I'VE FOUND THE OCEAN

Hello beach! I have moved to a new town named Port Alfred. It is a gorgeous coastal holiday destination and I have been lucky enough to be posted here!

One of the most interesting parts of Port Alfred for I have found is the blatant economic disparity. In the middle of the town are multimillion dollar ocean front homes with beautiful boats and Land Rovers securely tucked behind guards and an electric fence. Ten minutes outside of the town center you arrive in the area where I work -there are no boats, very few cars and only barbed wire fences.

    In my first week working in this location I was welcomed with a high rate of HIV – telling me that we are definitely needed. Although people have heard of HIV and know that they should get tested few do because they are afraid of the stigma that chases people who are diagnosed positive. It doesn’t take long for someone to leave the clinic after picking up a prescription known to be HIV meds for most people in the neighbourhood to know that they are positive. With the high rate of HIV I have often wondered what people still have to talk about, almost every fifth house has someone who is HIV positive, so why is there still need to gossip? Although we educate everyone that it is very important to be diagnosed early many state that they would rather not know.... ignorance is bliss? Not when it comes to your HIV status.

Last week while the counsellor was chatting with a woman I was secretly assessing her 11 month old daughter. Her daughter had this deep purple blistery rash across her arms and legs that I didn’t like the look of. When I got her a little closer I noticed she had a round firm little belly.... I asked her mom what the rash was and she said that she was told it was an allergy to milk. I asked if she was eating well and mom said yes, but why was her belly so distended? Something wasn’t right here... The mom was telling us about how her brother that she lives with is HIV positive and has defaulted from his medication. We were counselling her on the importance of taking ARV’s everyday when her test results came back positive. Once I saw that the mom was positive I just knew that her daughter was going to be too... and she was. An eleven month old baby being positive for HIV is a hard reality for me to understand. I can’t imagine what the mother was feeling. We did our best to encourage her that she and her baby can have a healthy life. Sometimes I leave a house feeling totally helpless, and this case was one of them. The counsellor I was working with is really good, and is able to speak to people in a manner that really gets through to people. I know that the mom understood everything we said, but still, we left that house having told her that her baby has a Virus that everyone in South Africa is afraid of.

Mothers are encouraged as much as humanly possible to get tested during their pregnancy but some refuse. Everyone has their own reasons; some are simply just too scared of the, ‘what if’. The mother of the 11 month old girl had been tested during her pregnancy. She may have been in the window period when she was tested, or she may not have contracted it yet. Unfortunately she wasn’t tested prior to delivery or she could have been given medication to help prevent her child from contracting the virus. A colleague of mine tested a woman who is nine months pregnant last week and she turned out to be positive. She hadn’t tested previously and was due any day. Hopefully she will have an HIV free baby! I followed up with her a couple days after testing and she had already been to the hospital and has started treatment – things are looking good. She has a c-section booked for the end of the month and I already made a date to go back and hold the baby.

On a side note I need to tell you all about the mail system here... Out of the +20 postcards and letters that I have sent out to you only two have made it to their destination. Please know that I’m thinking of all of you, and that I’ve tried to send out a little South African love... it just doesn’t want to leave Africa.... On the other hand two deliveries sent from Canada haven’t made it to me either... A kind man turned in my rejected envelope that he found on the roadside, unfortunately the contents were nowhere to be found, it seems that a man working for the post office here enjoyed my parcel....