Week 3 and Kit finally does a bit of work...

Whilst waiting for my official application to volunteer with the Hark Audiological Service to be approved by the Ministry I tried to make myself useful last week. On the Monday I headed off North to Leribe at 5.30am (school starts early here!) to spend the day with Sian (one of the Welsh teachers over here for 6 months with Dolen) at a fully inclusive primary school.

The school is linked to the church and convent. I was made to feel very welcome and sat in with Sian on double English classes for year 5 and 6. Approximately one quarter of the pupils are profoundly deaf and some pupils have learning difficulties but they all attend the same classes. This is pretty challenging for the teacher as the classes are large and an interpreter is required. The children were very patient and some hearing children would occasionally take on the role of interpreter to explain things to the Deaf children when they saw them struggling. It was fascinating to see.

Sian told me that since primary education was recently made free for all and every child must be given a cooked lunch of papa, some children who had missed out on an education have returned at a later age and joined classes. In each class therefore there are quite a mix of ages present with some quite bit older than their fellow classmates.

I used my rusty sign language and chatted to some of the children. Their sign language is quite different to BSL but we got by (with the help of paper and pen at times!). After the morning classes the children gave me my Sesotho name (which you then keep). After a tense few minutes of them pondering and whispering and me worrying they would they would soon christen me...”crazy big nose lady”....they called out ‘Laretto’ which means Laughter or Love (I can’t remember which). I breathed a sigh of relief.... In the afternoon, the older children sang and danced in the open air and everyone joined in with all children signing the lyrics and the Deaf children following the rhythm and movements of the others.

There were few school buildings, no electricity, minimal equipment, snakes in the latrine (!)...but regardless of any of that, there was such a good feel to the school and for what it was striving for. Sian’s enthusiasm was quite infectious! Some of teacher’s told me of some success stories where some Deaf pupils passed their end of school exams and went into neighbouring secondary school with an interpreter to support them.

On Friday morning I had been invited to assist on a Paediatric Special Needs clinic that runs once a month at the QEII Hospital. It was good to see the place where Matt has been working these few weeks. As I entered the hospital who should I see coming the other way with his team but Matt himself off on the Friday Grand Round. Brief introductions were made but it was good to put faces to names of Matt’s colleagues.

Despite Matt having carefully drawn me a map so I wouldn’t get lost... I still managed to find myself at the door to the Mortuary when a kind lady put me back on the correct path. The clinic was held in the schoolroom of the Paediatric ward. It was a clinic that a Psychiatrist (Andy) had set up about a year ago. Some of the children we saw had been seen previously and some were new referrals. The age of the children ranged from 6 months to 12 years and presented with a vast range of different problems. Once an interpreter had been located the clinic began. Many children have HIV, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and some with sight and hearing problems. I could see Andy struggling at times to offer solutions when there were no wheelchairs available, funding for equipment and lack of medications. An extremely frustrating situation to be in when you can see the genuine need for things you get hold of so easily back home.