THE LOST CHILDREN

As a very young child I remember wanting to save the world. So I started with the bugs in the garden. I Was sure that they could not possibly be happy out in the cold and rain and that I was doing them a favour by bringing them inside in boxes and bottles. Spiders, ants and chameleons, anything that crawled. My mother was long suffering.

As I grew into my teens my passion turned to children, abused or neglected children. I did not have a plan, but a plan came into fruition as the years went by.

I married, and still had my passion, which was to show less fortunate children that there is a better life out there and to love them. My husband and I went to Nazareth House in Salisbury, Rhodesia and spoke to them. They had children who could be taken out by families for weekends. Our first experience in foster care was an 18 month old toddler, Shirley Ann. The fact that my eldest daughter's name is Shirley-Ann is purely coincidental, she had her name before we met Shirley Ann from Nazareth House. I do not have a photo of her but can tell you a bit about her.

There was a company which let out baby furniture, so we organised for a cot to be delivered to our flat on Friday afternoons and for it to be collected on Monday mornings.

We would collect Shirley Ann on Friday after work, when we arrived they were eating their supper, we then whisked her off. This set the pattern for many months. Her parents were drug adicts and alcoholics and her mother made contact with the child once in six months. As long as parents did that the child could not be adopted. Crazy hey.

She had been badly neglected and was very withdrawn. She also had a little brother Darren who was a year older than she was, and he was eventually taken out by a life long friend of mine, Veronica. We decided after some time that it would be better if they were together so Veronica and her husband took them both and kept on doing so for a very long time. But, as often happens, once the parents or parent knows that someone else is interested in their child, THEY start showing interest and demand that the child goes to them for some weekends. This confused the two so much Veronica stopped taking them out so that the mother could step in. I think of them often as they are in their 40's now -wow, and I hope that they had good lives, and happy lives. That is all we can hope for.
We went back to Nazareth House and asked if there were any other children needing a weekend home. Above you see Jenny and Darryl in trousers I made for them so that they would have things that could stay with us. They were 3 and 4 when they came to us. Jenny was a fiesty little thing, asking questions and very inquisitive. Darryl was destined to become a rag and bone man as he could always be found rummaging around in the rubbish dump behind the flats and brings in "treasures" of other peoples discarded junk and eventually had a box full of his prizes which we were to watch over during the week!

We then had children of our own, and anyone following my blogs will know just how demanding they all were and with the situation in the country being as it was, I was basically raising them on my own, so for a number of years we did not foster any other children.

We came to South Africa when they were small and once again my mind turned to foster care.

This time it was not weekends that we took children but we applied to be Place of Safety parents for children who have to be immediately removed. The social worker would telephone me and ask if we could take a child within the next 2 or so hours. These children would stay with us for up to 6 months when they were permanently fostered by a family, adopted or returned to rehabilitated parents.

Above you see Charlie, a little french boy who was 2 year old, with Shirley left, then Kerry, and Lisa on the other side of him. She was 4 and very jealous as she was the baby and now she had competition, this did not please Lisa, but she always came up with ways to get rid of poor Charlie! I heard the kitchen door slam one day and a scream from outside. Lisa was in the kitchen, door closed. "I told him to go home" she said. Well, that was new, taking in children when we had our own children who had no idea why we were doing this!

Within 6 months Charlie's mother had started to visit him on weekends, evidently rehabilitated herself and Charlie was returned to her. A week after he was gone we were watching Police File when a picture came on the screen of Charlie's mother and father. They were wanted by police for stealing a caravan and they were thought to be in Zimbabwe! We wondered why she had suddenly become this "super mom" , all was made clear! Charlie is in his 30's now.


We decided to go back to weekend foster care as we did not want any of the girls throwing these children out in the street behind our backs, so when Shirley was 8, Alice came to us. She was 9 and a delightful child with a very confusing family life. We loved having Alice and she and Shirley got on very well right from the start. She started to come to us for school holidays too and often came with on holiday,in the pic above we were camping on the Eastern Cape coast close to Port Alfred.

The story gets more complicated however, as within 2 weeks a social worker telephoned us with a place of safety child.

Matthew was the 3rd of 4 brothers all very close in age, Scots immigrant family. His mother had walked out on all of them and his father could not cope with the two youngest, so they were to be removed immediately. He was 2 and I could not say no. They brought him, with his father, who seemed as distraught as the child but as time went by never came to see him again. He had a few clothes in a black bag. Our church friends all rallied round and donated clothing for him. He still wore nappies at night, I had 2 in the bag and no pin, so they all saw to that, they truly saved the day.

He was adorable. But he was our biggest challenge.

He could not speak when he came to us but within a month we could not stop him from speaking, he was like a wind up toy with no off button.

We became very fond of Matthew and when it was time to find him permanent foster care, we applied to be his permanent foster parents. The girls fought with him no more than they fought with one another but they never told him to go home! In fact when the issue of his going to a foster home came up they all begged if he could stay.

We actually had to apply to foster him. We were "accepted". Dumb rule, we had taken care of him for 9 months by this time.

He stayed with us until he left high school. Brian, my son, was born when he was 5 years old. They were always brothers to one another, even to this day. Matthew is 28 and has a baby girl. Brian sees Matthew and his brothers often.

He was a very difficult child to raise and it often became hard. He was returned to his mother when he was 11 but she brought him back to us because she could cope with him, so with us he stayed. He was clever and successful. He is still connected to the family and I know that now he is happy.

What I would do differently? Make sure that I had the FULL support of my husband and children, because at the end of the day they were living MY dream, it was never anything they chose for themselves.

I thank them all from the bottom of my heart for letting me realise my dream of helping the lost children.