Home Visits

We do a lot of home visits as part of the child carers project, requiring us to go out to the rural areas to various homesteads and talk to the children's parents, grandparents, or guardians.  Some of the residents receive us with open arms, some are skeptical of our involvement, and others have never heard of Environment Africa or child carers before.  As a special side note, there was another volunteer here for two weeks in February! Her name is Janna, and she is a nurse from Wales, but working in London.  It was AMAZING to have another volunteer to work with in the same program, and we had a lot of fun together.  Without further ado, some pictures of the home visits in February.

Cheidza, an 18 year-old orphan who asked to be a part of the Child Carers project.  Her cousin, Caroline, was the reason for our visit.  They both live with their ill grandfather. 

 

 

 

a beautiful homestead on a perfect Zimbabwean day

Janna and Lorren (lower right in the blue t-shirt) with the family of one of the child carers

During these home visits in Nemananga ward, I also got some good photos of a borehole water pump and of a rural woman carrying firewood on her head back to her homestead.  Traditionally, women do all the heavy lifting because the men are supposed to walk beside them with a spear, protecting them.  While this is not the case in modern times, the women in the rural areas still do all the water and firewood fetching (traditional female roles) and they are all masters of grace and balance. 

borehole water pump. they are fenced in so that cattle and elephants do not destroy or bend the pipes

Daniel and Lorren, waiting for me to pump them water.  The excess water flows into a trough for livestock to drink from

A woman we asked for directions, she didn't even need to hold the massive amount of wood on her head to talk to us or walk down the road

Ministry of Health HBC Workshop and Monitoring Visits

At the end of January and through the beginning of February, I participated in the Ministry of Health's HBC workshop and monitoring visits in Mkhosana as part of Environment Africa's PRP II sector (Protracted Relief Program).  This series of events started out with a day-long lecture on what the ministry of health is trying to asses followed by a practice session on the interview form and how best to coax the information from the interviewees. 

All of us attending the lecture at the youth-friendly center in Mkhosana, at the time of this photo, we were already going over the interview questionnaire.

A representative from Save the Children conducted the lecture, which mainly focused on the definition and components of 'quality of life'.  According to him, there are three B's concerning quality of life: being, belonging, and becoming.  Being was defined as the physical, emotional, psychologial and spiritual station of a client; essentially, their ability and willingness to care for themselves and function normally.  Belonging concerned with assessing the community and how it relates to the client including the communities attitude toward the client both physically and socially with emphasis on identifying cases of positive and negative discrimination.  Lastly, becoming referred to the client's participation in community activities, leisure, and personal growth.  After the quality of life discussion, we moved on to a full explanation of the questionnaire and any clarifications needed.  We then took a break for lunch, then returned for a mock-interview session with the other participants to try and identify any problems with the questionnaire.  

For the next two days, I went out into the field with two different community facilitators and interviewed clients using the questionnaire and the training I received the previous day.  The first day, I visited three clients, two children and one adult.  The first was Brightshoe (pronounced bright-show-eh), a seven year old boy with chronic knee problems.  In spite of this, he was a precocious little child, and his mother said he always is out running and playing with other kids.  Evidence that children are universally procrastinators: Brightshoe was finishing his homework for that day even as we were interviewing him!  The second child we tried to see was Simalinekosi, a nine year old girl who was very, very sick. She was taken to the Vic Falls hospital that morning by her father, so we interviewed her mother in her place. The last client on the first day was Ennah Shoko, a gogo (grandma/old lady) with a bad cough and pain in her joints.  The second day was uneventful, since we could only find one person at home to interview and that was Mrs. Anitah Ncube who was feeling well though partially shunned by the community.  Overall, the workshop and visits were worthwhile, although I do not know when we will be monitoring these same people again to check on their well being and quality of life. 

Brightshoe in his house, he was working on his homework on the floor

Brightshoe's mother, she was so vivacious; always smiling. I included this because it is a beautiful picture although you can tell how bare and spartan their house is.

HBC Kit Distribution

At the end of January, Lorren, Nyarie, and I spent three days distributing home-based care (HBC) kits to child carers at five different clinics in the Hwange district.  Although these kits consist of extremely basic medical supplies, they are incredibly useful for the people in the rural areas and they can do wonders for basic health care and cleanliness, particularly when fending off opportunistic infections in people living with HIV and AIDS. 

A full HBC kit consists of:
- one twenty liter bucket
- one ten liter bucket
- one apron
- one tube of betadine ointment
- two jars of vaseline
- three bars of antibacterial soap
- one 1kg bar of laundry soap
- two packets of oral rehydration salts
- one washcloth
- one canvas bag
- one packet of cotton wool
- one can of bicarbonate of soda

Supplies we left at the clinics for all child carers to check out:
- packets of linen savers (basically disposable bed liners)
- extra bicarb of soda
- five liter bottles of bleach (called 'jik' here)
- betadine ointment and solution
- extra gauze and cotton wool
- household rubber gloves
- boxes of disposable latex gloves
- extra soap and vaseline

These basic supplies are mainly used to try and maintain a living situation that is as sanitary as possible for both the client and the child carer.  Most items on these lists are self explanatory, but the jik is used for cleaning purposes and the bicarb of soda is used to cure thrush (yeast infection of the mouth commonly seen in HIV positive and AIDS patients).

Not all of the children were given full kits; only the five children with the sickest parents got full kits at each clinic, but all of the children were given soap and vaseline as well as full access to the remainder of the supplies we left with the nurses to distribute as needed.  This system is obviously not perfect, but we distributed as many kits and supplies as we possible could.  The biggest problem I had with the distribution was the selection of the most needy children - who knows what could happen next week with all the other child carer's parents and guardians?

Most of the kits and supplies were donated from Save the Children, but a few of the kits came from World Vision complete with bright orange bags and hand-written notes from the lovely people who donated that specific kit. (as a side note, I was very impressed that these notes were included in the kits. they embody the kind of promise that NGO's and charities are constantly making to donors but that is very difficult to see followed through, so kudos to World Vision).

Here are a few pictures of the HBC kit distribution at Jambezi clinic:

Some of the secondary school children listening to the nurse describe how to use the various items in the kits and from the clinic

Me inventorying supplies while the children line up to sign the registers

Our three facilitators (second from left, fifth from left, and sixth from left), myself, and three of the children who recieved the full kits (in front)

Some primary school girls signing the register with help from Nyarie

The whole group with their vaseline, soap, and kits.