Girls and Boys Town Integrated Biennial Report April 2018 – March 2020

22 Girls & Boys Town South Africa Integrated Biennial Report 2018/2020 EVALUATION and research services Moments from a Growth Beyond the Town interview. Xolani is 19-years old and has lived with his two older sisters since he left GBTSA in 2016. He is now in grade 11 at a local school. He kind of knows and trusts me after our first research interview in 2017. His story begins at a young age: Mom and Dad both die and this small Zulu boy is placed in the foster care of a white, English-speaking family. When Xolani is nine- years old they “pass the ball” to a children’s home. Two years later the children’s home “passes the ball” to GBTSA. Four years later Xolani returns to his somewhat broke Zulu family. Xolani’s sister, Nonhlanhla, aged 30, is the matriarch in the family home. If one listens closely, his sharing during the interview is emotionally rich – full of pain and tears, joy and laughter. Early in our chat, Xolani acknowledges that he still tends to test authority, a behaviour which might have been part of his “ticket” into GBTSA. He admits that sometimes he does not feel like going to school – and that Nonhlanhla patiently parents him about the importance of education. I learn that he remains, nevertheless, a strong advocate of the GBTSA programme of helping youth at risk to learn and master basic social skills. He describes how his mindset towards people in his community has changed, and welcomes the fact that every greeting creates an opportunity for a new relationship. He says that previously he “just didn’t care about other people around him - like I was self-centred”. And then – suddenly -- I am face-to face with a shocking experience. Xolani tells me he was in a serious motor vehicle accident at the end of 2018 which left him hospitalised. He tells me (and I am thinking this is a post-traumatic stress reaction) that he believed that “nothing in life mattered anymore because we can die any time”. When he got home from hospital, he went into his room, locked the door and stayed there for some days. He was trapped in his own dungeon of despair. (I am reading this as the depression part of post-traumatic stress triggering a total meltdown.) His broken and disconnected childhood played through his mind over and over. Tears were pouring -- the pain of it all recalled. So painful that he was saying to himself he wouldn’t want anybody else to experience what he had been through. And then his cousin/friend, Asanda, started visiting him and listening – and kept Xolani from falling apart completely. (I am thinking: Thank God for Asanda’s caring friendship, otherwise this episode could have ended in suicide.) I ask: “Xolani, when you recovered with Asanda’s help and emerged from your bedroom-dungeon, what then?” “I had to accept it,” he says. “The past is past -- what did not kill me will make me stronger.” We both laugh. I say to him: “So, you have lived that saying”.