There Are Three New Double Orphans in Lesotho

About a year ago I was in a meeting with the management team at Phelisanang Bophelong, regarding a piggery project we were looking at supporting. PB, as it is more commonly known, is the local HIV/AIDS support group, based out of a small building on the campus of the local government hospital, Motebang. At the conclusion of the meeting, ‘M’e Thakane, the executive director at PB, asked if she could talk to me about another matter. She then told me about an HIV+ widow out in the neighbouring village of Khanyane. She is a member of PB and a patient at Tsepong. Her name is Makhotso. (Mother of Peace). Her HIV+ husband died from an opportunistic infection some years ago. She has three children. The oldest is Khotso, approximately 20 years old. He drifts around, coming home for short visits that are weeks or months between them. The daughter in Mahlonolo, aged 12. A beautiful girl with a ready smile and laugh. The youngest is a boy, Lebohang, aged 7. He’s a good kid, but always into mischief and like many boys, has a hard time keeping clean and staying out of trouble. What ‘M’ e Thakane wanted from me that day was support for the family. PB did not have money in their budget to provide even a small portion of what the family needs. They have nothing. They stay in a borrowed, decaying rondavel. There is no income. The mother was so ill from not eating well that her ARVs were doing nothing for her. The 12 year old girl had assumed the role of caregiver to her mom and mother to her younger brother. She’s 12. It ain’t right. So, with ‘M’ e Thakane gently twisting my arm, I bought some groceries and paid my first visit. It was sobering. The center peak of the thatch roof was all but gone. Then floor had worn down to a shallow concave shape. And when it rains, the floor becomes a small pond. The kids were amazing, and ‘M’ e Makhotso, who was lying on an old, very thin mattress on the floor, so ill that she could barely raise herself up a few inches to greet me, but still insisted on doing so in an effort to be a good hostess to a visitor. I was hooked from that moment. We unpacked the groceries and put them away, and got her started on drinking a small container of milk. Over the next few months I visited every few weeks, usually bringing food. One time the two little kids and I went into town for school shoes and backpacks. They had been going to school barefoot. The principal allowed it only because she knew the family situation. ‘M’e Makhotso learned my name on the first visits and always remembered me on arrival. On the first few subsequent visits, ‘M’e Makhotso’s condition seemed unchanged. I grew discouraged. Why wasn’t she getting better? But, about 10 weeks from my initial visit, improvement happened. I came one day to find her sitting up on her mat. It seemed amazing and I was encouraged.. A few weeks later I found her sitting on a bench outside in the sun. Both kids were there and a neighbour was visiting. It was wonderful. A few weeks after that I arrived on my next visit to find her in the middle of doing laundry. I was blown away! She was still painfully thin, and didn’t move well, but she was getting better. At Christmas we had a new roof put on the place and began construction of a new stone home adjacent to the current one. PB found some additional funding in the months following, and my visits became less frequent. But I still went from time to time, and things continued to look promising. On Sunday evening of last week, about 6 weeks since my last visit, I got a phone call from the neighbour. ‘M’e Makhotso was sick, had stopped eating and taking her meds. “Could you help with transport to the hospital, now-now-now?” ‘M’e Mahlompho and I got into the car, went out to Khanyane, and with the help of a group of neighbours, who carried her in a blanket some 200 yards down the side of a big hill, we got Makhotso into the back seat of the car and were off to Motebang hospital’s emergency room. The lady was very thin, appeared to be delirious, and could not walk or get up on her own. She was somewhere between her late thirties or early forties, but her present state of health, you could guess she was my age and not be faulted. Different people in the group tried talking to her, but she really couldn’t communicate. I came over and just held her hands. They were so cold. And she clutched mine so tightly it almost hurt. But at least she was still and quiet for a while. Within a few minutes of our arrival, ‘M’e Makhotso was admitted into the female medical ward. It is a very cold brick building in the winter. The floors and walls were filthy. The room they placed her in contained 8 beds and the atmosphere was chaotic. The shared sink was so dirty you didn’t even want to touch the faucet. After sticking around for a while, we left the woman moaning in her bed. The nurses requested that we drop soap, a facecloth and toilet paper in time for bathing the following morning, no later than 6:00 a.m. So on Monday morning I appeared at the female medical ward doors and went to ‘M’e Makhotso’s room where a tired, overworked nurse with an attitude laid into me hard about the fact that they needed those supplies at 4:00 a.m. and I was too late. Furthermore, I was informed that the hospital had a routine and I was interrupting it. Momentarily incredulous, I found myself almost apologizing as I explained to this nurse that I was right on time, as per her instructions. Early, in fact. She was having none of it. And when I said if she had told me 4:00 a.m., I would have been there at 4:00 a.m., she had the brass to tell me that there was no way that I could have been there at 4:00 a.m. as hospital security would never have let me in at that time. And she said “where is the sports bottle? I cannot get the patient to drink from a regular glass.” Giving it up as a lost cause, I turned on my heel and made my exit. It gets better. I returned at noon with a sports bottle in hand only to have the day shift nurses dress me down because ‘M’e Makhotso was refusing to eat, had pulled her IV out three times and wouldn’t take her meds. Hey, two out of those three were why we brought her into the hospital. So, I am 0-for-2 with the nurses in just under 6 hours. As I reached the front gate of the hospital I run into 12-year old Mahlonolo, accompanied by one of ‘M’e Makhotso’s neighbours, on their way to visit. As I look into this kid’s terrified eyes, my heart melts. In those eyes you can see that she is already dealing with the possibility that she may soon be the head of the household. The girl is limping badly. She was hit by a taxi about 4 months previous and her leg had been broken in multiple spots, and this is the first time I have seen her since the cast came off. It was only then that I realized this kid was never going to take two normal steps again in this lifetime. And to top it off, she has seen her mom sicken and grow weak for the second time in a year. My partner, ‘M’e Mahlompho and I, visited ‘M’e Makhotso twice daily for the following two days. Each time we found her the same, not better, but not really worse. Painfully thin. Not responsive to questions, even when we asked her about her kids. Mentally, she was checking out. Today I got busy with other things and did not go to the hospital at lunch time. I picked Mahlompho up after work, and as we were passing the hospital, Mahlompho remarked that it was almost 6:00 p.m., which is when evening visiting hours start. So we pulled in and parked. And then we walked down to the women’s ward. We entered Makhotso’s room and her bed was neatly made and very empty. No nurses were in sight. We sat at the bench facing the nurse’s station and waited. After a few minutes a door across the hall opened a few inches, and a few seconds later, it closed again. A minute after that the same door opened fully and a nurse emerged. Same one as from the night before. She knew who we were there to see, yet still she asked. Then, after she stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, she told us what we had already known for some time. ‘M’e Makhotso has passed away. Turns out she had passed about 5:30 a.m. that morning. So now there are three more double orphans in Lesotho. A twelve year old is going to raise her seven year old brother as best she can. A twenty year old young man is going to drift around without purpose Life is hard. Life isn’t fair. Those statements hold true all over the world. But today, life seems most unfair, most hard, here in Lesotho.