Die Sterreweg

It is about time to update my blog and let you hear more about Die Sterreweg and what I am doing over here.

As you could read on the last post - and couldn't understand when you don't speak English :) - my day starts at the beach. After running and swimming I rush home where Thomas is waiting to leave for Die Sterreweg. A day at Die Sterreweg starts with the morning ring, which is the part of the day I love the most. All the children and caregivers gather in one of the classes and for 20 to 30 minutes we sing songs: in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa. Educational songs (kop en skouders, knie en toen, knie en toen), religious songs and the songs everybody knows (If you happy and you know it ... ). My Xhosa and Afrikaans are slowly improving.

After this morning ring the children devide into two classes. The one class is for the children with a severe mental challenge and physical challenge. The second class has a wide variety of children: one of the girls has a normal intelligence, but couldn't attend a normal preschool because of her physical disability, whereas one of the boys has a combination of a severe mental challenge and autisme. For the people that know a little bit of this children, it is not difficult to understand that it is not an easy task for the caregivers to give these children all an appropriate program.

At this point I am still busy with the individual plans of the children. I try to asses them as good as I can (sometimes with the occupational therapist), set up goals with the caregivers and make a plan. And we are almost there: at the end of october we will have a plan for everybody.

Other moments I just help in the class. And I am aslo learning here. I didn't have too much experience with children with physical disabilities and I didn't know childrens muscles can be so stiff. Today I was stretching one of our children, Bongiswa. Bongiswa is a sad story actually. She is 9 years, but she looks as if she was only three years. She is so small and so thin!! Her legs and thighs are just skin over bones. I am always shivering when I change her nappy. Her mother probably didn't know how to handle her and feed her properly. She only started in august in our center, so she is now getting better as she gets proper food and stimulation. She is a child with cerebral palsy (hersenverlamming) and because of that she is really stiff. As she has never been stretched it is quite bad. I didn't know muscles could be so stiff. You really have to put a lot of strenght to stretch her arms and legs.

The problems of the children in the other class are more known to me and the challenge there is to let them listen to me. :p
Last week, the caregivers all went on a course for one day, so we as volunteers runned the center. As quite it can be in that class when the caregivers are their, as chaotic it was with us. I was in the class with a few volunteers who have never worked with these children and don't speak the language. Yolanda surely knew that and took her change. Imagine a girl, 9 years, weighing way too much and starting to scream in the class. When you tell in your best Xhosa (which allmost doesn't exist) to go outside, she puts herself on the ground and start laughing ... It was fun ...

But in fact all the children are just cute:

Valdericka, playing jembé with one of the volunteers for one day. She always says 'I love you' and jumps around the place.

Pedro always laughing, starting to learn to talk with gestures (SMOG) and learning really fast. A ball was his first one to learn. Now we have to find the time to learn him more.

Siphelele, my friend. Doesn't care what is going on around him, just doing what he likes: talking all funny things in Xhosa (yes, echolalia is the word). And did you know that not only autistic children from Belgium like straws? This one also likes them a lot.





One of our youngest children, Abenathi (2 years) with one of our new nice flashy toys. He likes to be on his own, watching his own hand. And he is learning to sit now. Hopefully he will get to that point soon.


Vuyokazi. You can see that she is becoming more and more at her ease in the center: she starts talking more and more and she never leaves the center without knocking on our offices window to wave goodbye.





Enrico, king of the mountain. Smart, hyperactive boy, who loves to come and get the keys in our office, so he can open all the doors.