A Pietersburg NGO is battling to create a home care centre for Aids orphans
Suzan Chala
Joe Funky Ngobeni, the 13-year-old orphaned “man of the house” featured in the Mail & Guardian’s Christmas edition, began ninth grade this week in Ga-Maja, near Pietersburg, unaware that the article has made him a celebrity.
The article has attracted attention both nationally and internationally, with the M&G offices flooded with phone calls, letters and e-mails from concerned readers and media organisations from as far away as Australia. Many want to help Funky, who has been raising his six-year-old sister Melicia on his own since his mother died four years ago.
One organisation that has been helping Funky and other children like him is an NGO in Pietersburg called Takalani-Nana Home Care Centre, but it needs help too. It has been squatting in other organisations’ offices and is still battling to create a home care centre.
The organisation was started in 1998 by Sara Galane (54), with the intention of providing a home for destitute and terminally ill people with HIV/Aids, after she attended an Aids international conference in Cte d’Ivoire.
“I saw what other people were doing for people living with HIV and for Aids orphans in their countries,” she said. Galane received one month’s training from Zimbabwe’s Family Aids Caring Trust on how to start and manage an NGO.
Takalani-Nana is registered with the South African Department of Social Development and offers services such as home-based care training and service, support group formation and care of orphans. It is run by volunteers and works closely with the departments of welfare and health in the Northern Province.
The organisation depends on donations and sponsors from individuals and companies. “We live from hand to mouth. When we get something [money, food or clothes] we then give to the orphans.
“Orphans that suffer mostly are those who live in remote areas, as it becomes difficult to get there. We don’t have a car. We depend on our volunteers to take food to orphans who live near their homes and on the local clinics for transport which most of the time is unavailable.”
Takalani-Nana is currently caring for more than 300 orphans, most of whom like Funky are heading families comprised entirely of children. The organisation cares for the Chokwe family, headed by 18-year-old Ester, who is mentally ill. The family includes six other children aged between four and 17. Ester does not know when their mother died or when her own child died. Their father lives with his parents at “another village and visits us sometimes”.
Some of the orphans go for days without food. Lucky Tlouammas said this week he had not had food for eight days when Takalani-Nana arrived at his home with bread.
He lives with his twin niece and nephew, Florence and Donald, his 17-year-old sister Julia and “the baby she brought home after she had gone for a long time to look for food. She disappears from time to time to seek food, which she never brings home,” Lucky said.
The baby in the Tlouammas’s one-room home was not mentioned when its mother counted the occupants of what is called a house. The spaces on the wall supposedly windows are covered with dirty pieces of what looks like an old mat.
Lucky’s elder sister mother of the twins and brother are both working “ko magoeng [for whites]” but do not support the children. “Sesi o tla ka Keresemose [our sister only comes in Christmas],” Julia explained.
The children last saw their father when their mother died and have not seen their brother since he left for work “a long time ago”.
Takalani-Nana paid Lucky’s school fees but cannot afford to buy him a new school outfit so he goes to class in an old, torn uniform.
“The schools are reopening so more orphans need money now,” Galane said. “It would be easier for us to care for these children in a home,” she said, adding that the children, especially the girls, were often exposed to abuse.
“It is difficult to help such children because we have no place to keep them.
“We have more than 20 other cases of child-headed families that have been reported to us but haven’t visited because we don’t have transport.” Galane finds it difficult to ask volunteers to visit areas where they would have to walk for kilometres.
Although she does not have the means, she is optimistic about building a home. “We will start small because we have to consider things like salaries, food and schooling for those children.”
Galane is in the process of adopting three orphans, including Funky’s sister Melicia.
Sister and brother returned home on Tuesday after a long break at Galane’s house. Funky said his Christmas was fun “It is the best Christmas I’ve had.” And a bonus: he got an A in his favourite subject, mathematics.
Readers who are interested in helping can telephone Takalani-Nana on 083 687 6841 or can deposit money into: Takalani-Nana Home Care Centre, Absa Bank Pietersburg, Cheque account 4 048 705 959.
Takalani-Nana is registered under the Non Profit Organisation Act. Registration number: 006-743.