After our hectic week of traveling in rural South Africa and hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains we returned to a busy week of classes and lectures. Our proposals for our independent studies took up quite a bit of our time as we worked through all of the necessary steps to provide human subject consent forms and completed confidentiality and privacy requirements for each of our research projects. From there we worked on finalizing our placement sites, found housing locations, and contacted local advisors for our projects who are experts in the field we wish to study. We enjoyed our weekend in Durban and relaxed on the beach in the time we had off over the weekend. The next week jumped right back into intensive work as we each completed our Community Health Seminar final papers which ended up being upwards of 30 pages. By the time we turned in our papers it was already time to get started on our independent study projects. The next day we moved out of our flats on the beach and had drop offs all over…depending on where students decided to pursue their projects.
Kristen and another student were dropped off in a rural village, Eshowe where she will be working at a local hospital.
Myself and another student ended up heading back to the Drakensberg area in an area known as Underberg. The small town is located in the foothills of the mountains and we are both working at the local orphanage, “Clouds of Hope AIDS Project.” Today was only our second day at our site but we already love it! The children and the staff are truly amazing. The founder of the organization Gogo Abi, is pretty much a modern day Mother Theresa. Her father never believed in schooling for women so she wasn’t able to start her education until she was 14 and decided to enter 1st grade. She finished her schooling and went on to become a nurse and midwife. She traveled throughout South Africa as a nurse until the AIDS epidemic broke out and she started adopting orphans in the area. At one point she had 6 adopted children and 6 foster children all living with her in her tiny 2 bedroom home. She wrote several articles for the local paper talking about the needs of these orphaned children in the community. The community responded and ended up raising enough funds to start the Clouds of Hope project. The orphanage has been quite successful and currently has 12 “cottages” on their property which each house up to 8 children with a house Mama living in each one of the cottages. Gogo Abi was recently presented with an award in San Francisco by the Dalai Lama. As we settled in Gogo told us about a few of the little kids as we sat down for tea. One little girl who looks to be about the size of 2 year old is actually over 4 years old. She was born very premature at 24 weeks, the nurses in the hospital thought the woman was having an abortion until they saw the fetus breathing. The mother was extremely sick at the time she gave birth with complications from AIDS and ended up dying of pneumonia 3 days after giving birth. Gogo Abi was called into the hospital and the nurses told her that the little girl was paralyzed, deaf, blind, and mentally retarded and would probably die soon. They asked Gogo Abi to take her in so that she could at least die in loving arms. Today, the little girl is 4 years old, she’s not mentally retarded, and able to see and hear just fine. She’s mobile but is still working to build up muscle in her legs to start walking…other than that she is quite healthy and speaks English quite well as I noticed when she crawled over to me and told me she wanted to sit in my lap. She’s quite adorable and I know already that she will be one of the children that I will grow to be attached to.
I thought that the kids would be afraid of us at first from previous experiences in rural villages with children having little exposure to white people. But I was more than happy to be greeted by a swarm of hugs from the entire pre-school class. There seem to be a million things to write about the organization so I will try to consistently update the blog on interesting stories and experiences that I have throughout the next three weeks here at Clouds.
Until then…Sala Kahle
Alyssa
No comments:
Post a Comment