Understanding

I am approaching 5 weeks until departure, and that has given me a new appreciation for my time left here, as well as excitement to see family and friends again.

A strange coincidence occurred last week, which is not actually that out of the norm, but it left a distinct mark on me. First, I received a phone call from a social worker who was calling on behalf of a frantic mother. The woman's son (age 14) had tested positive for HIV twice, and yet his father refused to take him to the doctor, preferring a sangoma (traditional medicine) instead. The sangoma declared the boy was possessed of an evil spirit and prescribed remedies to exorcise the spirit. Months later, the boy's health was rapidly declining and yet the father still refused Western medicine. I transferred the call to our Social Welfare Manager, Penny, as I felt utterly unsure what to do. The next day Penny told me she phoned the mother again to solidify a plan, and the boy had already died. The gravity sunk in: her frantic phone call the day before was her desperate last attempt to save him.

Later on in the week we learned that one of our own staff members passed away. We had a memorial service on-site and gathered to honor her memory. She was a smiley, energetic, happy 25 year-old and yet AIDS ravaged her body as well. We learned that she had been too afraid to test for HIV until she was in the hospital, immobilized by TB, and it was already too late. How can someone who works at a HIV clinic not know?, I asked myself. And it wasn't until arguing with a Afrikaner at a braii (South African bbq) this weekend that I realized the answer.

She did know. She knew about HIV/AIDS, about risks and safe sex and symptoms, and yet she still succumbed to the fear and stigma that prevents so many people from testing. I think it is far too easy to attribute the HIV epidemic to general lack of education. All I have to do is look to the 200 children I educate every Friday to realize that their knowledge of HIV exceeds most American's.

Fear, stigma and cultural practices -- which we can all relate to -- are the deeper layers that fuel a complex epidemic.