Her problem has traumatised her family for years and everyone around them - including relatives - shun them. “For the past six or seven years, we have not been sleeping well. Our neighbours no longer want us in their area and the landlord has doubled the rent in a bid to chase me out of her house,” says Boipelo’s mother, 44-year-old Orapeleng Khumo.
She told Monitor that her daughter, Boipelo started seeing visions at night when she was doing Standard Three. Since then, sleep has been a luxury for the family of six. “Her problem always starts at around 12am and she would scream for help saying that she is seeing snakes and things that we cannot see ourselves. Sometimes she would topple everything in the house and she would hold me tight screaming for protection. When she starts screaming, you can see that she is really terrified and she is seeing real things,” Khumo said. She added that she has taken her daughter to different traditional doctors in the country and outside but in vain. At Princess Marina Hospital, they said that Boipelo has mental problems. She was given pills, which are not effective.
Khumo said that Boipelo’s problems have really affected the family to the extent that the younger ones are not performing well at school. “They are not doing well because they cannot get enough sleep and they are also scared of her.”
Khumo said that she has lived in the house she is now occupying in Gaborone since 1990. When her daughter started experiencing problems in the late 1990s, word spread around the location. “The people know about Boipelo’s problem and they shun us. They seem to be tired of us. When I tell them about my child’s problems, they say it is “Satanic Spirits” and they ignore me. I have even developed heart diseases and diabetes because of the trauma I am going through. We have not slept well for many years and this is unbearable,” she said.
“The landlord has threatened to evict me on many occasions because other tenants sharing the yard with us have complained to her saying that we disturb them at night,” she said.
Khumo is a general duty assistant at an educational institution in Gaborone. She said that her daughter narrowly passed Standard Seven examinations at a time when she was seriously ill. “We did not expect her to get third grade because she was weak and sometimes she fell down during examinations.”
She said that she is forced to go with Boipelo everywhere because no one wants to stay with her. “Everywhere I go she has to be with me because I am the only one who understands what to do when the troubles start. She can’t go on school trips with other students and this has affected her performance.”
The head of the Community Junior Secondary School (CJSS) where Boipelo is doing her Form Three said she did not know about the girl’s condition. She said that the young girl has not shown any signs of problems and mixes well with other students. The only time she developed a minor problem, teachers and health professionals dealt with it. “I have not been informed about the persistence of the girl’s problem and had I known, we would have helped her with all we could,” she said.
The young girl told Monitor that every night she sees snakes and images she does not understand. The visions sometimes takes place when she sleeps during the day.
