Feb. 28.07…Day with my Supervisor, Tiekie DeVos

I was asked by my supervisor to accompany her and a girl from Yale who is getting a PA into some informal settlements around Attridgeville. Our first stop was to pick up Franky who is the security guard at Mohau and also lives in the community. His job was to show us around as well as help us find this Creche (preschool) that this woman is running on R60,000 ($8,000) a year. In total she supports 163 orphans with this amount of money. It is really quite remarkable. A week ago she came to Mohau to see if we could have a social worker come and work with some of the children at her place, so Tiekie wanted me to go with to see if it was a good idea to get involved or not. This place was something else, as we were driving all Tiekie said was, “well if we get a flat who can change it?” The roads were defiantly not meant to be driven on; there were rocks everywhere as well as huge pot holes. As we approached the crèche we could see a swing and a hollowed out aluminum barrel painted blue as the playground for the children. We parked our car in the middle of the street because there was no where else to park and Lord knows no other cars were going to need to get through anytime soon. Kgotosmo came running out while wiping her hands on her apron. She was busy making pup (porridge) for the 98 children that were there. I walked into the 3,4,5 year old classroom that was no bigger than 10 feet by 10 feet and there were 49 children sitting on the floor all peering up to see what the commotion was outside. The teacher was telling me that these children do not pay anything to come to school and she is doing her job for free, so that they have a safe place to be rather than on the streets. When I said hello to the children they perked up and started counting to 10 in English. As I was leaving they said a thank you prayer for me. The next room that I walked into had 47, 3-24 month old babies crawling around in their nappies (diapers) in the same size of room as the older children. Each day these children get breakfast, lunch, a bath, as well as some educational instruction. With only the help of 3 volunteers and Kgotosmo. I thought these children looked healthier and better kept than some children that have two parents at home. Needless to say Kgotosmo gets my Mother Theresa award for the day.