On Hiking, Hardships, and Helping Out

This weekend was a long one due to a public holiday Monday, so my group and I took the opportunity to do some hiking. We climbed up Kgale Hill, which probably stands around 2,500 feet. Only four of us, myself included, made it to the top because the terrain was extremely rocky. I really enjoyed the hike as it gave me some reprieve from the stressful life that befalls someone trying to save the world.

We also got a chance to attend the Charity Cup, an all day soccer and music festival held at the Botswana National Stadium. It was a lot of fun until the end, when all the drunkards around us started hitting on the girls I was with and talking in Setswana about Lekgowa (white people). We decided to leave before the end of the final match, so as to avoid the inevitable confrontation. Unfortunately, this wasn't possible, as we saw one of the girls from the "Old Naledi Street Kids project" getting egged on by some trashy girls. My friends and I decided to try and help this girl avert danger, but apparently the people around us wanted to see a catfight and prevented us from getting involved. We left the stadium unharmed, but it was tough to see a girl who was so kind to us getting involved in such a mess in an extremely hostile environment.

And now we come to the hospice. When I last left y'all the hospices only nurse had decided to take leave, so on Tuesday the nursing student and I decided to make some large-scale changes. The hospice had never been about putting the patients first, even though they were the reason for its existence, and Loni (nursing student) and I wanted to change that. All day Tuesday we made the nurses office into a "nursing clinic", by hanging up posters, sitting out old brochures, and digging out condoms that had been sitting in a drawer collecting dust. We also moved a copy machine out of the nursing office so as to give the patients privacy when it was time for them to open up in the counseling area I had fittingly dubbed the "Circle of Hope" in the center of the clinic. We got proper permission for it and everything, so no big deal right? Wrong. Apparently, there is a Filipino Financial Officer who thinks he runs the hospice. I had been handed three letters of resignation the day I got there, all stating they were leaving due to the FFO, whom I will just randomly call Peter the Prick, and accusing him of embezzling the small amount of money the hospice receives. Peter the Prick burst into our office at the end of the day Tuesday, after everyone had told us how incredible our clinic looked, and demanded to know why we had put the copy machine in his office. Well, we explained, because patients are going to start coming first around here and they needed some privacy. Peter the Prick, whose patient care techniques rival that of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, thought that the patients were fine sitting outside by themselves (perhaps furthering the stigma that comes with HIV infection) and that a copy machine was much more important. Well obviously I lost it, destroying him with an argument in which I uttered the phrase "patients are dying and you are worrying about a copy machine" somewhere between 20 and 2000 times. The director decided to walk in just as Loni and I were blasting this "guy", giving Peter the Prick an opportunity to ask why we were yelling since he just came in to ask us a simple question (oh the chutzpah!). The day ended with the director kicking him out of our office and apologizing to me for the incident.

The next day no patients came to the clinic because the hospice needs a whole day for office work even though people do that kind of thing while the patients are at the center anyway. Everything was going well until the administrator, who secretly (along with everyone else) wants Peter the Prick gone, told us that he was holding some medicines and foodstuffs in his closet (which conspicuously says "DO NOT OPEN UNLESS GIVEN PERMISSION"...yep, not even kidding, where are the auditors when you need them). Loni and I decide to go have a look, as PTP begins to yell "why are you looking through those, we need to buy them, they are samples...all while stammering and turning red. I take this opportunity to inquire as to why the patients are not seeing any of these medications, considering the fact that every sample I've ever seen has been able to be used. He tells me that in Botswana samples are different, to which I pull out a Merck and Pfizer pill bottle, containing ARVs (priced at about $500 a bottle) and tell him that these medications happen to come from America, where samples are usable. We go back and forth, people stare, I tell him financial officers at hospices should be seen and not heard, he tells me I'm an idiot, and the day ends with me yelling at everyone I can get my hands on and hating my life.

Today it all became worth it. We opened our clinic, and the patients absolutely loved it! I had come up with an HIV "Fact or Myth" game, with the questions being used as transitions into deeper conversations on topics like condoms, fidelity, and nutrition. It was unbelievable to hear what these people thought about HIV (a few samples: condoms have worms, drinking on ARVs is OK, HIV can be spread through shaking hands). I really could not fathom how these patients had been infected for so long, yet all the people who cared for them neglected to teach them anything about the virus. Anyway, the day went incredibly well, was PTP free and the patients told us that our clinic was what they had always wanted, a place where they could have open discussion about their feelings. They said they were worried that when Loni and I left that everything would go back to normal and they didn't want that to happen. I was thrilled with their reactions and felt like finally I had made a difference. The patients and the last few days have really helped me to see that yes, it's impossible to change the world, but changing a few people's lives, maybe even their days, is worth it, no matter how much trouble it takes.