Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies - 24 July 2003
John Sparrow and Selma Bernardi in Silele, Swaziland
Thursday
13.10pm
Along with Mummsy Sithebe there are 115 other Red Cross home-care facilitators in the area, working hand in hand with six chiefdoms and their communities. What they provide is community care. Most of their clients are chronically ill with AIDS-related problems but the wider well-being of the community, its health and welfare, is what they are there to protect.
High in the hills they visit people like elderly Albertina Dlamini whose left side was left partly paralyzed by a stroke eight years ago. A wood fire fills the hut were she lies with smoke. Her husband is coughing, not with TB, but the legacy of 25 years labour in South African mines. He could do without the smoke. Their home carer comes three times a week, sometimes to bring medication, sometimes just to talk. If something is untoward she will soon know about it.
14.20pm
Down in the valley another calls in on ten-year-old Tengetile Nxumalo. Epileptic since she was three, she is paralyzed on her right side and moves with obvious difficulty. Her mother says she was a clever girl but for several years now has not talked. The home carer drops in on a regular basis to consult with the mother, keep an eye on medication and deliver Red Cross food parcels.
15.15pm
Children orphaned by AIDS are of major Red Cross concern. More than 15 per cent of children below the age of 15 in Swaziland are without parents. By 2005, it is projected, the figure will be 24 per cent. In 2002 there were 40,000 of them and by 2010 it is estimated there will be 120,000. Support and care is crucial.
Close to the Silele clinic, Mbhobho Jele is caring for five of them, her grandchildren. The eldest Nhlanhla is 15, Thando, the youngest, five. They are not completely destitute. The old woman collects and sells firewood, has a couple of goats and some chickens, and Red Cross food helps ensure the children's nourishment. But it is life on the edge and with no perspective of betterment. With no money Mbhobho cannot pay schools fees so since 2000 none of the youngsters has been educated.
She is a caring grandmother but the question has to be: can she cope with the needs of all these children? Twelve-year-old Sponele has a huge, black, crusted sore extending down his arm. The skin was broken by scratching, the woman says, and then became infected. She took him to a healer a month ago but it has only worsened since. She agrees to go to the clinic tomorrow but, without a Red Cross carer to persuade her, one wonders what might have happened.
The children most at risk are those in child-headed households, like the six Dlamini orphans. They live far from the nearest road on an isolated hillside, where their father died in 1995 and their mother in 2001. The eldest is now 19, and often away searching for work. The youngest is eight.
They do their best. They plough the land of their homestead and plant, and in May harvested some maize, enough perhaps for a couple of months. Red Cross food helps them further. But the place is slowly collapsing. The animal pen is broken and empty, the maize drum overturned and rusting. Home carer Sphiwe Gina calls twice a week, looks around the place and asks them how they are faring. Of the 23 homesteads she visits, this one worries her the most.
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