Community AIDS Care and Late Night Cravings

While we’ve been conducting our research, we have come across some really neat AIDS programs that are taking place in the townships. Etafeni is a program that started in a black township called Nyanga. It is literally one of the best examples of a grassroots organization I’ve ever seen. In my public health classes, we always use grassroots organizations and horizontal treatment of disease as almost standard responses to ways to improve health care in developing areas- these guys have been listening.

Though mostly funded by international donors (as most places here are), Etafeni sought to make facilities and programs that would not only help out the infected, but also the affected (a phrase I’ve heard repeated many times at the AIDS programs I’ve visited). They have a daycare that serves children of all ages in the community and gives them free food. Their school is also free, unless you can pay the R150 payment every year (an amount which is peanuts and is never pushed). The younger kids have opportunities to learn music (so many marimbas) and do alternative activities like dance and yoga. There are leadership and job placement program that help kids out with their resumes and put them into temporary jobs while Etafeni searches for more lasting ones. There’s even an income generation program, where mamas from the area can come and learn how to sew, do beadwork, and make other arts and crafts which are subsequently sold at Etafeni’s store (along with products donated by other shops), and whose profits go back into the program. The nutritionist at Etafeni has even started a program where Etafeni grows its own vegetables and herbs (along with employing men from the community to work the gardens instead of committing crimes), and even teaches other people in the community how to start their own gardens so their children can improve their nutrition.

On the medical side, Etafeni has home-based carers who do follow-ups in the community and ensure that people are getting their medicine and going to clinics regularly. They essentially have to know the entire community and rely on tips to find people who need help. Etafeni also has a very impressive AIDS testing program, even using a Tutu Mobile Tester (YESSSS) to go out into the communities and run HIV and TB tests. The clinic proudly displays a PEPFAR plaque (the only time I’ve not had a negative reaction to seeing a PEPFAR logo) and pictures of success stories and ways to prevent TB, one of which includes a sticker that looks like the stop signs we got at Sex Signals saying, “Stop TB. Open the Windows”.

The other program that has impressed me is Yabonga, more of a counseling program than an all-inclusive prevention program. They take people who have tested positive and use them as counselors and therapists to lead support groups at various clinics in the townships. We got to witness a particularly gruesome talk on STI’s, complete with the pictures of syphilis and genital warts and gonorrhea that you saw in high school that made you never want to have sex (or something like Mean Girls- “Don’t have sex because you will get pregnant and DIE”.) The woman we talked to was proud to disclose her status and uses her confidence to try and get other people to disclose their status and receive treatment.

Our home interviews are going fairly well now. We’ve traveled to the sea and back to find people with about a 60% success rate, as many people move to the Eastern Cape or just run away (my township talk will be in a later post).
Later on Thursday, I got a call from Fredre to come out and celebrate Gareth’s 30th birthday with them at a hip-hop club in town. The unfortunate thing- I would be driving. Since the car Fredre was in was full, I took her (and the beers she was drinking) to town. I literally had 5 minutes to get home, scarf down some food, and get ready for the drive out. Gareth was high out of his mind and couldn’t stop shouting at me and saying that I looked like a lumberjack, which distracted me enough to misjudge my reversing and hit the bumper of my car against Angelique’s house (no scratches though, but Fredre, who is already afraid of European drivers, was now leery of my driving from the start).

The club we went to was a little one, but had 2 sick DJs playing old school Hip Hop mash-ups. Fredre was starting to feel old because she ran into a kid she used to babysit there, and I made things worse when I told her that this music was probably the music I was conceived to (more likely my sister, but possibly me as well). Afterwards, we headed to a gas station to grab some late night eats and to let Gareth try to find some of the FIFA World Cup stickers he is eagerly collecting. I found out that in Cape Town, people love getting pies at night. And these aren’t fruit pies (those are tarts, I was told quite plainly in line); these are meaty pies. Sort of like the frozen chicken pot pies your mom would leave for you to make if she was away (maybe that was just me). They’re about the size of your hand and damn good. A cute drunk girl in line kept insisting that I get a peppersteak pie, and who am I to ignore a cute drunk girl?

Damn that pie was good.

On Friday we had team-building and a “Christmas in July” party for all the kids. Our work has been running a team-building program this whole week where the staff is divided into teams and has to accomplish various tasks from knitting to building a cardboard house (the one day I wasn’t doing home visits and participated, I had to play a version of Taboo with Christmas terms, but American Christmas terms, which don’t exactly mean a lot to South Africans. Even the Christian brothers I was reading to couldn’t get the damn names of Christmas carols). The last task was to have a blindfolded person make a paper Santa with our instruction, which we managed to win. While we were setting up for lunch, I had to diffuse a few fights between an 8 year old boy (one of my little ones, Keano, who is the most troublesome and outgoing of my ward) who was picking on a 21 year old girl (she’s a little behind developmentally) and a very nice deaf girl (who is significantly bigger than he is). Also, everyone here knows magic. I know I can juggle and stuff, but our frickin financial director had a magic wand and magic scarves that he had out of nowhere (he also apparently did a run of Godspell for 6 months, which I guess I should have seen coming). We also ended up having lots of talks about race relations and Judaism. I’m not sure why it’s such a popular topic because there really aren’t that many Jews in South Africa, but people were talking about Gaza for an hour (I was either talking about growing up in the South or burritos or the difference between pudding and cake at that point).

Also I made my first successful drive into the city to watch Uruguay v Ghana. Uruguayans should all flee Cape Town after Suarez’s handball. I understand everyone’s argument that he was justly punished under the laws of the game and that Ghana didn’t take advantage of their PK (Asamoah Gyan couldn’t even stand up after the game because he was crying so hard), but if FIFA is going to make little kids carry out a Fair Play flag every game, they might as well count that goal because Suarez was not playing fair. During the game I was also bought whiskey and Plays (Cape Town’s favorite energy drink) by a random guy with a wig who kept declaring that the Olympics would come to Cape Town. When bald guys wear wigs it scares me, but when bald guys wearing wigs buy me drinks it’s even scarier.