A day in the life and home of a child in an informal settlement

(Flashback) Ayanda! The house is a mess, Mom is dying and you still have to go to school! You know what forget school, we need to take care of mom!(end of flashback) I always dream about that moment, the last few days of my mom's life. I'll never forget her. What's worse is that my dad is now becoming very ill and there aren't many doctors to help him, because we live in an informal settlement. Well now you know my name is Ayanda. I am 7 years old with a 16 year old sister, Keo.  My house is not very big, but I still love living here. Even though it is an informal settlement, it is very lively. If you come you will really enjoy yourself with all the joyful vibes. 

Breakfast this morning was the same old home made pap, dry pap. This was because today, water was scarce. This morning, I didn't go to school, because I still had to take care of my dad. Mornings are not really my favourite time of the day. They are just so boring because everyone is always asleep at the time we wake up. This week was even worse, because even though I don't really go to school anymore I still wake up early everyday and having nothing to do and no one to talk to makes these days even more boring than it ever has been, but I just had to smile and deal with it because some people don't wake up after they sleep because of their living conditions.

In the afternoon, I managed to have 20 minutes of playing in the area with many people. The area was very positive, joyful and social. There were also many children to play with, but the time of playing ended very quickly. Soon it was boring again. Nothing fun to do and taking care of my very sick dad. Sometimes I wish he wasn't sick, because if he wasn't, I would have much more time to play. Our lunch was a green salad because most of the stuff in it was green. Keo and I had a scavenger hunt to find the vegetables that we ate. That was the most fun thing I did after playing with my new friends. My dad started violently coughing and soon he fell asleep. We weren't able to wake him up so we assumed that it was a coma. Unfortunately there weren't enough doctors to help him. There also wasn't any medication in the house so we both knew he was going to die soon. All the time after that was very late.

It was now the night and we had more pap for dinner, but this time as a treat to help us feel better we got to use water. It didn't help much, but it tasted better. Since miracles do happen we tried to wake Dad up and suddenly he did wake up, but he was still tired so he just rested on the chair. Keo and I were overjoyed because we thought we lost him. After that, Keo and I played a running game we made up. She beat me twice and I beat her three times. The night was less boring than the beginning of the day. When we were done with our running game, we started making up songs to sing and dances to do with them. We performed the two songs and dances that we made up then started to get tired so we went inside and went to bed. We have one small, uncomfortable bed that Keo and I have to squash into, but we made it work because we were very tired.