Every year we are required to do two weeks of elective work
in hospitals during our time off from varsity in order to make up some of our
practical hours that we need in order to graduate. This year a fellow class
mate and I decided to venture into two of the more rural settings to gain some
experience as well as to prepare ourselves for our community service year. So
we set off to our chosen hospitals, one in Harding and one in Kokstad hitting
pot holes the size of my car on the way there which began to make us doubt our
choice to be adventurous. However it turned out to be the most emotionally
moving experience that I have had since I began studying OT. One day in
particular stood out for me and that was when we accompanied the Kokstad
Hospitals comm serv OT and Physio to one of their clinics in a community called
Ndawana just outside of Underburg. We packed the back of the double cab bakkie
with wheelchairs, mobile plinths, walking frames, toys and all the rest and off
we went. When we arrived at the clinic there was not a soul to be seen which
the community caregiver (CCG) explained to us was due to the cold. So we got
her (the CCG) into the bakkie with us and off we went to each individual house
to find the clients we went there to treat. What we found in these tiny hut
houses was hard to believe. We saw multiple cerebral palsy children but one in
particular being a 17 year old boy who was terribly contracted due to the fact
that his family had rarely brought him outside of their hut and left him in the
dark on a mattress due to the stigma attached to disability and their lack of
knowledge about his condition. We saw elderly stroke clients with home-made
crutches that could barely hold their weight whose smiles were enormous when we
handed them brand new walking frames and walking sticks and taught them how to
use them. And so our day went on, now climbing the hillside by foot from one
hut to the next carry wheelchairs on our backs seeing things we had never
dreamed we would see before, some things that broke our hearts and some things
that gave us hope.
Standing on the top of the hill now close to the end of the
day I began to feel extremely useless. The people in the community of Ndawana
are there crying out for help and they humbly welcome and appreciate any form
of help that comes their way. And this was only one community, there are
thousands just like it that need help too. But standing there as a third year
Occupational Therapy student I felt as if there was no way I could give these
people what they needed. It made me think of how I lose sight of things when
I’m stuck in my daily routine of ploughing through copious amounts of varsity
work wondering why I got myself into this and how I think my life is so hard
because I have to sit and study when everyone is out. But standing there on
that hill in the freezing cold was one of those situations that brought me back
down to earth and reminded me why I’ve chosen to study OT. Although what we
experienced that day was tough to accept it has made me realise how much more
there is to what I am studying and it has given me the determination to come
back to a new semester at varsity and absorb as much knowledge and gain as much
experience as I can so that one day I can stand on that hill knowing that I
have helped those people.
That day in Ndawana we could have turned around and gone
home when we saw that there were no clients at the clinic. But we didn’t. We
went and found them and as it turns out they needed us more than anyone back at
the hospital would have needed us that day. I think as Occupational Therapists
we need to do this, instead of just assuming there is no problem and turning
our backs to it we need to search and dig deeper until we find it. We will help
all those that we decide to help no matter how insignificant that help may
seem, even if it means simply giving them a walking stick.
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