Turns out it was someone else's 21 year old that died. My neighbor was discharged in relatively good health and is home now. I do not yet know if she has gone to have her CD4 count done or if she has been put on ART.
Girls camp 9/10/05
I had a 5 day “day camp” for the girls at the orphanage and the girls in the community the week of the 5-9th of September. This was supposed to be a period of school break for all the kids and it seemed a great opportunity to create a venue for HIV education, female empowerment, and just plain fun. Unfortunately 2 of the high schools were back in session so we were missing some of those girls; however, we ended up with 60 girls and it was a huge success. The idea of a camp to empower young girls was not mine, the Peace Corps does this program-wide, generally as an overnight experience. One of the other volunteers did this in her community recently and it seemed that the orphanage would be a perfect location to host such an event. It was important that the educational component, to take place in the morning, be done in SiSwati. It was more important that the kids understood than that I understood. I enlisted the help of 3 “peer educators”, youth that have been trained to teach other youth about HIV, life skills, communication, etc. I had additional help from Nompilo, the HIV+ woman I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, who is one of the most inspiring women I have had the pleasure to know, and a woman from an NGO in Manzini who turned out to be solid gold. The afternoon sessions were all fun and 6 – 7 different female Peace Corps Volunteers helped each afternoon with a variety of arts, music, drama, games, and sports events. When I asked the girls what they enjoyed the most, they all agreed it was the people who had come to spend time with them that week. Can’t buy that.
Simphiwe and I went to the hospital this morning to visit a little girl who had been badly burned after falling in a fire, probably the cooking fire. She is two and tiny with a sweet, sad little face. Her father died before she was born and her mother died when she was still nursing. She lives with her gogo who is staying at the hospital with her. Apparently the gogo stepped away for a minute to check on something and returned to a screaming, burning child. The full details are unclear. Her right hand is completely burned off and the arm is seared past the elbow. 2 fingers on her left hand are burned beyond use and her left arm is also burned. Most of her beautiful little face has been spared, the burns severe under the jaws and chin and just edging up her lower face. They say her clothing stuck to her as it burned and her belly is still bandaged. You can see the burns on her thighs and chest. She looks confused. It was painful to watch her try to put her sweater on- as if she didn’t know that she couldn’t hold on to it with her partially spared hand and as if she didn’t understand why not.
Simphiwe took information from the gogo in the hopes we can find them some help somewhere. Being female in Swaziland is difficult at best. Being female in Swaziland without one hand and only partial use of the other will be impossible. I don’t know how she will live when gogo passes away. It must have been very difficult for Simphiwe- she looks a bit like his darling 4 year old daughter.
This afternoon I was on my way to town and found little 7 year old Ayanda, the child living in the abandoned structure in the woods, on the road to get something from the market for her mother. We walked silently to town and back, hand in hand, with rain threatening in the near distance. Somehow language is sometimes unnecessary. Sometimes it even gets in the way. Her little hand in mine, so trusting and so vulnerable, was all that existed, was all that mattered.
Kaposi Sarcoma 9/14/05
Spent the morning in the ARV clinic with and 18 year-old male that our Rural Health Motivator (RHM- rural women trained to help sick members of the community) brought to me the other night. He and his 27 year-old sister have been on ART for about a year now. For both to be HIV+ and on ART means they were probably infected 6-8 years ago, I suspect by a family member. The youth was brought to me because the RHM was worked about his leg. He had a “condition” that was getting worse. In front of the RHM, his mother, and me, he dropped his trousers exposing a pretty severe case of Kaposi’s Sarcoma down the entire length of his leg with concomitant severe swelling of the entire leg. KS is common in sub-Saharan Africa, is almost exclusively associated with HIV, and appears predominantly on the legs here. Fortunately, KS is extremely responsive to ART and even pretty severe cases will resolve once treatment has started. That his condition was getting worse, and that his sister is currently very ill and in the hospital, might suggest a “compliance issue” with the medications. Unfortunately, poor compliance is not uncommon here. People frequently stop taking their meds as soon as they start to feel better. I am not sure how clearly they understand the ramifications of noncompliance. A drop below 90% compliance is dangerous and will lead to the emergence of ART resistant strains of HIV. I fear we will see a plethora of these resistant cases in Africa. God knows what we will do then.
They took his blood for a CD4 count today and we should get the results next Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment