Today a social worker brought us a mentally disabled child that she had found in a dire situation.  His granny had passed away and his older sister was taking care of him and her own little child.  When the social worker arrived they had not eaten for a few days and she went off to ask for food from neighbours to give to this little family.  Although there is a grant they are obviously poor at budgeting. The sister is very young and obviously overwhelmed by her responsibilities.

Last week we popped into a home where there is a disabled young man living with his mother.  Mlu had seen him often on the road and he always waved at our vehicles when they were in the area.  But he hasn’t been seen around lately and so we stopped to visit and investigate.  His name is Big Boy and he has deteriorated physically in that he doesn’t walk around anymore.  Very gently I suggested that the mother might try and enrol him with us so that we can try and get his legs strong again.  We invited her to visit the centre to see what we do.  She came on Monday and was thrilled and eagerly filled in the application forms.  We can see already that he will fit in well.  He is gentle and responds wonderfully to praise and really seems to enjoy the social contact with the others.  For now we are just leaving him to play and get used to the new surroundings but on Tuesday the Physiotherapist and Occupational therapist will be coming and they will assess him and get us going on a good regime with him.  He is very similar in size and disability to Thabani and so the two of them are spending time together .  This is him (pic on left), bib and all, already doing some fine motor play therapy.

We now have two Olwethus so this is going to be a bit confusing, but we will call the older one “Ollie”  and this is our new little fellow who was very overwhelmed when he first arrived and wouldn’t eat but when we tempted him with some ‘Ensure’  a tasty, immune building strawberry drink he couldn’t get enough of it.