A day at Die Sterreweg

This morning, the caregivers from die Sterreweg went on training, so me and some other volunteered to help out to look after the children there. Though I had passed by the center before, and helped out with like the construction of the sand pit, it was my first day spending time with the kids where Thomas, Goedele and Sander spend all of their time.

It was actually more intense than I had expected. When we went walking with them, and Jonas passed me the child he had been holding, I was looking into the eyes of Bongiswa, a girl looking 3 years old but is actually 9... She was brought to the center only a couple of weeks ago, extremely undernourished and apparently she's just started opening her eyes... I wish I could say something deep, like I saw infinity in her eyes, or wisdom, hell, even happiness, but truth is, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't even make her react or look into a direction I was pointing at. It is funny how it is small things or events that I feel most confronted with the work done to try and... do something. There was nothing great or splendid at the fact of holding her, and you do wonder how many more Bongiswa there are out there, but your admiration for the people working to improve all this does go up a notch...

Did you know, there are 500 million disabled people in the world - one tenth of the human race. Eighty per cent of disabled people live in developing countries. One third of them are children. Everywhere, disabled people are the poorest of the poor. Access to buildings, information, independence, opportunity, choice and control over their lives are denied.
At least half of all impairments could be prevented or cured. 300, 000 children are still impaired by polio every year. 1 million a year are disabled because of malnutrition. 20 million blind people could have sight restored by cataract operations. There are some countries in the world where 90 per cent of disabled children won't survive beyond the age of 20 and 90 per cent of those with intellectual impairments won't survive beyond the age of five. The World Health Organisation estimates that 98 per cent of disabled people in developing countries are totally neglected.

In South Africa, every day, 52 people die from violence but for every death, three people acquire permanent impairments. One in three women can expect to be raped. One in four children has been abused, for which disabled women and children are particularly vulnerable. Fifty per cent of disabled children have never been to school...