Words don’t explain it…welcome to where I was, where I am, and where I will forever be Part 1

So now that you have a VERY general outlook on how I’ve been feeling since we got back I should probably tell you what we did while we were in Guguletu and all around the community! Instead of breaking the week down day by day I think ill break it down into sections…lectures, host families, service projects, Rainbow after school program, the kids, and food…and then hopefully tie it all back together talking about passion, ubuntu, and the genuine love I felt in Gugs.

As a part of this week we had a wide array of lectures that came to speak to us about a variety of different issues within the community and South Africa. Although there were a handful of lecturer’s there were two that really grabbed my personal attention. First, we met Nombeko. She was a woman with hands down the best outlook on life. This woman was fierce, she was open, and most of all she was passionate. We soon found out that she became HIV positive after she was raped. There are no words in this world that can truly describe this woman. After listening to her story and how she looks at life one can only hope to be as strong as she is. Throughout all of our lectures many things came up about HIV/AIDS and the stigma and ideas behind it in the community and I thought Nombeko brought out an interesting idea that really didn’t cross my mind before. I had assumed that HIV was an everyday issue within the townships. However, she explained even thought HIV/AIDS is associated with only black South African’s there is still a disconnect in that it could be you. She said there is the idea that it should be someone else and not you. I guess I understand where this could come from, yet in a place where HIV is so prevalent I thought there would be more concern. One of the biggest things I got from listening to her speak was that people need to have the ability to look past HIV and move on. They need to realize it is not instant death!

That idea leads into our lecture from Zethu Xapile. I had no idea about the health care structure in South Africa prior to talking with her and it was a very eye opening lecture. The biggest thing that I did not know was that people can get ARV’s (anti retroviral medication) free of charge from the government supported health care facilities. Thus, HIV is not instant death! However, we soon found out that this is only the case for level 4 HIV patients…ie they have progressed as far as possible. The ideology behind this is really out of line for me. Why dump medications on people that are so far down when others could take them at earlier stages and live much longer. Zethu explained that there is a problem with people taking them and they really want to have people wait as long as possible to take them. She explained how people would take them, feel better, and then get off them and get sick again; thus building resistance. This becomes a problem in South Africa because there are only two lines of ARV’s and people can become resistant to both and at that point are in big trouble. Whereas in the states there are more lines of ARV’s so the chance of resistance to all of the drugs is quite rare. I don’t remember who was telling us about Tik but this kind of falls into the whole ARV talk. So in the townships drugs are a big problem and lately kids have been doing Tik. Tik is a concoction of ARV’s and any other drugs the users can get together. It is then put in a light bulb and smoked. This really infuriated me. It blows my mind that people steal ARV’s from people who need them to use them for drugs. Some people wait 9 months to get their ARV’s and now they are getting stolen. This really blew my mind. All in all I really enjoyed hearing from all of our speakers. They all brought really unique points of view about South Africa and AIDS/HIV and I really loved all the passion they brought. I have really learned a lot from all of them and really appreciate their ability to open up to us.

Originally I really didn’t know how I would like the speakers, yet this really wouldn’t have been the same experience with out them. They really helped tie a lot of loose ends on this trip together for me.

One Love Always