Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T17:59:52.749Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Appendix: Interlocutors and Research Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2021

Get access

Summary

As described in the Introduction, my two research assistants in Okhahlamba were Phumzile Ndlovu and Zanele Mchunu. Within the NGO where they worked, Phumzile was responsible for co-ordinating the work of volunteer home-based carers in Okhahlamba, who had trained in palliative care in 1999, and who were responsible for caring for the ill in their neighbourhoods. Zanele undertook intervention work with ‘vulnerable children and youth’, to use the terminology of the NGO and global development sectors. She had ongoing contact with children and young people who had lost one or both parents through death.

Describing the scope of their activities in more detail, once a month, Phumzile convened a large meeting of all the home-based carers within the region in the NGO offices in Bergville, in which she encouraged them in their work. On occasion, speakers were asked to address the meeting, including personnel from the Department of Social Welfare, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) members from Pietermaritzburg, and more frequently, a doctor from the local hospital with whom carers had formed an ongoing and open relationship. Phumzile also attended support-group meetings for home-based carers in four areas of Okhahlamba, where volunteers could speak of their problems in relation to specific patients and their families, and of their own emotional turmoil in the face of the suffering they witnessed. She recorded the minutes of intermittent inter-sectoral meetings of interested parties across local communities and racial divides, where their contribution to confronting the AIDS epidemic was discussed. Groupings involved included: church groups, the police, personnel from the provincial education department, a few doctors from the local Emmaus Hospital, charitable bodies, the personnel of a small local orphanage in which only two children lived for most of the research period, other NGOs, myself and interested individuals. Phumzile attended an AIDS task group meeting set up at Emmaus Hospital, to which I was also invited. I attended many of the above meetings, recording them and writing notes concerning my observations of them.

Phumzile introduced me to the home-based carers at one of their general meetings, during the first month of my living in Okhahlamba. The group was made up of 77 members, although on average, only 43 regularly attended general meetings. Only two of the carers were men.

Type
Chapter
Information
AIDS, Intimacy and Care in Rural KwaZulu-Natal
A Kinship of Bones
, pp. 187 - 192
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×