Mrs Kate

So, today is Mothers Day and I know that my Mum will be reading this because she begs me to put up blogs when I fall behind, so I would just like to use this opportunity to say; HAPPY MOTHERS DAY ALLY D! You’re the best and if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t even be where I am today. Miss and love you.  Xxx

Also; I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT IT IS THE 10^TH OF MARCH, I really have no idea where the time is going. One minute you’re doing the Bloukrans Bridge Bungee or sitting on Table Mountain and the next time you look it’s nearly 3 months ago that those things happened. Holy crap.

In contrast to prior expectation this week was incredibly different from my assumptions; Kathy (my host) phoned me on Sunday night asking if I would like to spend the week with them in Manzini working at her new school, Enjabulweni. Enjabulweni is similar to Sisekelo (where I live) as it is a private school and all of the children come from well-off families. Some are seriously well-off; I met one of the Kings daughters. Working with privileged children isn’t normally my style, but Enjabulweni has a ‘Learning Centre’ which provides a space for special needs children to receive the attention that they need... and that is where I have been working all week.
Unfortunately in Swaziland special needs and disabilities aren’t widely recognised and children who do have these problems aren’t always provided for in the correct ways – especially in rural areas where there’s nowhere for them to be helped academically; so if they were fortunate enough to be at school but couldn’t manage the workload they would just be branded as stupid. This is a massive shame because with the right attention they could manage the workload and progress academically, but instead they are landed with physical jobs from a young age (such as becoming cow herders) and it is their responsibility to look after that herd until they’re too old to do so, or someone else takes over. 
The ‘Learning Centre’ at Enjabulweni is one of the only (if not THE only) place in the whole of Swaziland that provides this attention for children with special needs; there’s a permanent audiologist/speech therapist, occupational therapist and teacher to help the children.

My first day at the Enjabulweni Learning Centre was different from what I had expected; I was expecting there to be some physically disabled children as well as those with mental/social disabilities but there wasn’t. Most of the children there have learning disabilities which makes them unable to be in normal classrooms with other pupils as they aren’t at the same academic level as their peers or they have behavioural problems which makes them disruptive.
Two of the children Muke and Banelele are down’s syndrome; they have very short attention spans which means they need one on one time all the time, if someone isn’t sat with them they won’t work. Muke has brilliant speech, he’s originally from Johannesburg so speaks English perfectly but sounds a little American sometimes! He’s also rather effeminate and was always saying ‘Mrs Kate Mrs Kate, can I tie your hair Mrs Kate?’, and wanting to read Princess books.
Banelele on the other hand had very slurred speech and is very difficult to understand; I was working mostly with her all week and it is really slow going, even when she knows the answers you have to battle to get each one out of her as she’s always wanting to wander around, rub things out, lie down on the table or just stares blankly at you and refuses to listen.

Two boys called Thando and Tsepo had ADHD; in the classroom they just seemed like normal kids because they got on with their work quietly and the work they were doing was correct for their age group. However at break time they went crazy, once they had been let free of the classroom they developed too much energy! So when they came back inside after break time they couldn’t concentrate on anything, they wanted to get puzzles out, run around and were generally disruptive to the others.
Ayabonga and Thelive are both autistic; however their autism is very different... Ayabonga doesn’t really talk that much and he throws random temper tantrums in the classroom over nothing, there’s a ‘soft corner’ in the classroom with blankets and pillows and more often than not you would find him curled up there. As well as the temper tantrums he has a habit of running off; every day I was there he ran off at least once; he would sprint across the field towards the high school or would run into the primary school building, take his shoes off and hide in a little cubby hole, he’s quite the handful! However he is very clever, mathematically brilliant and can read and write in English perfectly even though he rarely speaks.
Thelive on the other hand just comes across as an insanely annoying, spoilt egotistical brat. Sounds quite harsh but it’s true, the occupational therapist explained to me that he had been very introverted and didn’t socialise at all but since starting at the Centre he’s done a complete U-turn and is now at the total extrovert extreme. He would dance around the class singing silly songs, telling everyone ‘look at me look at me I’m amazing, I’m the best’ etc, and trying to grab at Ricky (a guy who helps out) saying ‘I love you Ricky, I love you my boyfriend, I’m gay Ricky’ and wanting to hug him all the time.
Lastly is Mihle; Mihle is a girl who is deaf and blind – recently she started wearing hearing aids but is still getting used to hearing sounds and she’s not sure what to listen to yet, I think she also has partial sight because I would see her holding crayons up to her face (basically at her eyeball) to see the colour and then she would lay her face on the paper before colouring in a picture. She communicates through touch and has her own signals for telling people what she wants, she can say the word ‘no’ but other than that she just makes clicking noises or humming noises. Because of the two disabilities she can get easily confused and when she becomes confused or upset she gets very violent; she lashes out at people and throws things that a near to her. Sometimes she ends up hurting herself because she can’t see what she’s doing.

Woking with these children this week has been a different experience for me; it has shown me that there are all kinds of people who need to be helped, no matter what background they come from. Unfortunately by the time it came to the end of the week my patience was also coming to an end; I felt awful because the kids weren’t deliberately being difficult but after a week of fighting for every single answer I was getting tired of sitting with them and never feeling like they were 100% listening or wanting to work. You give someone your unconditional attention for hours on end and they don’t want to work; but as soon as you walk away to help someone else they turn around and shout ‘Mrs Kate please helping me!?’, so you go back to them and then they pick up where they left off... lying on the table or ignoring you.
I’m making it sound like I’ve had a horrible week here, but I haven’t! It has been great, it’s just that I don’t think I’m cut out for working with children like this full time... honestly, I’d take our 80 screaming, fighting, non-English speaking preschoolers any day over 7 English speaking children who 3 of which only work if you talk them through each second of the day.

I take my hat off to anyone who is in this profession full-time; you are a saint and have more patience than I could ever wish for.

Living with Kathy and Richard this week has been a nice change from hostel; I love living in hostel but staying with Kathy and Richard is similar to being back home, lovely home-cooked meals in front of the TV, Hunters cider bought especially for you because you don’t like wine, internet, a double bed and take-out pizza one evening!
My one favourite thing about being in Manzini this whole week was simply this; being in Manzini. Manzini is at a higher altitude than Big Bend, so on an evening it actually gets cool, twice this week I was COLD – now that’s something I haven’t felt for a long time. Goose-bumps even made an appearance, amazing!

After a hectic kombi journey back to Big Bend on Friday morning I arrived with the task of cooking for soup kitchen alone, always stressful. Made twice as stressful because I had been in Manzini so had twice as much food to cook! Thankfully the Aunties helped me out and even washed up the big cooking pot for me (which I had burned to a crisp so it must have taken hours to scour out), I felt awful because it was a massive job so I repaid the Aunty with some Dairy Milk chocolate that Ingrid had given us... she seemed perfectly happy. 
Turned up to soup kitchen to see all of the kids harvesting Aunty Vinah’s maize field, she’s taking the maize and putting it into her new granary so that it can be ground to make pap. After I’d served and all the kids went home I went down to Aunty Vinah’s house and helped her fill ice bags with juice so that she could make ice-blocks to sell, she was pretty impressed with my bag tying skills so looks like I’ve got a back up profession, haha!

Saturday I made myself get productive and finally made some weather posters for my classroom which had been sat waiting to be done for over a month on my desk. At the very last page the laminator decided to screw me over and created an almighty jam, this one I couldn’t even pull out. Off I went to find a screwdriver and I had to dismantle the whole machine, remove the rollers and slide out the jam. So 3 hours later I’m covered in oil, screws are lying all over my room and I’ve suffered a pretty big electric shock that made me jump two foot in the air and left my right hand spasming, but the jam is gone! So now I’m basically a mechanic of laminators, I definitely screwed everything back in where it came out of, I just hope that it functions properly... Let’s hope so. Yikes.

The terrible state of my room... and the laminator.

THE JAM OF PURE EVIL

Ashley is back today, so I can’t wait to hear the stories of her South Africa adventures!

Over and out...

Kate xx

P.S. Two legendary quotes from Muke this week:
“The Queen has brown hair, like Michael Jackson’.
“You have beautiful shiny hair like Rapunzel and Barbie and Beyonce, are you Rapunzel?”
What can I say, this kid loves hair!