In 'Gift,' couple finds new beginning

After their 21-year-old son was killed, Celina and Pule Seloma decided to become foster parents.

By Scott Baldauf – Staff

from the September 26, 2007 edition

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DOBSONVILLE TOWNSHIP, SOUTH AFRICA - Gift has packed a lot of hard living into his 4 years.

Social workers removed him as an infant, with his three sisters, from a squalid shack in a settlement near Soweto. His mother, who was diagnosed as HIV-positive, was aggressive toward her children, each from different fathers, and sometimes went days without feeding them, bathing them, or even clothing them.

Gift's troubles don't stop there. He also contracted HIV from his mother.

Gift is now an orphan. He is also a member of an especially vulnerable group of 240,000 children with HIV. But Gift's life proves that ordinary people can make a difference in one another's lives. He has found a loving and stable foster family, and, through their persistent advocacy and care, developed into a rambunctious bundle of boyish energy.

"He's a clever boy, a naughty boy," says Celina Seloma, Gift's middle-aged foster mother, with a broad smile. "He likes to play, he likes wrestling, he likes to dance, he likes to sing in church."

"Ooh-whee!" laughs Celina's husband, Pule, shaking his head. "Gift, Gift, Gift."

Celina and Pule Seloma, both in their mid-50s, are not the typical foster couple. She is a housekeeper, working twice a week. He is a painter, carpenter, jack-of-all-trades, and gospel musician at his church. Together, they live a comfortable life, just above the poverty line, in their small concrete home in the working-class black township of Dobsonville, on the outskirts of Soweto.

Ever since the couple lost their only child, 21-year-old Tumi, in a shooting six years ago, Celina has been pining for a child in her life. "One day I said to my husband, 'We have no kids, we eat here, other kids are hungry outside, they've got no food, they've got no parents, they've got no love. They've got no one to give them love.' "

So one day in early 2005, Celina went to the Roodepoort Child Welfare Society, in the neighboring town of Roodepoort, and offered to help out. Walk-ins are unusual; the social worker's jaws dropped.

"Usually we have to advertise for foster parents, but we were lucky with Celina," says Jane Swanepoel, the social worker who was managing the cases of Gift and his three sisters. "She came to the office saying, 'I'm available, these are my circumstances, I have a house, I'm married, I have an income,' and her circumstances were stable and sustainable. She said, 'I want to make a difference in a child's life.'"

On March 15, 2005, Celina got her chance. "They phoned me and said I must fetch him," Celina recalls. "I was so happy, and I thanked God for Gift because … I've got somebody who I can give love."

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Four-year-old Gift dances and sings with his foster mother, Celina Seloma, at the church they regularly attend. Melanie Stetson Freeman - staff Gift and Mary get a new home