Bernie's week was emotionally rough

This week has been a rough one emotionally on me due to my internship. It has been rough emotionally because having worked with these kids for 3 days out of the week for the past 2 months I have become so connected to them and connected to who they are as individuals. They are all such wonderful children who have their whole lives ahead of them but yet they are in this convalescent home for more than 6 months, which is not normal, because their families of which they come from don’t want them. That saddens me so much because to hear that a parent doesn’t want their child is unreal to me. I sit in the weekly MDT meetings and hear about how the social worker tries to contacts the parents to come in to visit their child, but they say no and they don’t come and visit their kid. They abandon their kid and it frustrates me so much because if I had a kid I would NEVER abandon them, if I were able to I would take these abandoned kids home with me in May. I also understand that situations may be different than one I would be in when I have kids but I just don’t understand how a mother and father could abandon their kid with no worry about what happens to them. I think because I have been with these kids so long I know who they are and how great and how much potential they have and how they need a family to continue to thrive and how they don’t have one upsets me so much and frustrates me because it’s the parents choice. That’s how I’m feeling at the moment.

Also another thing that this happened this week was a child was used as a human shield in Manenberg during a gang fight and he was shot and now he is paralyzed for life. Hearing that story really shocked me because I never actually heard a story like that where people I know work near. That made me think though because this kind of violence happens all the time in the US but we don’t hear about it as much, we hear about the violence more here in South Africa. Why? I think that we don’t hear about it as much in the US because it goes along with how history neglects to tell us the bad parts of history and how we ended up where we are. I think the news somewhat does that as well in the US where it neglects to tell us about the bad that can happen, especially to kids. I am continuing to notice these differences between the US and South Africa and am beginning to get frustrated with how much information gets hid in the US