Sunday 28/07/91 – Back Home In Gabarone

Diary Notes – 23 years ago today I wrote in my hearing impaired son’s diary. I was writing up Hughan’s ‘Diary’ so Vanessa, at The Carel du Toit Centre in Cape Town (South Africa), knew what we were doing at home, in Gaborone in Botswana, so she could track Hughan’s progress. 

Hughan and I had just come back home from another trip to see Vanessa at the Carel du Toit Centre in Cape Town. These were my ‘diary’ notes…

Dear Vanessa

Thank you very much for another two weeks of assistance.

I always get home feeling refreshed. Five months was too long a break – we missed you!

Cape Town to Johannesburg flight went fine. We left the Cape at 3.30pm and after arriving had an hour to get to the Gaborone flight. Arrived at the departure lounge in good time – to find out our flight was delayed half an hour.

I had time to get the boys dinner and went back to sit and wait again. Then they announced a further delay on the flight.

We arrived in Gaborone at 10 o’clock absolutely finished as you can imagine! Hughan did not sleep at all. The boys were very good considering how tired they were.

Willem went to Bulawayo (in Zimbabwe) by himself. Vil was very upset to find him gone when he woke up in the morning. So I decided we would go and play tennis. We were out playing tennis by 9.30 in the morning.

I was still very switched off and only to find I had locked my keys in my car when it was time to go home. Willem was now on his way to Bulawayo with the spare keys! I asked a friend to help and within half an hour he managed to open the car.

Vil, Hughan and I made pancakes twice over the weekend. Otherwise we sat and watched videos and the boys enjoyed playing in the garden on their bikes.

(Helping parents with hearing impaired children through our experience…we are following our profoundly deaf son’s diary, from 1990, so you can see what we did to help him with his speech and hearing. Hughan is 25 years old now and he can hold a conversation on a phone. It is the little thing we did every day, over a long period of time, that has helped him. Please visit our page…’like’ and follow us to help others…Thank you 🙂 )