Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Dear Family,
Wow, I’ve been back in Mozambique for quite some time already but it’s strange because I’m just getting back to site and my house. I have been traveling around the province for a few weeks, helping as a translator for this project with traditional healers. It’s been quite interesting actually…and also pretty sad. Obviously people go to the traditional healers because the health system here is so poor and for some it’s many miles (without a car) just to reach the local health post-and then they are lucky if a doctor is even there! It’s just sad because the majority of traditional healers are completely uneducated (many can’t read or write) and can’t even identify common illnesses that NEED treatment, like TB, HIV, and many STIs. By the time the patient comes in to the hospital, they are in such bad shape it’s almost impossible to turn it around! It’s just sad some of the stories we heard from patients-one brought her sick infant to multiple traditional healers for two years trying to find out what was wrong with him before finally going to the hospital…poor kid! Another lady said she had pain while urinating (probably a UTI) for two years before coming to the hospital. I just can’t imagine living that way for so long! I think they just get used to always dealing with some sort of pain or ailment.
Then there’s the kids born with HIV… if a positive mother goes to the hospital and takes the prescribed ARVs and whatever other precautions, then there’s like a less than 1 or 2% chance the baby will be born positive and then it’s recommended to breastfeed for the first 6 months only and give nothing else, not even water, then stop breastfeeding at 6 months when they are old enough for other foods. This would never be the recommendation in the States, but here the powdered milk is too expensive and clean water is not available, however, most women don’t fully understand the 6 month rule and end up going longer and also adding solid food into the baby’s diet which creates a greater chance they will become infected. One lady told us how she brought her baby in at 6 months and she was negative (the mom is positive), then at 9 months she had the baby tested again and she was positive. It just sucks, it’s like they’re so close! If they are born negative they should stay that way! I recognize that the people here don’t understand the disease and how complicated it is and they are so poor that they have no other options, but how horrible to know the baby was born negative and is now positive because of you. A lot of times the women don’t get a choice but I just feel like it’s selfish to be HIV positive and still have children—you are giving birth to a soon-to-be orphan! Plus then you have one year olds on ARVs with parents forgetting to give them their medication on time or every day. Another Volunteer and I were just talking about it too the other day-that if you have an HIV positive child, how and when do you tell them?? How does the child react or think about life, about their parents?? It’s all so complicated! And the disease is so new, who knows what will happen in the next few years or how long people with it will live. Sorry if it seems like I was just ranting or going off, it’s just strange to have HIV be such a big part of my everyday life here now. And I think after a year, you become a little immune to it all, it’s easy to not realize how much it’s actually affecting me-it’s very sad, depressing stuff to see day in and day out.
I just got back to site yesterday and I tried to go running in the evening but was stopped constantly by people wanting to know where I’ve been and telling me they thought I had left for good. It was kind of nice to hear they care so much! Some even went to my maid’s house asking what happened to me. On the way back from the jog, the ten kids at the house next to mine where running down the road after me, chanting Ka-tee-ah, Ka-tee-ah! I told them to stop by the next day for gifts, so the whole gang shows up today in my yard—they about lost it when I gave them the little tubes of bubbles and helped them figure out how to use them. I also had pictures printed off for Christina (my favorite little one), it was so cute. They loved it! I had to practically kick them out to get them to leave finally!
I think that’s about it for me for now…headed back to Quelimane this weekend, it’s Carnaval—a huge festival in Brazil that Quelimane tries to duplicate..to a much lesser degree I’m sure! Last year it was mobs of people, some in crazy costumes, fried rat and snake on a stick, popcorn, drunk people..ya know, the usual!
