Whilst Sarah was playing with fish I travelled down the coast a little to a place called Kommetjie Road. On this road is basically a hostel and a township with the little town of Kommetjie at the end, this became my home for two weeks.
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View from my hostel |
In the township of Masiphumelele is the Sinethemba Special Care Centre which is a day centre for children with disabilities. They provide care for children from two surrounding townships- Masiphumelele which is a black township and Ocean View which is a coloured township. I stayed in the hostel, which got rather lonely as I was the only person staying, whilst working at the centre during the day. The bus driver, Albert would pick up all the children in the morning from both townships. For the two weeks that I was there Albert became my personal chauffeur and would let me sit in the front with him, which was apparently a great honour!
My day would start at 8am, once we arrived at the centre the kids would all go to their classrooms. The classes are split by the needs of the children- for example there is a class of high dependency children and a class for all non-verbal children. I was put in a class with 7 kids, all very verbal and all semi-mobile (some had to crawl around as they cant provide wheelchairs for them all). I soon had a favourite called Leo. He is 8 years old and has Down Syndrome. From the very first day he was calling me his girl friend and soon became very protective of me, he even kicked one of the other volunteers when he joked I was not Leo's girl friend but his!
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Jody and Liyabona |
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Leo |
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Inati (girl), Inati (boy), Batibile and Leo |
Although I mostly spent my time in that class it was nice every so often to escape the noise and spend time with some of the other kids at the centre. I would always end up in Bella's, one of the carers, room as she was in charge of the baby room. Unfortunately these kids are suffering from conditions such as cerebral palsy and so they can't play as much as other toddlers might and so I learned how to do massages on them to help relieve the tension built up in their muscles.
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One of the classrooms |
Unlike any of the experience I had had before with special needs kids, I was just thrown straight in to being a carer and so was often left with many kids on my own which was challenging at times however I soon learnt the best way to distract each kid from causing more chaos! For example Mlungisi (yes most had tricky African names!) would love to bounce on the trampoline whereas Batibile could sit for hours chatting on the play phone.
Like most of the carers and staff my favourite time of the day quickly became 1 o'clock. This was when the kids would go to sleep and the staff could have their lunch. Our lunch hour would consist of us all squishing into the tiny staff room to chat or more often than not snooze until inevitably the children would wake up and demand you push them on the swing or read them a story.
On the Saturday between my two weeks of work the staff and children put on a school concert. The children were all in costumes and would dance along to the songs whilst the carers sang. It was such a fun morning which all the kids loved as the whole week after they would ask to sing the songs over and over!
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School concert |
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Inati as Peter Rabbit |
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Singing in the rain! |
What would always pull on my heart strings was when Albert and I would drop the children off at their "houses". Many of these disabled kids who face so many challenges already in their day are living in what we would call a shack- many with no running water or electricity. Despite this the children always had the biggest smiles on their faces and would never complain.