IT could be any children’s home: that cloying nursery smell; the litter of toddler-paraphernalia; the baby-walkers clustered around a big-bosomed matron. But there’s one difference to the Salvation Army’s Bethesda Home in Soweto: all 14 of its infant occupants have been abandoned — because they have HIV.
Adrian’s mother was raped — she abandoned him when he was 10 days old. Khotso’s mother left her baby in the hospital when she found out he was HIV-positive. Siphiwe’s foster-parents dumped him at four months when they discovered he had HIV. The twins’ mother is too ill to take care of them.
At the centre of all of them are two unsung saints, Salvation Army pastor Lena Jwili and nursing sister Theresa Mokhesi. “The textbooks tell us not to get too close to the babies, because we’re going to lose them,” says Jwili, who started the home after realising that other institutions were rejecting babies because they had HIV. “But how can I not bond with them? I cannot imagine my life without them.”
Jwili and Mokesi run Bethesda on the shoestring of R6 500 a month. They already have a waiting-list of 10 babies, and things are only going to get worse. It is estimated that, by the turn of the millenium, there will be between 500 000 and 1,3-million Aids orphans in South Africa, many of them with HIV themselves.
“You just cannot institutionalise 500 000 children,” notes Leslie du Toit, who runs a programme for infected mothers and children in kwaZulu/ Natal under the auspices of the National Association of Childcare Workers. “And we already have such an enormous problem with abandoned and abused children. So we have to find new solutions.”
In Africa, of course, there’s the much-mythologised extended family: the granny-generation option. But in parts of Uganda and Malawi, it is common to find an 80-year-old woman taking care of the offspring of all four or five of her deceased children. And because Aids hits the economically active sector of the population, she is doing it with little or no income.
Jwili believes the only solution is to encourage the community to take on Aids orphans. “But there’s still so much fear and stigma, so much education that needs to be done.”
Most striking about Bethesda is that, although most of the babies entered the home very ill, all are now as healthy as normal children. Surprise, surprise: even babies with HIV thrive on good nutrition — and love.