Perpetual Change

Orphans

So I was going to post a rather angry message today, but after reading Blia's latest email, my thoughts seemed rather petty. I am sorry if this moves some of you to tears as it did me, but it needs to be said. Email me if you want Blia's address.

So I have decided to move my camp to August, so it’s not gonna be in May anymore. Another volunteer is having her’s in May and I’ll be helping her out. It works out better anyhow, because I have more time to prepare. So if you are sending items/supplies for the Boys & Girls Day Camp you can just send it SURFACE MAIL & I will get it within 2-3 months, I’m sure, way ahead of the August date.

We also recently began a Boys & Girls After-School Program & I LOVE IT! So I just thought 20 kids would show up, I had over 80 kids show up on the first day! There were so many kids, and we just had this little shack of a room, you know, broken windows, cement walls falling apart, so we packed as many kids as we could into the room, then other kids who couldn’t fit in peered through the windows! The children & youth do arts & crafts, sports activities, and life skills/HIV&AIDS education, etc. Most of these kids are orphans & vulnerable children, we also have children that don’t attend school because they can’t afford school uniforms & school fees, so they come to the after-school program. We started this because children here don’t have any activities after-school, so a lot of children are getting involved in high-risk behaviors. So if you all send items/supplies for the Boys & Girls Day Camp in August, I hope you don’t mind me also using it for the after-school program. I promise you whatever you send, nothing will go to waste.

That said, oh my goodness, so you know in Swaziland, we don’t have someone come & pick up our garbage. Basically every family has a garbage pit, and you throw your stuff in there & then once a month the family burns the garbage pit. So one day I’m at Ebuhleni Primary School (it’s the elementary school that I have to cross the Indiana Jones bridge to get to & I just started teaching this term), and I see this old empty package that has papers in it, and it’s from America. I was like, oh wow, who sent the elementary school a package from America? I go over & look and it was my empty package that I had thrown in the garbage pit months ago! Kids go through everything here, and NOTHING GOES TO WASTE. I’m always throwing away plastic bags, with garbage in it – kids use plastic bags as backpacks for schools here & bomake (mothers) make carpets & purses out of plastic bags. So I see a lot of my crap (or what I think is crap) being used again as something else. And in fact, Ebuhleni is another village, so it’s just mind-boggling that my garbage ended up there!

Like I have mentioned numerous times, creating dependency is something I hate, however thinking about how my family got to be where we are, we would not have made it without the help of many generous offerings from such kind people. My family lived in a refugee camp after the Vietnam War before they made it to America, and without the help of a sponsor I don’t know where my mom, dad, & siblings would be in our lives now. Another reason why all of this is so close to my heart is because my father was an orphan, he lost both of his parents when he was young, and he went to live with a family that virtually made him do all the household chores. I never understood it when he use to get really upset when my siblings and I fought or when we were lazy, didn’t do our chores, or slept in till 8am on the weekends, but now I do. My father didn’t have his biological siblings, so he always wanted us to appreciate one another, and he use to get really upset when we were mean to one another. Because you see these kids that are orphans here, most of the times they’re separated from their biological siblings sent to another family & they become the herd boy, the one who wakes up at 5am to herd the cows, then in the evening they bring in the cows, and their not treated like a child that belongs to the family, they’re just not. They’re treated like “you should be grateful I took you in because no one else would.” There are also many child-headed households here, that is a family that is run by a child because both parents have passed away or abandoned the family. And this may sound awful of me to say, but sometimes I think it’s better to be living in a child-headed household than to be living with someone who treats you like a slave. I should also mention that most of these orphans end up living with a grandparent that is too old to take care of them and provide for them. When I was registering the children, I didn’t have one child cry when they talked about not having parents or how their guardians mistreated them, but I had grandparents cry because they just couldn’t provide for these kids, but at the same time they knew they couldn’t abandon these kids, and they were crying because they were looking at the Young Heroes program as hope. Due to the fact that we knew some guardians/caretakers would abuse the system and use the money for other purposes than food & clothing, we chose other responsible adults that the children live by or are related to avoid that.

You know when I sat down & heard these kids’ stories one by one, I just really wish there was more I could do then just write their information down. Especially, the little 3 month old, Sakhamuti Hlatswayo – I couldn’t sleep at all, I kept thinking about this little baby. And many of them, their mom and dad died from an illness they don’t even know. The death is always “unknown” in this country. Or on the death certificate it will state “Cause of death – Tuberculosis.” I should also explain that the route I went in registering the double orphans in my chiefdom was through the schools, so the headmasters (principals) have verified that they are double orphans. Because sometimes people lie to register their child because they need the money so bad. And there were people who came to register their single orphans (that’s a child that has lost one parent), and oh my goodness, I hated that, because they start telling you their story, and it’s so hard to tell them that this program is only for double orphans. There are SO MANY single orphans, so many.

So NERCHA is going to put pictures of the children up on the Young Heroes website, and most of the children I registered will be wearing school uniforms (children are required to wear school uniforms in this country & school is not for free either), because I had so many double orphans to register I couldn’t go to every single homestead, so I registered them at the school. For most children they have one school uniform and wear it 5 days a week, however, they wash it every night & iron it every morning, believe me, they do this, because they’ll get beaten by the teachers or headmasters (principals) if they don’t. I’m just mentioning this because you’ll probably look at the picture and think they look just fine they’re wearing a collard shirt & slacks, but believe me this is their ONE good outfit they own. And when you look through the pictures, you are gonna see that they are standing next to a cement house, that is the school, it’s not their house. Most of the double orphans live in mud huts. So please don’t choose to sponsor a child by what they are wearing or what they are standing in front of, because I took most of these photos at school, so for most of these children, they are wearing their one best outfit they own. On weekends, I see my kids from school wearing their high water pants that they’ve owned for years, or skirts all ripped up. I even had a little boy & girl come looking their best, in their church outfits because it was their first time getting their photos taken. The majority of these people have never seen a photo of themselves, so when I show them how they look like on the digital camera they are so amazed, laughing, & gasping. Okay, so I gotta stop, because I could go on & on about orphans here.

posted by jjs @ 3:50 AM