaulted on his first round of treatment tablets. Our Mama checks in with him a few days a week as a part of the DOT strategy. After we left his home we went to a few of his neighbors to see if they would agree to be the man’s DOT person for the days of the week when our Mama was unable to make it to his home. Then we checked in on a grandmother with two little girls to see if they were up-to-date with their immunizations. Next, we visited a man who was sick with AIDS…he was extremely thin and was suffering from a severe cough. Our Mama encouraged him to go to the clinic for medicine and told him that she would come back the next day to check in and bring him some porridge as well. Rounds ended around noon and then we headed back to our home. We hung out with our siblings for a little while playing soccer. Sally and I also started picking mangos off the trees and eating them like all of the other children were doing…unfortunately we both broke out in a super itchy rash similar to poison ivy after a few days all over our necks! We got back and ate dinner and once again went to bed pretty early.

The next morning we were up early and got picked up by our driver and were off to our next rural home stay in Umthwalume!!!