It had just gone 10am when a Grade 1 educator came to me with a learner and a letter. The learner had allegedly been raped and the letter was from the clinic, requesting the school to take the child to the police and open a case. The learner’s parents have not featured anywhere in this scene; when we ask the child where her mother is, her answer is short and simple: ‘Usetshwaleni”, meaning that she’s gone to where people drink liquor.
The clerk was not in the school office, so I decided to use my own cash to phone the police from the community phones. But after three unsuccessful phone calls I was running short of money. I then decided to take the child to the police station myself. The first police station was closed down, so we drove on to the next one. At last the child could give her statement.
But the most pathetic part of this is that right then I was informed that we would not be able to make a very strong case because the child had washed herself.
I told myself that I’m not going to give up now. It was getting late; even the people at the police station were beginning to knock off, but the child and I still had a lot to do. We went down to the hospital in the company of two policemen who had a special test kit. First there was more paperwork and then we had to wait for the doctor to examine the child. When the doctor came he got quite impatient with us. Eventually he examined the learner, used the test kit, filled in more forms and prescribed some medicine. After collecting the medicine, I took the child home.
By the time I got home it was already 10pm and my children were already asleep. Yet I couldn’t rest: I knew I had this huge assignment the next day to make certain that the child returned to the hospital for HIV, gonorrhea and pregnancy tests, which I knew were essential. My worry was that the school plays it safe with finances, and I could not rely on the child’s mother for help.
This is just one incident in a million that highlights how the rural teacher is subjected to the most difficult conditions. We become emotionally involved in the sense that we become parents to these children. We provide not only emotional stability for them but also food and clothes. Before the laws about school fees were passed we would often pay for our learners to be at school too. Children are literally dumped onto the school by their own parents and forgotten.