Surviving Marian Ridge - Week Three (23 April - 25 April 2013)

Tuesday (23 April 2013)

I arrived at Ridge Cafe to find the parking lot packed with high school kids, wandering aimlessly around and talking - not a typical scene in the morning. I soon discovered that the teachers are on strike, thus did not come to school. This has been an ongoing battle over the past few weeks and has slowly escalated, leaving parents frustrated while the students - in typical student manner - are taking the strike as a holiday. Coming out of the MCC, I clearly surprised one of the boys who were hanging around because he turned to his friends and half shouted "How! Mlungu!", clearly not expecting a white person to be walking around comfortably in Marian Ridge. I smiled and greeted them, asking how they were in isiZulu, which resulted in incredulous looks from all who stood nearby. I have to admit that I chuckled the whole way to Candy Floss Creche at their responses.

Picture courtesy of Katie aka The Audio in Africa

I had been prepared for how the creche operated as I heard many stories from my peers about the set-up but I didn't really know it was going to be as chaotic as it really was. The creche comprised of, what seemed like, millions of little kids packed into a church hall which is divided up into smaller open-planned classrooms by bookshelves and other furniture. The most obvious thing about Candy Floss is the noise. It would be impossible to screen inside the hall because of the noise, so we decided to screen outside where it was relatively quieter.
We had decided to try to screen in a production-line style with each member of our team doing a bit of the screener before sending the child to the next clinician, however we quickly discovered that this method wasn't working so we went back to the traditional way of screening one child per clinician at a time. It was quite interesting to see how the results varied between the children, although without knowing their backgrounds it would be impossible to gather a theory on why some performed so well while others were barely passing. When it was time to leave, we made the mistake of saying goodbye to all of the kids and within seconds we were being surrounded by little kids hugging our legs goodbye. It took us forever to disengage ourselves from the children and we all agreed afterwards that each time we leave in future, we shall do it covertly.

As the schools were all closed and there were no children hanging around the library, we were unable to do start the Literacy Program which we had planned. Instead, we decided to do some work on the many pamphlets and posters we need to start on. 

Wednesday (24 April 2013) 

I woke up excited for our the session we had planned for the Grade Rs at Marian Ridge Primary, and then I remembered the strike. Deciding to be pro-active, I called the school to find out if anything had changed. The woman who answered, who I can only assume was the secretary, told me not to even bother coming to the school because it will be locked. Having our plans ruined, we decided to do some more screening at Candy Floss Creche before we joined the OTs on home visits with Aunty Katie, a Community Healthcare Worker.

The first home took a while to walk to as it was on the edge of Marian Ridge, and we had to walk along a treacherously steep and slippery path to the house. We encountered a few dogs on the way which was rather sad because they were malnourished and obviously strays, in some ways a danger to the area with the increase in Rabies there has been over the past few months. When we arrived at the first house, we were greeted by the father of a 41 year old man with cognitive impairment and limited communication abilities. Between the OTs and ourselves, we decided that the client needed a full assessment so we plan to return. We went to two more homes, the residents of both being in their eighties. The last home we went to was the home of an 86 year old man who clearly had a hearing impairment, although at first he didn't want to admit that he couldn't always hear us. We spoke to him a bit about what happens to your hearing as you age and why you can hear some peoples' voices clearly but not others'. I must admit that it was great to see the lifestyle the community members lead, and it surprised me that the two elderly people were living on their own quite proficiently without the constant supervision of their families. In comparison, those who live in luxury seem to be frail and delicate.

From the home visits we went to do some stimulation training with the parents/teachers at the clinic while the OTs taught them how to make play dough. It was really nice because we got to put a lot of input into this one small activity and the two creche teachers who came along were enthusiastic about what they could do with the activity. We had a new member at the stroke group, the only guy amongst the sea of women (not including the lonely male OT who has probably been tortured to death by us females). Apparently, one of the ladies who is a regular at the stroke group invited him to come and join us. He seemed a little overwhelmed by the sheer exuberance of the other two ladies, but held his own in the activities. The OT who organized the session took the patients into the library, although two of the patients complained that they cannot read. Working with them in finding specific books made me realize that their inability to read is actually a perceptual problem. As usual, after the session we sat down with Chantelle to talk about the session.

Thursday (25 April 2013) 

After another eventful ride to Marian Ridge, in which we managed to cram two extra people over the seating capacity into the vehicle (all we were missing was a goat and it would have been a typical African Taxi experience) and the driver missed the turn-off to Khetiwe, we arrived at the clinic. Trying to get the parents who were sitting in the queue to talk to us or even acknowledge us seemed like mission impossible, and we didn't want to cause any trouble, so we abandoned mission impossible and went to Candy Floss to try and finish screening.

I think Thursdays are a free-for-all at the creche because withing a matter of minutes we had a sea of children surrounding us. Trying to get them to settle down and go back to where they were meant to be was a mission which rivaled the clinic, however with the help of some of the teachers the tide abated and we were able to settle down to do some work. We managed to screen all of the grade Rs except for those who were absent and we spent the remainder of the time expanding the vocabulary of the small group of kids who wanted to read the books. It was quite blatant that there was a contrast in the teachers. Some were extremely helpful and knew everything they could about the kids in their class, while others barely knew the kids names. Their attitudes towards the kids were also extremely different. Being someone diagnosed with A.D.D. and having being medicated since I was a child, I'm certain I wouldn't have responded well to a teacher who would rather shout and call you stupid than give you one-on-one attention to make sure that you get the best results that you can get. While I would love to run a workshop on the different learning disorders, I'm not certain that it would change that specific teacher's attitude toward her class. It was great to see the same teachers who came to the stimulation training on Wednesday do the activities that they were taught, so it was nice to know that at least some kids are benefiting from what we could show the teachers.

Overall, it has been an extremely improvised week, although a week in which we were able to go deeper into the community and learn even more about the members within it,