No Place Left to Bury the Dead by Nicole Itano

Author:Nicole Itano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

SADLY, ABUSE OF ORPHANS by family members was becoming an all too frequent phenomenon in Ingwavuma. It was nearly impossible to determine the exact scope of the problem since most cases never made it to court or into the files of the local social welfare department. But anecdotal evidence suggested that the problem was growing as extended family structures creaked under the stress of rising poverty and the increasing number of orphans.

Abuse and neglect of children was certainly not limited to orphans or families affected by AIDS, but to Ann and the other staff members at Ingwavuma Orphan Care it was clear that orphaned children were uniquely vulnerable. Sometimes, as in the case of Bongilani, the relatives were simply cruel or uncaring. In many more cases, the abuse stemmed from ignorance or poverty.

Some time before I arrived in Ingwavuma, the staff at Orphan Care dealt with the case of one young boy, just a toddler really, whose mother had died of AIDS. The surviving family members were so afraid of catching the virus that they refused to touch him. In a society where young children are often in close physical contact with their mothers for the first years of their life, carried on their backs and sleeping in the same bed, the confused little boy was denied physical affection. No one bathed him, and while he was given food, the family refused to share cups, plates, and utensils with him. Until Hlengiwe Dlamini, one of the orphan workers, intervened and counseled the family, the poor little boy who had just lost his mother was a pariah in his own home.

Orphan Care got involved with another family, whom I will call the Myeni family. After the death of their mother, the five Myeni children were sent to live with their aunt, who kept the children in a squalid hut, separate from the house where her own children lived, failed to feed them properly, and generally neglected to look after them.

When Leigh-Ann Mathys, an Australian–South African of mixed-racial heritage who joined Orphan Care in 2005, found them, the youngest children had bad cases of scabies, a contagious skin disorder caused by tiny mites that burrow into the skin and lay eggs there. The children’s arms and legs were covered in the tiny, itchy bites. The aunt had done nothing to treat them, and even when Leigh-Ann gave her medicine for the children, she failed to administer it properly. Leigh-Ann eventually had to take the children to the Orphan Center for the weekend so she could oversee their treatment and the cleansing of their clothes and bedding. The eldest girl, who was only fifteen, was later diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection.

The strained social welfare bureaucracy in Ingwavuma, which when I arrived had only three social workers to deal with a population of more than a hundred thousand, lacked the manpower and skill to adequately address the problem. The social workers spent the vast majority of their time processing new social welfare grants.

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