Adele and Karen's Swaziland trip ends

We're looking forward to seeing photos and more detailed stories from Adele and Karen's Swaziland trip, but in the meantime, here are some early reflections about the end of the trip from Adele. --bn

End of trip blog: March 16, 2007

Hi from aboard the small plane already winging its way away from Mbabane towards Johannesburg, as Karen and I leave Swaziland at the end of an intense week – a week of learning more about Swaziland’s HIV epidemic, and a week also of deepening attachment to this small, beautiful country waging a valiant battle against the disease that in some way affects every person in this nation of one million people.

Since we last wrote, we have had another series of moving experiences through meeting more HIV-positive Swazis as well as the healthcare workers helping them to fight this disease. Karen met Siziwe, a young orphan – Siziwe is an HIV-positive girl living with her grandparents, who has TB in addition to being HIV-positive (very common in this part of the world), but has had to start on TB medication before starting on anti-retrovirals (Karen will write more about this). While Karen went into a rural area to meet Siziwe and her family, I re-met with Vusi Shabangu, a former marathon runner, and his wife Kwazi, both HIV-positive, whom I had met on Rosie’s and my trip late last year, and spent some time with him and his family at their home. For the first time I met with Dr. Velephi Okello, the Swazi-born national coordinator for Swaziland’s antiretroviral therapy program and as such the woman responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the country’s program to ensure ARV access to all who need access to treatment.

The next day, Thursday, Karen and I spent the morning at Mbabane’s central antiretroviral treatment center, guided by Dr Patrick Okoth, the coordinating doctor at the center, and then an afternoon at an inspiring KaGogo (“Granny”) center at a place called Sitenji, where around 250 orphans come for lunch every day – for many this is their only meal of the day – and of these 60 children are “double orphans”, meaning they have lost both parents, and live either with surviving elderly relatives or just with their siblings. Some of the children are as young as three, and this is the only place they get to have a bit of love and a bit of food. I can’t begin to do justice, here, to the emotional impact of hearing over 200 children singing grace and giving thanks for their modest meal, seeing the care with which these dignified, loving volunteer women dish out the food and carefully hand each child their plate, and of witnessing the children’s trusting, vulnerable, grateful expressions as they approach the front of the line.

This is mostly just a list of what we have done but it can’t begin to describe the impact at the individual, human level of what it means to every person reached by support provided by the Global Fund and (RED), to be receiving this assistance – whether it’s anti-retroviral treatment that they otherwise would not be able to afford, a meal that they would otherwise not eat, or the school fees they would otherwise not be able to pay. There were times this week when Karen and I both – though we are more than familiar with the issues – were overcome with emotion and with the real impact HIV and AIDS can have on individuals and a society who have the will and the drive to deal with this themselves, but simply lack the money. It has been hugely gratifying to see how much has been done with Global Fund and (RED) money – yet there is still so much more needed, and spending time this week with the open-hearted, generous, dedicated people we have met has been the most powerful motivator for us all to do much more, and to keep our focus on what really matters.

--Adele