EIL Intercultural Learning

SOUTH AFRICA, 2008 - We found the school and Zola who had been recently discharged from care with Thembacare, the organisation I am volunteering with.  She has now been placed with a dedicated foster mum and her teacher says she is doing incredibly well and getting stronger everyday.  Zola is full of smiles and playing with the other children in the crowded classroom; she seems to be the life of the party.  Thembacare is an 18 bed care unit for babies and children living with HIV.  The organisation offers a second chance for a happy life to the children lying neglected in the Cape Town hospitals.  Sadly because Zola was taken in by Thembacare as an infant, and previously did not receive the correct care an HIV positive baby needs, she has to live with a severe disability and cannot walk.  However, determined to keep up with the other children she uses a small plastic chair as a walking frame.  Part of the organisation’s work is to provide follow-up home-based care to the children who have been discharged, and that was what brought me to this school.

This was just one of the unforgettable experiences I had while volunteering in South Africa as part of the EIL Global Awareness Programme which focuses on raising awareness of HIV and AIDS.  Thankfully most of the stories I witnessed were positive and of children who had hopeful futures.  However I was very aware that these kids, despite each one’s tragic past, were the fortunate ones, and in South Africa there are a quarter of a million   children living with HIV, most of whom live below the poverty line.  Is it any wonder that Thembacare has a long waiting list of babies hoping to receive proper care?  On one of my trips to the hospital to collect a baby who had reached the top of the waiting list, a mother of a different child approached me and tried to convince me that it was her child I was there to collect.  Such was her desperation and her harsh reality.