Placement

Tuesday- Our first day at our placement. I am volunteering at the Sarah Fox Children’s Convalescent Hospital in Athlone, Cape Town. Most of my days will be spent looking after children and infants. These children suffer from HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria and other terminal illnesses. There is also a severe burn unit. Many are orphans and consider the hospital their home. Because of the hospital's strict photography policy, I will not be able to show you where I will be working each day.

Three other girls from the homebase are also placed at Sarah Fox. One is a new volunteer like me, and the other two have been there for 6 and 8 weeks.

The hospital is divided in to two different wards. One is for the infants and the other is for the older children. The older children are then divided into toddlers and older kids. Since the other two volunteers have been working with the older kids, I worked with the infants on the first day and Alex (the other new volunteer) worked with toddlers. The first hour was spent in the laundry room. One of the housekeeping ladies kept taking us from our room and showing us how to fold, hang, and load the laundry. Later, the older volunteers told us that the woman just tries get new people to do her work while she sits and drinks tea. We felt really stupid for falling for it, but we'll know for next time.
I spent the rest of the day in the nursery, and the staff seemed so glad to have the help. Most of the babies were HIV positive and many were extremely underdeveloped. Some of the babies I guessed to be 8 months old were actually almost 2 years. We were told that many of the children also have TB, but all were given treatment and are no longer infectious.

After our placement, we had our first language lesson at homebase. I had to choose between isiXhosa and Afrikaans. I chose Xhosa because many of the children at the hospital speak it. Xhosa is a click language, and there are three main types of clicks - "c", "x", and "q". Here is a link to a youtube video to help explain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31zzMb3U0iY&feature=related
The lesson was a lot harder than I expected, but hopefully I will be able to say a sentence or two to the kids before I leave.