Welcome

Jump to the most recent post.

Care 4 Soweto is a partnership of Suncoast Hospice with the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa supporting the important work of the Hospice Association of the Witwatersrand and Soweto Hospice.

Our purpose is simple – To provide care, aid and support to the Soweto community - ravaged by endemic disease. The people of Soweto and surrounding Jo-burg, are making valiant strides in caring for those patients and their families who are battling terminal illness, and also helping with some of the most basic of needs: food, housing, and care for the children.

Please consider participating in this effort and donate to the important work of the Soweto Hospice and their many programs for the people of Soweto. It only takes a minute.

Follow this blog, and follow our ongoing commitment to our friends in Soweto. Please pass along the address for this site, to your friends and family as well. Thank you for your support, and we encourage you join our partnership.

Reflections of the Soweto pediatric inpatient unit

As an employee of Hospice SA it is amazing how I would attempt with my entire being to avoid entering our Pediatric Ward in Soweto. However my passion gets the best of me all the time as I try with all my might to bypass the ward. I am drawn by the little cry or laughter that fills the corridor. Entering the ward always has the same effect on me: a lump in my throat, tears streaming down my cheeks and a knot in the stomach. As I visit these little people from crib to crib there may be a silent cry “Why Me” or “Please Love Me” perhaps “Hug Me Please.”  I stand dumbfounded as I watch dedicated “Care Giver”, Nurses and Doctors working with so much love and compassion. Some feeding, diaper changing or just holding a crying little one. At time when I am able I would dig deep and contribute to the care. Occasionally I just want to flee from the scene and justify my actions for not caring – How can one so tiny endure so much! How can one turn and run when the need declares this is not fun! How, how do you ask this tiny being to hold on, because tomorrow will be a better day! I salute all hospice workers – you make working at hospice worthwhile. Thank you Stacy and Team for touching the hearts of our Nation. God Bless.

Regards,

Mrs Eugeny Maraba

Center for Palliative Learning, Head of Department

We are all created equal in the eyes of our higher power… but do we treat all equally?

Every day miracles happen in Johannesburg and Soweto. Some are small- others quite large.  In 1994 South Africa celebrated the end of an awful era in its country’s history- the end of apartheid. Only 15 years old, there is much to celebrate already.  When visiting patients in the Houghton area of Johannesburg I witnessed two such miracles.  Roxie and I spent the day with Annette Bruns, a nursing sister from the Houghton office.  Annette took us to visit Frieda, an elderly white woman and her husband Marco.  Along with many other ailments, Frieda was losing her eyesight and required much assistance with her activities of daily living.  Frieda and Marco had live in help, a young black African woman.  Unable to have their own children, Frieda and Marco have been quite generous to their assistant.  After their domestic had a child, Frieda and Marco welcomed this baby into their home.  The child is even Frieda’s namesake, and carries the name, Frieda.  I marveled watching Marco lovingly hold this black African baby, cooing to her, and acting in all ways as the baby’s grandfather.  What a miracle to see this blending of a white and black family in a country that only 15 years ago imprisoned black Africans for something as small as not having a correct passbook to move from one township to another. 

 

Tiny (the patient’s name- not the size of the miracle) is the second miracle Roxie and I witnessed.  Tiny was the longtime domestic for a white family.  She lived with the family for over 40 years, helping to raise the family’s children.  Over the last few years, both of the elderly caretakers died.  One of the caretaker’s adult daughters moved into the home and insisted that Tiny stay in the only home she’s known for over 40 of her 67 years of life.  Tiny helps to keep the home clean as best she can, often doing things because she wants to- not because the family expects her to.  As we visited with Tiny I couldn’t help but notice on the shelf behind the table we sat dozens of family pictures- all of them of white people.  Equally comfortable in this setting was small but mighty Tiny- an equal family member for over 40 years, living the rest of her life in the only loving home she’s known since she was an adult. 

 

I couldn’t help but thinking as I visited with these two families… how many of us in America have opened our homes and lives to someone who is different than us (in whatever way we see differences)?  Are we able to see the humanness and sameness of each of all? And, would or could we have done this so soon after the birth of our own civil rights movement?  Every day in South African people risked their lives to support the anti apartheid movement.  Today miracles occur each and every day.  May we learn to embrace these every day miracles and make them happen in our own community.

Stacy

Keep it small

written by Dr. Stacy Orloff

It’s easy to get overwhelmed… every where I look I see ‘big’.  Overwhelming poverty; too full hospital beds (sometimes with two children in one bed); a one room shack with no electricity or running water; a granny caring for her four year old grandson; an AIDS pandemic that has created thousands of orphaned children.

Then, I see small.  A pediatrician who knew there was a better way to care for children.  She began as a medical student picketing in front of the hospital advocating for ARVs for children.  She continued her advocacy and after much work now runs a very large and successful pediatric palliative care program. Her next step- moving to Cape Town to establish an academic pediatric palliative care program to teach pediatricians across South Africa.  I also saw a nurse who felt called to do something different with her life and started caring for one person infected with HIV who now can proudly ‘show off’ the program she started; a hospice program for HIV positive children. This residential program cares for 240 orphaned HIV + children, allowing them to live there until adulthood.  I also saw hospice nursing sisters and community care workers who, every day, visit their patients, giving them food, medicine, and love.  Their visits do more than just provide food and medicine.  I have personally seen hospice patients regain their sense of hope and feeling of worth because of the love given to them; equally I have seen the nursing sister and community care worker ‘filled up’ again because of the love given to them by their patient.

So, what have I learned?  Not to focus on the big- I can’t make the whole problem go away.  I can make a piece of it better.  So, for my remaining days here I am committed to keeping it small.  I can do that.

Stacy