Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Hospice Work and T-Shirts!

The beginning of this week saw my start with the Botswana Council of Churches. For the most part we were briefed on what the BCC did and taken around to some of their various projects. The one that was the most interesting was "The Place of Hope", a school set up for street children in a rough area of Gaborone. Some of the children were orphaned and forced to the street, but some were there because it was profitable for them (it was explained to us that these kids were similar to our gangs…just not violent). There were about 40 of these kids, varying in age, and many were affected by or infected with HIV. Fortunately, this program was doing really nice work and had turned around many of their lives, getting some of them jobs and even sending a few to Universities. I decided this was the perfect place to distribute some of the T-shirts I had collected from Pitt. I handed them out to the one class that was in session while we were there, and from the looks of it they were really thrilled. The kids were hugging me and rocking their Pitt wear proudly, even joining me in a “Let’s Go Pitt” chant. I got a good amount of pictures for those who donated T-shirts (thanks again!) and also so that Chancellor Nordy can use them to plug Pitt (I can see it now…”Carl Krauser wasn’t the only street child we saved”). The kids enjoyed me so much they asked me to join their futbol team, which I accepted, as I will any chance I get to dominate small children (actually the soccer team competes in a city league and has kids as old as 25 on the team...the head of the school says he’s won championships with interns before and expects nothing less from me). All in all, that was the most fulfilling day I've had thus far.

The first few days with BCC were to show us their programs, but today was the first day that we got involved with a specific program within the Council. I chose to work with a Hospice which deals with HIV and cancer patients. They only employ one nurse and one nurse’s aide so they were very happy to have me and within an hour we were on our way to an extremely poor area to see some home-based clients (usually the patients who were too ill to come in to the hospice). The truck we were driving in was very small so I rode in the back (its legal here). While driving, a number of small children in the area started screaming Lekgowa (white person) and running after us (smiling, thank god). For just a minute, I felt like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan when they are being chased by the paparazzi...unlike them however, these kids didn't drive me to cocaine, rehab, or even alcohol). Most of the patients we saw were just check-ins, but I did see some thing I’ll probably never see in the States. One patient's disease had progressed significantly and she was clearly in her last few weeks. When we arrived at her house, she was so bed-ridden that she had developed intense open bed sores all over her body, which at first I thought was gangrene, something the people I was with had never heard of. The nurse was ill-equipped to treat such a condition and only used a saline wash to cleanse the wounds. Additionally, she was suffering from a uvular cancer that was extremely gruesome and had completely taken over her pelvic area. When asked why a doctor was not being consulted, the nurse said no one would operate because of her HIV positive status and that she wanted to die in peace. Unfortunately from what I saw, there was no way this woman would get what she wanted.

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