A very bad accident.

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Our neighbour who was the postmaster of our town invited us to come and watch the rugby at their house. We normally did not visit parents, but he was our neighbour and I wanted to watch the rugby with another man who enjoyed it as much as I did. 

So we decided to go and we had a braai while watching the rugby. We had a lovely day as it is always nice when you watch the rugby and the team you are shouting for wins.

 After the game we all sat around eating a lovely meal with salads and the meat that we put on the braai and everything was just perfectly done. There is nothing much nicer than a good steak taken off the fire. 

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The kids were playing around and ours said they were going home as they wanted to swim.

 As you all know it can get very hot here in South Africa and we had a very nice pool where all the kids went to and did their own thing.  Because we were neighbours we could watch them and we were not worried, as they were all good swimmers.

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 Our neighbour had a little girl of five years old and we kept her with us just for safety sake. 

We were just worried that the bigger children might just hurt her, and then we would not be in time to help her. If only we knew. We should have let her go with them because she was crying being alone and her dad said never mind you can help us clean up like the grownups, and then you will show them how smart you are. 

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This made her happy and she started taking the food inside that was left over as well as the little things she could carry. 

We were all busy cleaning up when we just heard this terrible scream and rushed outside. This is a sight that I never want to see again. Here was this little girl lying on the porch, she had taken a glass Coke bottle into the house and had fallen. She got half of that broken bottle in her one eye. This is impossible to explain and what she looked like. We were all in the most terrible condition. 

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Her dad grabbed her and said, I am rushing to the hospital with her and my wife, will you please look after the other children. 

We ran over to our house to get all the children out of the pool and get them dressed so that we could also go to the hospital. All this time all that went through my head was, we kept her because we were scared she got hurt and now look what had happened. 

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When everyone was ready we drove to the hospital and found her parents sitting in the waiting room. What did they say I asked? The mother was crying terrible and her husband was trying to console her. They have taken her into surgery, they say they have to remove the eye and she will have to get a glass eye. 

We were all in shock as we were thinking we really tried to keep her safe and we did not. This was not any ones fault as she was trying to help clean up. We all waited until she came out of the theatre and then we saw that the one eye was closed. The doctor said they will do their best to find her a perfect match for the other eye. This was such a sad day. 

So please never give bottles, knives or anything sharp to little children to carry as you never know what can happen. 

Safety for children was always one of my most important lessons to everyone and here I am sitting with a little girl who has just lost her eye. 

It took a while for her to heal and then she got the new glass eye.  She came to school the next year and she was really happy. 

Children have a way that we grownups do not have and that is to just accept what happened and go on with life. Her parents felt bad but she was happy and they realised that accidents do happen so this could have been a lot worse as the only thing she lost was an eye. She could have fallen with the bottle going into her brain, and then would have been different for the rest of her life.

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So some of the children at school did not even notice that she had a glass eye and it did not bother her at all. She always did well at school and did all the things the other children did. 

But I can assure you ever since then I feel rather be a little over protective than letting an accident like that happen. We stayed neighbours for 2 more years and then he was transferred to Cape Town where he became their postmaster. 

We do not know what happened to her later in life but I am sure that she was fine as she had wonderful parents who cared and handled everything that came her way in the best possible way that they could. 

Thank you for reading my post and have a lovely day here from the Wild Coast.