Bathing at a New Hour, for a New Year

My last shift at Baphumelele ended on New Year’s Eve. Just before that, at the suggestion of some of the volunteers, the care workers began to bathe the children in the “evening”…well, almost. The idea was, instead of waking all of the children up at 4:00 a.m. to bathe them each day, why not do it in the evening, just before bedtime, so the children do not go to sleep dirty and also so they, and of course the care workers, can sleep later each morning? Well, as with most things at Baphumelele, changes were implemented, but in a bit of a funny, haphazard, does not completely make sense, sort of way.

It was a tradition among the Aviva volunteers that, at least once during your volunteer period, you would arise and help at the 4:00 a.m. bath time. I prepared do this on my last shift. However, during this last shift, the care workers implemented the new bathing policy and began to bathe all forty children at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. So, they took our advice to bathe at the end of the day, but we meant after dinner, not in the middle of the afternoon! Because, what happened was that the children, bathed and dressed in clean clothes or pajamas, would then run outside and/or spill dinner all over themselves, going to bed dirty nonetheless. To make it even crazier, the care workers were still getting up and bathing them again in the morning!

But the bathing process, no matter what time, is something to behold in-and-of-itself! The care workers bring the older toddlers – most are now out of nappies – to the toilet room. About 20 of the children wait in a line there. Not sure why everyone must be in the room at once. With the door shut. The room is steaming hot. Luckily then, the children have their clothes off. Not lucky for those of us helping. I try to open the door once and let some air into the room. “Shut the door” the care workers shout! Like the teethbrushing event each day, you must fight to keep the other curiously frantic children out of the room.

Two care workers and two volunteers are in the room also. I stand by the door and keep getting hit in the back with it as the laundry lady decides to put up the clean clothes at the exact same time. 20 children. Now 5 adults. Steaming hot toilet room.

There is a process. Marta is in charge of medicated cream (applied all over some of their bodies before the bath) and Vaseline (applied all over each of their bodies after the bath). A child steps into the bath tub, others wait in line behind. Hilda bathes them. Marta towels them off. New towel is used for each child. Marta applies the Vaseline and passes the, now very slippery, child to me. I hand them underwear – believe me, these kids know the difference between girls’ and boys’ underpants. I struggle to find appropriate ones for them to wear, and can not always. I sometimes try to pass boys’ underpants off for girls’, or vica versa, but they will have none of that. For the younger ones, I put on their nappies. Because of all the Vaseline, they slide all over the place. I then pass them to Koleke. Koleke puts on the rest of their bedtime outfit. She hands them back to me. I take a big, horse-hair like brush and brush their hair. I kiss their foreheads – can’t resist – and they leave the room. Marta and I then wash our hands with anti-bacterial cream so we do not spread any of one child’s skin infections to another. We wonder about what is being passed to us? Then the process begins again.

Despite the craziness of it all, the foreignness of the process to me, I felt a lot of tenderness and love in that steaming toilet room.

Happy New Years to everyone.

(Pictured: Koleke and children in line for bath; application of medicated cream before the bath; Luthando in the bath tub)