They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday

This week has been really productive in working with various PEPFAR organizations, and completing interviews for my research. At the beginning of the week I worked with and organization called The Olive Leaf Foundation, which runs several programs in the city. These range from a home-based care unit for people suffering with AIDS and the various illnesses associated with it, to HIV/AIDS testing campaigns, and a childrens program to help the kids who are orphaned by AIDS cope in the everyday world.

On Tuesday afternoon the organization hosted a little “day away” for twenty of the AIDS orphans and their care-takers in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s birthday, which is a HUGE deal here. We went to a small farm outside of town, which is basically a petting zoo where we could walk around and see the animals, go for a hayride, and milk a cow. Afterwards the group had a little tea party in the gardens. Most of these kids and women come from extremely poor households, and so this was all quite a treat for them. At the party they gave each of us MASSIVE pieces of chocolate cake. Halfway though I was sure I couldn’t eat any more, but looking around the table, every woman and child had completely finished every last crumb on their plate. I took this as a sign of their situation and thought how disrespectful it would be to throw this food away while many of them came from places where its not uncommon to go hungry some nights.

Needless to say, I have NOT lost any weight in Africa, and I sat at that table and forced every last bit of the chocolate cake down my throat, bite by bite like I was Bruce Bogtrotter in Matilda sitting on the stage in front of the entire school being coerced by Mrs. Trunchbull and her whip. Woof.

I also spent some time at an organization called AIDS Haven, which is an orphanage that takes in orphaned or abandoned kids, most of which are HIV positive. The stories that come out of this place are enough to break your heart six times in one day. Most of the 28 kids were either born with HIV that passed on to them by their mothers, or contracted it from being raped and sexually abused. One set of twins at the home who are HIV positive were found abandoned by their mother outside a pub and brought to the home by a social worker. Another girl here contracted it by her father who sexually abused her and used to make trips over to the home every once in a while demanding to see her. Luckily the “mother” of the home, Aggie, is a scrappy woman who told him if he every crossed the gate into their yard she would kill him herself and now he doesn’t come around so often.

I made the initial mistake of visiting the pre-school age kids one afternoon during the middle of snack time. 15 four and five year olds attacking me in tandem covered in cheetohs cheese dust and snot with sticky hands and faces? SO GROSS, but how can you tell an AIDS orphan, “Hey, would you mind going to take a bath before I pick you up?” So I too left the house that day covered in cheetoh dust that I didn’t even get to eat, and the smell of dirty diapers and little kids. That day though, I’ve never been more happy to smell like processed cheese and toddler poo.