HIV/AIDS: Death and Dying

September 24, 2009

Today we finished our HIV education course. All of the students passed with 80% or better with 6 of the 8 that showed up for the final exam scoring 20/20. Admittedly the test was pretty easy, but I think they still learned a lot. One of the questions that they struggled with was whether or not HIV was a punishment from God. They are a very religious people and believe that all is in accordance to God’s plan.

We had started the class by talking about the proper way to use a condom and since no one else would do it, I ended up demonstrating to the class how to correctly open and put a condom on a practice penis. (I wonder what the Catholic Church thinks about that…) Brave then followed with a very detailed description, which I got a very good video of. We finished off the session with the presentation of certificates and plenty of pictures. I am on strict orders to print these out and send them back so that the women that graduated the course can have a picture of themselves with their teachers.

Although I have seen a lot of sick people since I have been here, I was lucky for the first few months to not have to deal with death. Or at least be oblivious to it. There was one time about three weeks ago where a patient we were supposed to see at home-based care had died the night before, but I did not know the patient so her death had a minimal impact on me.

This past week though it seems to be everywhere. We ran into some women crying in the street this morning at Maramba HBC. I knew that something big had happened since it is very rare that Zambian women, men and even children can be seen crying. It turns out that their older sister had died that morning. At another home-based care this morning, Claudia found out that a patient she had been seeing fairly regularly had died. To top it off a patient that I had seen last week passed away yesterday. He had cancer and had large tumors and sores on his legs. We tended to the sores but there wasn’t much else we could do. He looked sick but not on the verge of dying and the news came as quite a shock to those that had helped with his treatment.

One of the driver’s at the house took the monster truck out this morning to carry the mourners for the funeral of a friend’s son. I’m not sure what an actual funeral is like here but I saw the funeral procession driving through town today. They fill up the back of big trucks and divide up between men and women. Then they drive through town singing songs, but not sad sounding songs, just African songs.

They deal with death a lot more here than we could ever imagine. It’s not just old people that die or the occasional freak accident. It’s children and parents and young men and women that have these horrible diseases. The treatment for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria have gotten much better in the past years but there are still people we see that don’t have the means to get to the clinic or run out their medication and find out that the clinic has run out as well. To top it all off many of them don’t have enough money to buy the right amount and kinds of food to keep themselves healthy.

Africa is a tough place to visit and to work. It’s an even tougher place to live. I am continuously surprised by the strength of character that the people here show. The projects we are doing have their faults but I hope that we are making a positive impact.