Today we visited the offices of Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF) partner dlalanathi which means “play with us”. They use play and parenting interventions to build supportive relationships between adults and children in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. With a focus on emotional and mental health, their programs support children affected by trauma and loss, and the ongoing challenges of poverty. 28% of all children orphaned in SA (600,000) live in the province, many with grandmothers.

The story of how they started, 25 years ago, is pretty inspiring. It is the story of three people – 1) a play therapist who was working in a children’s home when nobody was talking about HIV and especially not to kids about HIV , 2) Rob, a farmer man dying of brain cancer who noticed that his farm workers were dying of AIDS without access to a hospice or any kind of assistance, and 3) Rachel who met the play therapist while walking along a road with her young child. The therapist told her they needed someone to help with fundraising and Rachel thought “how hard can it be?” and said she’d help. Today, 25 years later, Rachel was the one who introduced us to the truly impactful, thoughtfully designed, multiple programs that they are currently offering. As his brain cancer progressed, Rob lost his ability to speak and started to paint pictures to communicate. Then his brain started to see warm colours as cold and vice versa. Their first logo was a pink cow. And he began to think that maybe art was a good way to get children to communicate rather than speech. Their early work was all with children, but they quickly realized that they also needed to work with parents/grandparents and that the parents were grieving. Learning how to work with grieving families came naturally because it was a grieving family that started the organization. They figured out, not just how to support the caregivers, but to enable them to take the necessary next steps with their children. They were in a stressed and understaffed environment, but they came up with the idea of using play and doll-making to create the support group processes. They make beautiful dolls which they do step by step, one group meeting at a time – trace an existing doll body onto a piece of paper, create the body out of material, stuff it thoroughly so it stands up well, add clothes, add feet and shoes, do the face, add the hair. This ongoing exercise in creativity made the caregivers sit still and opened the door to teaching them how to use the doll for storytelling. Rachel called it empowering the caregiver, OR, helping the caregiver remember their power. Telling stories while holding a doll you have created evolved into a system that looks at ways to connect children and mental health and caregivers and community. Their system of training staff members involves participating in the process first, then getting training, then co-facilitating groups and finally becoming a facilitator.

Dlalanathi connects with the Department of Health around maternal and childcare requirements and programs. They implement support as soon as the young women become pregnant. Pregnancy is often not welcome here – it happens as the result of sexual violence, or incest, or from a boyfriend who has now left, and the family turns their anger on the young woman. Dlalalanthi helps families deal with the conflict surrounding the pregnancy so that by the birth of the baby they have family support. They also work at the policy and district level to build capacity and strengthen these systems.

At this point we divided into three groups and went to meet with three different groups in the rural community of Swayimana an hour’s drive away.

From Bonnie: A group of us visited with some grandmothers. The drive there was through an agricultural area with avocado orchards, ostrich and cattle farms, vast sugar cane fields and tree farms.  We arrived at a well-kept family compound and were welcomed into a rondavel.  In Zulu culture this is a sacred space where families connect with their ancestors and maintain their cultural heritage.

We were welcomed with a song and a prayer.  Sitting in a circle we introduced ourselves with the two dlalanathi support workers translating into Zulu and English.  Then we were each given a hand made doll to hold.  Both African and Canadian grandmothers were invited to share how they felt on becoming parents and their parenting journey, what it was like to be a gogo and what made them proud of their grandchildren.  As the African women shared their stories many of them were holding their doll lovingly in their arms.  Their stories reflected difficult and challenging lives.  One woman shared that she had a daughter when she was still in school so she didn’t finish her own schooling.  She raised her daughter to young adulthood but then her daughter died.  Another woman told us her two daughters were married with children but both her sons had several children with different partners.  Several of the gogos were raising orphaned grandchildren.  But there were happy stories of children and grandchildren who had finished high school and some who were at university.  They also talked about familiar issues such as grandchildren arguing amongst themselves and complaining about not being the favourite grandchild. 

These women have been working with dlalanathi for some time.  This program starts with everyone making a doll.  Talking to the doll and holding it helps create a safe and intimate space to share stories, even difficult ones, with the guidance of a social worker.  They work with a child and youth counsellor who helps them with issues they have raising their grandchildren and also how to use play to connect with children.  The women in this group are now able to help facilitate other groups in the area.

Here we are with our dolls in front of the rondavel.

From Judi (Burlington Ubuntu Grandwomen): My group met with a group of health care workers and young moms. The HCWs run a 1000-day program that supports the mother and child from before birth up to the age of 2. The provide health and mental health resources to support the mothers. This group uses a blanket that they pass around as each person speaks. The blanket represents the fact that the mother is her baby’s blanket of support and the HCW is the mother’s blanket of support. The young mothers indicated that they appreciated the program because they experienced the feeling of love, were able to speak openly and appreciated having someone walking with them through this journey. They liked being able to share concerns and get answers to questions they couldn’t ask their family members. Most births are now in a hospital. The clients are generally referred by clinics. Each worker has 6 clients in a specific region and they try to stay with the mothers for the full 1000 days, functioning as a social worker with them and providing food vouchers if they are needed. Some of them even bring them food from their homes. The workers say it is very hard to focus on providing emotional support when there is so much else that is also needed.

From Laurie: My group attended and participated in a youth group session facilitated by one of the dlalanathi trained peer educators. The facilitator was quite skilled and the session was very powerful. We started by playing – tossing a ball around a circle in a way that required coordination, memory and focus. The young people were much better at it than we were! There were about four young women and four young men present and they (and we) were forthcoming as we did round table comments and responses before and after watching a video. The young people were very perceptive and concluded that a) what they needed most, and b) the way they could be most helpful to others in need in their community, was LISTENING TO UNDERSTAND. Some of them felt they had no-one in their lives who did this for them. And they all agreed that the issues presented by the video – drugs, unemployment, abuse, sexual harassment – were all prevalent in their community.

I met and spoke at some length to two young women today, very similar in age but with very different lives.

Mbali, 28, doesn’t remember her father who died when she was a baby. She was raised by her mother and a stepfather to whom she is very close. Her grandmother didn’t believe that women needed an education so her mother quit school after grade 11, though she is very smart and has a good mind for business. Mbali’s older sister works for the Royal Caribbean cruise line. She also has a 13-year-old brother who she says is a nice boy and she is hoping to help him stay that way! She has a Bachelor’s degree in Child and Youth Development and a Masters degree in Health Sciences. Her dream is to get a PhD and to do research. She was encouraged by a professor in her program when she did a presentation on her undergraduate research on music as a modality for helping adolescents recovering from trauma. She has a fiancé with twin 9-year-old daughters and regrets that she has stopped going to the gym (she has asthma and a knee injury) because her life is pretty busy. She is a youth worker a dlalanathi currently.

Lindelwa, 26, was a participant in the youth group session. She lives with her much-loved grandmother, her uncle and her two daughters, 7 and 4. The 7-year-old is in grade 1. There was no mention of the children’s father. She has no job but is trying to stay positive about finding something. She dreams of being a doctor and is remaining hopeful about possibly getting a bursary to attend tertiary school some day but doesn’t know how she would handle it with her children. Her grandmother is too old now to help. Lindelwa cooks for her family, and she and her daughters love to sing and dance. She told me she likes rhythm and blues and loves Beyonce’s energy!

On the way back in the bus, I asked Mbali what she thought was the main difference between her life and Lindelwa’s life. She said that she thinks in the rural communities the young people don’t have any role models of people getting higher education or doing interesting jobs so they don’t prepare themselves for those possibilities. Their worlds are much smaller. There was another young woman in the youth group who had her young baby with her and also had no relationship with the baby’s father. It made me shift my opinion just a little on “the maidens” because I can see what a difference it would make to prevent them from getting pregnant young, and to give them the opportunity to travel around the country dancing, and possibly even to receive a bursary for further education. It is a very complicated, unequal world.