Total Abjection For Moshopa Family

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Monday July 26, 2010 00:00

 

All 18 of them in this dump! Young children in shorts in the horror of the wintry elements take up most of the space in the little hellhole.

Forty-two-year old Judith Johane, who looks twice her age, assumes the role of family spokesperson in the absence of her sexagenarian mother. The Monitor learns that the family fell on even harder times in 1999 after the sole breadwinner succumbed to a long illness.

'Things were not this bad when my brother Keatlaretse was still alive,' Judith says sorrowfully. 'He provided for us.' She points to the pit latrine, the only other feature in the yard. 'He built it.'

Judith agrees with everyone that the hovel they call home is far from fit for human habitation and volunteers the information that the family sleep 'al fresco' in the Summer in order to avoid the real and present risk of the material falling on them.

'We are usually congested in the room when it rains or in times of other harsh weather conditions, such as this stinging winter,' she continues. 'But we know that should anything happen, we could go from bad to bereavement. What with all these children?' The Monitor learns that four members of this family have contracted tuberculosis, a highly infectious disease.

If it were said that the Johanes have an Oedipus Rex fate, it might be sad to the ear. Yet nothing can describe the condition of their lives better than Sophocles' tragic play. The single parent headed family lost its patriarch years ago when Judith's father was killed by a mentally disturbed sister of his. As if that was not enough, the only person that put bread on the table also passed on. So did Judith's sister who left two children behind. Completely dependent on the food basket that orphaned children receive from the government handout programme, the Johanes somewhat made do.  And if anyone thought that's as bad as anything can get, they are wrong. One of the two orphans died two weeks ago! 'It is hard,' Judith states the obvious. 'The two food baskets could hardly sustain all of us. Now things will be worse.'

The family has neither a ploughing field nor a goat to its name. Judith says they often help relatives at their fields in return for a small share of the harvest. A former TB patient who has also survived a fire, Judith says she is often too weak for certain manual tasks, but she always enrolled for Ipelegeng before the programme was suddenly terminated. 'I was diagnosed HIV positive last year,' Judith states. 'But I am not on ARVs because after being told that my CD4 count allowed me to enrol, the nurses would not register me because I did not bring a witness.'

She does small jobs like gardening and laundering for other people in the village, but Judith finds that the payment is too little. Though she is grateful for the food basket, she laments the fact that Botswana's dole system does not include blankets, clothes and shelter.

'I am weak, but I can do a groundsman's job, perhaps at a school,' says Judith.