On the road

More diary stuff...

15th July 2006

A few weeks ago, Catholic Relief Services donated a brand new Toyota Landcruiser to the hospital for outreach work. Lukwipa HIV support group have invited us to visit them, so Sister Martha, Bernadette and I hit the road with Mr Banda at the wheel. I have never been to one of these meetings before so I am not entirely certain what to expect. The road to Lukwipa is hilly, and within a few minutes I am feeling decidedly queasy. We arrive at the support group meeting and are invited to sit on the only bench, while the support group members are sitting on mats on the ground. Nobody seems to know what to say at first, and we all smile brightly at each other in the silence.

The discussion starts with some easy questions about nutrition, and Sister Martha is translating for me. I think I am doing all right. And then someone asks if it is OK to get married if you are taking ARV drugs. I say that these issues are for individuals to decide, my job is to help people to try and live as normal a life as possible. This answer satisfies nobody, and soon we are on to a debate about whether it is a sin to have a relationship if you are HIV positive. I am completely out of my depth with this. I talk a bit about risk reduction, condom use, disclosure of HIV status, rights and responsibilities but I am speaking a foreign language in more ways than one. I think what the group really wants to know is how God might judge them for their behaviour, and my vague answers about individual conscience are not up to scratch. I look desperately at Sister Martha, hoping she can do better than me.

The meeting then descends into complaints about our failure to ensure that blankets are distributed equitably, and the difficulties they have in finding enough food to eat. Like good international NGO workers, we tell them that we cannot help them with these problems, and then we climb into our shiny $45,000 4WD and go home. They seem pleased that we came to see them, although I don’t know if anything I said was helpful. But maybe our presence is more important than our advice.

18th July 2006

The first day of the mobile clinic – the hospice team are finally on the road. Although the team is somewhat depleted today – Bernadette is sick, so Cecelia and I go along with Joost driving. One of the many rules of using of the CRS vehicle is that all occupants have to sign a disclaimer before getting in, as the insurance doesn’t cover personal injury. We are giving a lift to four women who are going home from the hospital, and so I start the day with my clipboard and pen in hand, asking our non-literate passengers to sign a form that they are unable to read. There is much confusion, until eventually Cecelia signs for all of them. Conditions of use duly satisfied, we set off down the dirt road.

We arrive in Chimusanya, at a tiny church where the clinic is to be held. A small queue has already formed outside. We unload our boxes of drugs, and the first patient comes in. Predictably, it is total chaos. We see three times as many patients as we were expecting, and everyone seems to have a come with a ripe bronchitic cough today, so it all takes ages to sort out. We haven’t brought the right drugs with us, and we count out the pills crouched over the tiny wooden pews in the semi-darkness. I run out of paper halfway through the morning and end up writing notes on spare pieces of cardboard. And the patients keep on coming.

But in the midst of all the disarray, I am genuinely pleased to see the last patient arrive. Norah, the woman who had the Cesaerean section last month, turns up with her baby daughter Blessing, and when she tells me that they are both doing fine, the day suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. We emerge from the gloom of the church to find that Joost has achieved some celebrity amongst the children of Chimusanya – the Landcruiser is surrounded by admiring five year old boys. Somehow we manage to leave without causing serious injury to any of them. Not an auspicious start to our outreach service, but a start nonetheless.