Tracy Engelbrecht's Blog, page 10

Phateka speaks

Phateka is a 16 year old teen mom from Masi. She’s in grade 11, still at school and determined to finish. Her baby is a gorgeous, strapping young boy of 5 months.

I asked her if her peers or community are unkind to her about being a young mom.

Her answer was typical of so many of the Masi women.

“Yes, some of them say bad things to me – but what can they do? I’m already a mother. I just ignore them and focus on my baby and my studies. I am a good mother – what can they say?”

Precisely. What else is there *to* say?

Nothing. If the asshats of the world close their ever-flapping traps for one minute and actually *look* at the young women they’re judging, they’ll see mothers who don’t need or want their approval. The happiness and health of their children says enough to the world.

For my mom

My mom Linda is a huge part of Young Mom Support, working behind the scenes to make it all work.

When I had the idea to start the group, she was on board immediately, even though her life would change, she’d had much more work to do when she could be relaxing and doing her own thing. I work fulltime, so when Young Moms errands need doing, Ma is the one who does them.

We had a lovely donation of baby clothes this weekend, and now they need sorting out. This is what she does:

Sorts the clothes into sizes, takes photos of each piece of clothing. Makes up folders with all the photos. We take these files to every meeting, and each mom puts their name down next to their selections. Ma takes the list, goes to our (expensive!) storage unit, sorts through the clothes to find the right ones, makes up packets for each mom and we take them with us. If moms don’t arrive for 2 meetings in a row, she takes the clothes back to storage to go back in the pot. She also does all the printing, the driving around to odd places, fetching donations, helps with baking, shopping and organising. She does research of interesting info  for the moms, takes the meeting photos and edits them, makes presents for Christmas, mothers day and other occasions, talks to the moms, plays with the babies and gives up her Saturdays to be with us.

Young Mom Support is really all about her. We couldn’t do it without you dear Ma. So thank you, from all of us.

 

PS. Edited to add: she also nags me and fights with me when I’m being lazy. Really, without her, we wouldn’t be where we are.

A Celebration of Motherhood: You’re Invited

So this was my little idea. After attending the Huggies Momville launch last week, I thought why can’t we do that too? What better way to show people what we do, and show off our beautiful moms and babies to the world. They are doing a great job, and they deserve recognition. It would also be nice to show our supporters, friends and other interested people that we’re not so different – our circumstances might be vastly disparate, but humanity and love for our children is under all of our skin.

So – here’s the invite, Cape Town peeps. Please share, encourage any young or teen moms you know to join us, bring your own children along and eat some cake. Parents, grandparents, non-parents, celebrities who will tweet about us and make us famous – please do join us.

I know we’re far on the other side of the world for many of you, (way down South where bananas grow etc) – but we promise to make it worth your while.

Help us celebrate what our moms do – our group is giving them a voice – now we just need the world to hear it.

Please help me make this work for them.

Thank you

x

 

What we’re afraid of

This week’s meeting has given me much pause for thought. I love our meetings, I love soaking up the atmosphere of relaxed, calm, confident moms and their children. It’s very rare to hear a baby cry during the meetings. Very seldom are there toddler tantrums or fights between the children. All in all, there’s a sense of peace and nobody seems frazzled or stressed.

I’ve been wondering why this is. If all the literature and expert opinion out there is to be believed, mothers who are for the most part young, single, poor, relatively uneducated, probably unemployed and certainly not up on the latest expert parenting theories should be struggling with motherhood more. You’d expect them to be needing more help, somehow.

And it’s just not what I see. Sure, the mothers who come to our meetings are moms who are already taking their motherhood seriously and doing their best, so it’s logical that their babies should be doing well. The lousy, uninterested, neglectful or abusive mothers wouldn’t come to our meetings anyway. So yes, we’re preaching to the choir, but it’s a beautiful choir who needs to be told how awesome they are, so I’m happy to do it.

In other communities, a room full of new moms and their babies might feel a lot more fraught – and moms might go home feeling more exhausted than anything else. So as much we started this group to help moms with their mothering, I’m realising that for the most part, it’s not the sort of help they need. Of all the moms and children I’ve meet since December 2010, I can think of only one child who I’d be worried about – who I’ve wondered what he’s seen and experienced to make him the way he is.

So I’ve learnt that mostly – our moms are fine. They all have worries – most of which are pretty similar to yours or mine. This is what we discussed on Saturday. We all wrote down our fears anonymously, then I read them out and we discussed them.

The biggest fear and most common fear – that their children would be raped, murdered or molested. Moms spoke openly about their own experiences of rape and abuse and it’s something that’s foremost in all of their minds. Because as one mom says: “You don’t know what a rapist looks like. You don’t know what a molester looks like. I feel like I can’t trust my neighbours and I don’t want to feel like that.”

Other fears included:

paraffin stoves
cars
alcoholism and drugs in the community
violence in the community
corruption and crime
finances – needing work
their children’s future and opportunities to study
their daughters growing up and getting involved with abusive men
their children making the same poor life choices that they may have made in the past

Another one which struck me was the fear that because she’s unemployed and not able to provide adequately for her child, she’s not a proper mother. She feels that she’s not good enough. We spoke about how motherhood is  about much more than money.  Another mom has had to send one of her children to live with their granny as she can’t afford to look after her right now. She’s scared of losing the bond she has with her child, but she has no other choice right now. There were no easy answers, just a commitment to doing all she can to change her current situation and maintain contact with her child. 

You may recognise some of these fears in your own life. They’re universal and real for all of us. Some of the others may be very far removed from your own reality. Do me a favour and just think about it for a bit.

Think of these very real issues which are facing moms like Portia, Gloria, Nolufefe, Thandiswa, Liezel and others. Next time you’re reading an article about disadvantaged communities, or struggling parents – and if you are tempted to judge (although all of you lovely people reading this would never do that! )  - remember that our group moms want exactly the same for their children as you do. They worry, they try and change things in their homes, families and communities, they come to meetings like ours and talk about it, trying to find solutions. And then they go home and do it all over again. Through all of this they somehow manage to raise healthy, beautiful, loved children who – given the opportunities they deserve – will go on to do great things and be great people.

Our lives may look different – but inside the head and inside the heart, as moms we’re all the same.

Young moms strutting their stuff

Saturday’s meeting – Marisa Copley joined us to give us a tribal fusion belly dancing demonstration. Some giggles and shyness (but much less than I thought there’d be), and our small group of moms got into it. Obviously, I sucked at it. As coordinated, flexible and sexy as a drunk Dalek climbing a spiral staircase. But I had fun! Even the older children joined in. It was a great way of taking us out of ourselves for a little while, and for some of our moms, it was a chance to put aside the worries and stresses for a bit and just BE. Some might say that such a frivolous activity would be pointless and of no help to moms who are facing some very difficult issues.

It didn’t fix their problems. But it was definitely NOT pointless. No matter what you’re facing, no matter how hard your life is, no matter what you need to sort out and fix, – sometimes you need to forget all that and have fun. Afterwards, you’re energised, refreshed, ready to start again.

Thank you to Marisa and to our brave moms who jumped right in and got into the spirit of the occasion. You were my inspiration to let go of my own self consciousness.

Another thank you to Mrs Joan Henderson of the UK. She is a relative of Joyce, my next door neighbour. When Joyce visited the UK recently, she returned with bags full of hand-knitted baby goodies, which Mrs Henderson had especially created for our babies. Means so much to have people all over the world care about us. Much love to our UK supporters.

Re. the blanket raffle – we didn’t get a great response, so have decided to leave the link up for a while longer. If we get a better response, we’ll do a draw on 1 September.

 

 

Raffle Time!

Young Mom Support fundraising time!

Enter our raffle to win one of 2 beautiful handmade, unique baby cot blankets – one pink, one blue.

Tickets for the raffle are $2 each (have to do dollars in order to use Paypal and online payment forms) – use the donation form in the right sidebar to buy tickets via Paypal or with your credit card.

If you’d prefer to do a bank transfer, please email info@youngmomsupport.co.za to let us know.

We’ll email you a confirmation of your entry and the draw will take place on Sunday 19 August. Winners will be posted here and also notified via email.

Prizes will be posted to winners at our expense.

Your support is, as always, much appreciated.

Help us spread the word!

   

Meeting photos: June & July 2012

Have had an issue with the website lately but hoorah – have finally fixed it up! So this will have to be 2 meeting reports in one.

At June’s meeting we spent some time thinking about what is important to us as mothers, the kind of mothers we’d like to be, and what we feel we do well.

Each mom created a poster of her promises to her children – something beautiful, made from the heart and designed to be read every day as a reminder of who she wants to be. Everybody got into the swing of things and it was lovely to see them having fun with glitter and crayons like children. A small thing maybe, but seeing the words written down, spoken out loud – makes it harder to forget them.

July’s weather was awful – rainy and stormy, which kept most people away from our meeting. In the end we only had 3 moms – and 2 new ones who arrived just as we were packing up.

It was actually really nice to be able to spend one-on-one time with moms who I didn’t really know that well, really chatting indepth with them and getting to know them. So – a win anyway.

Meeting photos: June 2012

At our last meeting we spent some time thinking about what is important to us as mothers, the kind of mothers we’d like to be, and what we feel we do well.

Each mom created a poster of her promises to her children – something beautiful, made from the heart and designed to be read every day as a reminder of who she wants to be. Everybody got into the swing of things and it was lovely to see them having fun with glitter and crayons like children. A small thing maybe, but seeing the words written down, spoken out loud – makes it harder to forget them.

 

Meeting report: 12 May 2012

Did the meeting solo this week as my mom was sick. She’d made us a gorgeous pot of soup (which she complained she didn’t like as there “was no taste”. Meanwhile it was her tastebuds that were dysfunctional due to the flu). Everybody loved the soup and tucked in – was nice for a wintry day.

Gave away 3 more blankets which Joyce had made for us - the lucky winning moms were very happy – somewhere there’s a pic of little Elam with her prize pink blanket on her head!

I was worried I wouldn’t manage alone as my mom usually does most of the behind-the-scenes set up and organising while I talk to moms but everybody got stuck in and with Wadi & Phakama’s help everything went smoothly. Except of course when I forgot to take the lens cap off the camera… luckily Wadi came to the rescue and was on camera duty for the rest of the day.

Never fails to amaze me how everybody gets stuck in at home time and before you turn your head, the whole place is clean, swept, chairs packed away and 100% sorted. Makes me feel good that everybody feels comfy enough to take charge and just do things, without being asked. These ladies can teach us all a lot about community and doing your share.

Had a good chat with Shirley & Edith, two community leaders (and formidable women) from Masi & Ocean View respectively. Was interesting that Edith said she struggles to get Ocean View people involved in community events, workshops etc. She works so hard at running workshops, being on the school’s governing body etc, and it’s always just the same small core of people working to improve their community. This sounds pretty much like Fish Hoek and the traditionally “white” areas – plenty of people ready and willing to complain, but not too many prepared to get their hands dirty and do the work. It’s all about “somebody should do something” – but not realising that YOU are that somebody.

While Shirley says that in Masi, workshops, meetings and other community events are well attended. According to Shirley, the moms in Masi say that as they “never attended school”, they must use every opportunity they get to learn something. So, it seems that Ocean View and Fish Hoek have got a lot of catching up to do.

What are things like in *your* communities?  Do people get together to make things better? Or does everybody stick to their own couches and not do much?

Meeting report: 21 April 2012

Saturday’s meeting was lovely, as usual. Neighbour lady Joyce (who I mentioned in the last post) joined us for the lucky draw for the blankets she made. We draw names of 3 moms and each one received one of the beautiful handmade baby blankets.

Congrats to Edith, Minentle & Anoria! Anoria was a new mom who joined us for the first time that day – good thing she did!

Was lovely to have Joyce with us, the moms made her feel welcome and she spent time chatting to them all and getting to know the babies.

One of our moms Grace spoke to us about her HIV experiences, and the work she is doing with Positive Heroes  - an organisation which helps people living with HIV become positive role models in their communities. She goes into schools and speaks to the young people – her knowledge, enthusiasm and motivation was inspiring. And she heard today that her 2 month old son is HIV negative – which is a HUGE and awesome thing!

We’ve started a new plan for giving away clothes – instead of putting out all the clothes, we have pictures of each  item which the  moms can “book”- we then make up packs of their goodies and bring them next time. Works better as there were occasionally moms who got a bit “trigger happy” on taking stuff. Not many though, there were always only one or two who went overboard, but it did mean that some people got very little and some got too much. This seems to be working much better.

The children were so quiet this time! Having a large group of all age children does sometimes lead to “ïncidents”, and we often have to track down little ones up to no good (they’re particularly fascinated by the water cooler!)  :) – but this time they were all so quiet and busy with the toys. So sweet to see even the tiniest (under 2 years old) packing away the toys at home time. Very impressed with them all.