Nag Skuif

13/12/12-14/12/12

OK, so it's roughly 4am and I'm on a night-shift. I thought I'd write a post about what work we get to do on our night-shifts. It is really quite boring! If you're in a house with the younger kids, you get to change nappies and wake kids up to go pee. There are some kids you need to wake up in the older houses, but it's not so much of a mission. Tonight, I've been placed in the boys house (because it's the holidays, there is one girls house open, two boys houses and one house for the younger kids.) And it is wildly exhilarating, if by that you mean it couldn't get more boring if you tried. If you're lucky, it's 10 hours sat on a mattress listening to kids sleep. If you're not so lucky, like me tonight, you get a rather small sofa cushion to sit on for 10 hours.

On night-shift, you aren't allowed to sleep, obviously. But I'm fairly certain I'm one for very few volunteers that doesn't actually sleep. Some people are annoyingly blasé about how much they sleep, others pretend they don't sleep. I don't want to sound self-righteous or whatever the term is, but I think we all came here to work, and if we get placed on a night-shift, then we have to stay awake. There is a reason that there are volunteers on night-shift: Because of their pasts, some of the children have trouble getting to sleep and it reassures them that they are safe and there is someone watching out for them and making sure they come to no harm. Also there needs to be someone awake so that if anything happens to any of the children, a volunteer can either call for help or deal with the situation. The fact that some volunteers sleep irritates me. If you wouldn't sleep on day-shift, why should you sleep on night-shift.

I dunno. It's 4am and I wanted to have a rant, and I'm very bored having already watched 3.5 movies, read a little and played on my room-mates Nintendo DS

In other news, I bought a mosquito net yesterday. It's absolutely huge, and it was quite expensive, but last night, I caught (and killed) 3 mozzies in 15 minutes, only to go back to bed and have another one in my ear within 5 mins. I've been so pleased to have the lower bunk and a bunk bed since I arrived, just because I've been able to get so creative with it, but trying to install a 2 meter high circular net into a 1 meter high square space was certainly challenging! Especially as the net can't touch you're body, otherwise it doesn't work. It took me 2 hours, a lots of string, twine and thread and an awful lot of sweat (perhaps due to the 35 degree heat of the day) but it is up. It's just a shame that I'm spending the next 3 nights sat on a mozzie infected corridor. Hey ho, that's life!

6 bites on my left hand, 7 on my right...we're not even going to count the ones on my feet!

14/12/12-15/12/12 11pm

OK so this is now a double post in one. I didn't get round to posting this today so I'll try and post it tomorrow. Tonight, I've been placed in the girls house. The younger kids are downstairs, and I think there are less than 10 of the older girls here tonight. I know one of them has run away. This is quite a frequent occurrence, not just for this particular child, but for the kids in general. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot the home can do. With some of the children they can cancel home visits if they abscond too much, but if a child has no home to go to on weekends or holidays, and their pocket money has already been stopped, what else can you do? The kids that abscond usually come back the same night and when they come back, they have to sleep on the sofa or the floor of whichever room and house the night-shift leader is in so they don't disturb the other children and so that someone can keep an eye on them if they are intoxicated to make sure they don't hurt themselves or someone else.

But on a much better note, I just spent maybe half an hour sitting with 3 of the girls having them help me learn Afrikaans. It's really nice getting the kids to help me and one of the girls was telling me how nice it was of me to try and learn Afrikaans because usually the volunteers just assume the kids can speak English and leave it at that. She helped me pronounce the work 'bietjie' meaning 'little'. It looks like it would be difficult to pronounce coming at it from an English perspective, but you have no idea how hard! The combination of 'tjie' is actually pronounced 'kee' and when there are two vowels next to each other in Afrikaans, you often pronounce both of them e.g. 'lees' meaning 'read/reading' is said 'lee-uhs'. So bearing that in mind, try saying 'bietjie' out loud and enunciate the 'i', 'e' and the the 'kee' sound separately. Hard isn't it? Turns out you pronounce it 'bee-kee'. Who knew?!

14/12/12-15/12/12 4.30am

I just had to change a couple of kids nappies downstairs and wake up some kids to go pee. I had to wake up a new girl, I think she arrived yesterday and it was a bit strange. For one I didn't know her name, the other volunteer who woke her at 12 didn't think to ask and the child care worker didn't know it, but it's all OK, I asked her so I know it for future reference! It was also weird because she didn't wake up easily. No one wants to be woken up by a stranger to go to the toilet. Last holiday I had to wake up a little girl and my tactic to get her awake was just to gently pick her up and carry her to the bathroom. By the time we were in the bathroom she had woken up enough, then I would just carry her back to her bed. But because this girl is new, I didn't want to encroach on her personal space. It must be horrible to be taken away from all that you know, whatever bad situation made you leave. Also, I think I would be pretty freaked out if I woke up in a random strangers arms!

One of the older girls woke up earlier as well. About an hour ago. It was the same girl who was helping me with my Afrikaans. She had a nightmare and wanted someone to sit with her and just chat for a bit to take her mind off it so she could go back to sleep. I think it's moments like that, which make me so happy to be here. I love it here anyway obviously, but when a child gives something back to you it can be wonderful. And it's also a good reason to stay awake! If I'd been sleeping, she might have woken me up, but she might have just gone back to bed and laid awake thinking about her nightmare.

The children often ignore the volunteers and are quite disrespectful sometimes and part of me thinks that it's because they know the volunteers will disappear in a few months so why should they be nice to us or get to know us, so when a child asks me for help or even just a chat at 3am, who am I to deny them? And it depends on the child's age. The older kids always talk in Afrikaans so when a child talks to me in English and just makes that effort it's lovely. For the younger kids I think it might be a little more physical. One of the children I work with regularly always used to give me the most bone-crushing-breath-removing-painful hugs I have ever experienced. I think it was partly to get a reaction out of people, but also maybe because I don't think it registered in his mind that this gesture was causing people pain! Over some time, I showed him how to be more gentle. He could still squeeze me when he gave me a hug, but I would only hug back when I wasn't in pain. If he squeezed to hard, I would say 'gently kiddo, gently'. And it worked. He started be only giving me gentle hugs, but now if I'm there and he hugs too hard, I can tell the volunteer to stop tensing up cause it only makes it hurt more and I ask the child to be more gentle and it almost always works. I'm so proud of him!