Theme Three: Poor social interaction
This study revealed that the OVC had poor social life and communication with the people around them. The majority of the discussants expressed that the difficulty was mainly related to the orphanages’ rules of conduct, perception, lack of self-confidence, and social skills. A 15 years old double orphaned girl who lived for 12 year in the orphanage explained it as:
“I do not know how to interact with people in the community. I have no confidence to talk and walk with them because I am an orphan. I go to school but I do not talk with my classmates…”
Moreover, the majority of the children reported that they experienced verbal, physical and emotional abuse and neglect by the community and internal staff. It was more common for the children to claim that they were bullied and embarrassed by people in the community, solely based on the fact that they were OVC and lived in orphanages. A 16 year old boy described his feeling as follows:
“If the orphanage workers consider us as their own children, they will not punish us with such a big stick that we can’t tolerate. The worst of all is whenever they are informed that we quarreled with anybody in the community; they add the pain by punishing and giving us warnings of dismissals.”
It was also noted that the majority of the children preferred to be socially isolated. They perceived that the community had bad attitude and lack of love for them. A caregiver substantiated this by saying:
“The children have love for each other. However, this is not true for other people in the community including me. Most of them even never ask me when I feel sick and in bed for three and more days. When any people come from the community they hate and hide themselves…”
Furthermore, except a few of children, the majority of them did not feel secured since they had no good interaction with their caregivers, other staff and outside community. One caregiver explained this by saying:
“The children sometimes associate and go apart. Sometimes they want hugs and kisses, and later you can’t touch them. They can’t form strong bonds with people, and they avoid looking at others in the eye.”