Community Engagement

This week, now that the medical students are on holiday, we are back to doing community engagement. This involves visiting various NGOs around Bloemfontein and helping out however we can. On Monday, we went to Tshepo Foundation’s daycare and crèche in a township of Bloemfontein. It was founded in 2000, and it is a Christian-based organization. It has grown a ton since it began, and now it even has a wellness center. A local doctor volunteers her time to screen the children and refer them to another doctor if necessary. This prevents them from having to wait days at the clinic to be seen by a sister, who may not even catch that there is something wrong. She says she has found TB as well as HIV/AIDS in the kids. They hope to expand the program by getting more doctors to volunteer time. This way they can also reach other parts of the community. We visited all of the classrooms to see the different age groups. The children were extremely well-behaved and excited to see us. One group sang us a song about HIV/AIDS and how it affects their community. It was amazing to see how much these young children know about this disease, since it is a part of their daily life. Later, we had a chance to play with the children on their playground. They were very excited to speak whatever English they knew, teach us games, play with our hair, and just be held. It was a fantastic experience, and we couldn’t wait to go back! Later, we went to Lebone village again. We were only there an hour, so we played with the orphans a little, then helped feed them lunch. Afterward, we put them to sleep for naptime.

The children at Tshepo Foundation

Tuesday, we spent the morning at REACH. We had gone there the first week we were in Bloemfontein, but the children were not there since it is only an afterschool program. Now, it is their school holiday, so they are there all day. This week is Drug Awareness Week, and the children are doing various programs all week to learn more about drugs and their effect on the community. They were divided into four teams, with names like “The Drug Chasers” and “No High.” Yesterday, they performed skits to earn points for their team. Today, they had to create a poster showing the negative effects of drugs. At the end of the week, the winning team will get a prize. While there, we also played several games with them and had a short prayer, since it is also a Christian-based organization. The woman working there told us that many of the children are victims of abuse, so they have a social worker there that helps advocate for the children.

While we did not want to leave REACH, we were beyond excited to go back to Tshepo today. We went on a walk around the township to see what life is like there. We saw all of the shacks, as well as the RDP homes that are built for families by the government. We also stopped by a shop that sold vetkoeks (fat cakes), which were basically sweet, fried balls of dough. When we returned to the crèche, the children were finishing their snacks, and we played with them again.

Finally, we made our last stop for the day at New Horizons. This is an organization that provides nursing care for patients that are homebound in Heidedal. It was founded by a nurse who had lupus and saw the need for such a service when she wa unable to take care of the people in her neighborhood due to her illness. We went with the nurses to three different houses. The first man we saw had epilepsy. The nurses basically made sure he had taken his medication for the day and that he knew when he had to go to the hospital for follow-up appointments. The second patient was a woman who had a stroke and could not move. She lives alone with her two children, but is unable to take proper care of them. She can’t leave the bed, so her bed is always wet. However, these nurses are working with such limited supplies, time, and funding, that they cannot wash the bedding for her. They could only bathe her. It was very difficult to see. The last patient was a woman recently diagnosed with AIDS. The nurses wanted to make sure she was taking her ARV medication, since many patients stop taking them due to the extremely uncomfortable side effects. It was nice to see that there are people to check on these sick patients every day, but hard to accept that they can’t do very much with the lack of resources available.