Arto

Today was the day I was to take Catherine and her son with club feet, Arto to see the Camphill school principal, who is also a nurse, and the staff physiotherapist to talk about what we should do for him.  I told Catherine I would be at her house at 10:30 to pick them up and walk together to Camphill.

When I arrived, she was not to be seen, but was in her one room house. I knocked, she said I could enter. There in all her Motswana ampleness was Catherine in a large metal basin bathing herself and her son to be clean for the meeting.  She was quite pleased to see me and I told her I would be happy to wait outside, which I did. So “I will pick you up at 10:30” translates to “go ahead and finish your bath around 10:45 and we will just head out once everyone has clothes on.”

Arto is starting to warm up to me. The first time he saw me, like some young kids who haven’t seen such pale skin, he kind of freaked. But no real child his age can ever hold out for long to a nice game of peek-a-boo followed by silly noises and faces.  We even got to play a protracted game of give and take where he would hand me the Vaseline container and say “tsa” and I would receive it in my two open hands, as is the custom, hold it for awhile until he started to look worried I wouldn’t give it back, and then tell him to take it from me.  This is what children do when adults around them are speaking in adult talk that we can’t understand (his case) or just in a language we can’t understand (my case.)

It was decided that it wouldn’t hurt for her to go back to her doctor in Gaborone one last time and let him know we hope to have her go to Johannesburg to have her son treated. This requires her to travel to Gabs, sit for a few hours while the staff at the hospital give her file to the doctor who sets an appointment for some time in the future and hands the file back. Then she goes back at that time in the future for the appointment. I will go with her to that appointment.  She has no money, but the school principal basically said, “Look, you have been seeing this doctor and going to these appointments, you need to just scrape the money together and go.”  Silly me, I was almost tempted to pay for it, but I could tell by Catherine’s sheepish response to the principal that she knew I shouldn’t be paying for it, especially since I intend to try to find money to help with all the other costs associated with getting her and Arto to South Africa. She can pay her bus fare, they all felt. I guess bus fare is the health insurance co-pay in Botswana.

Meanwhile there is possibly another doctor at the private hospital who is supposedly knowledgeable about clubfoot treatment, though my sources in South Africa claim no one does the method which is deemed the most appropriate and least invasive.  So I emailed the SA group to update them and find out what is next.

I will be getting to know both Arto and Catherine more on this journey, to be sure.  She told me on our walk to the school that the father of Arto and his older brother Kagiso (Peace) is not around and provides no support to her in raising the kids.  The older daughter  Mpho (Gift ) has a different father who isn’t in the picture either. Catherine lives in a room in a building on her mom’s property. They cook outside, have an outdoor latrine, and bathe and do their laundry in the same large metal basins, though not at the same time. She is taking the father to court sometime this month to try to get support, though I am not sure how they enforce this if he doesn’t work.

She said the day she approached me she had been thinking about her son a lot and what was going to happen to him because he can’t walk. She had been seeing me pass by every day and finally just said to herself, “I have to do something, maybe this woman is god’s way.”  I gotta tell you, that is way too much pressure, yet also kind of funny because god and I formally don’t really hang out, although I certainly appreciate anything good he/she manages to do for people.

I am a bit uncomfortable with her thinking of me as a godsend, but however she believes and whatever she believes that gets her moving forward I guess is okay by me.  When the going gets tough on this one, I can encourage her to remember the strength she has and the strength it took to approach a total stranger and ask for help for her son.  And that I know that she, as a mother, will do what it takes to help him. If her strength and perseverance is god’s work, then god is working hard.