i have become a serial killer. last saturday i cut ten throats and was an accomplice in many other murders, holding the victim down so my associate could perform the dirty deed. one hundred innocent victims gave up their lives that day...
so, to put another spin on things: on saturday we were butchering chickens to prepare for the fbs youth camp. apparantly it's cheaper to do these things yourself. so that morning, a truck pulled up and delivered 100 feathery white birds to our yard. so then the gang of about 10 fbs members and salters swung into action: butchering, plucking, gutting, packaging.
at first i went to work plucking, which definitely has a high learning curve. my first bird took me about 45 minutes but then after that i was just cranking them out. these things get easier with practice. the same goes for butchering. it was a huge step to hold a chicken's feet and wings while its neck was severed. the spasms that run through the body after it's killed can be pretty violent. but as the day wore on, i grew used to it, running them down and capturing them.
i don't think i would have taken the step to doing the actual "slaughter" (as my fellow salter jesse put it) if it hadn't been for percy. but he was determined that i should learn, and put the knife in my hand and held the chicken down and then just looked at me. and he wouldn't let me get away with doing just the one, but gave me the "assignment" of 10 chickens. he was also the one that showed me how to gut the chicken, reach in and pull out everything inside, and cut off the undesirable parts.
the undesirable parts are actually fewer than you would think. we got the whole chicken experience as for lunch that day we ate grilled intestines, livers, and boiled chicken feet. waste not, want not! i tried everything for the experience, but i don't think i'll be fighting my gogo and make at home for their preferred delicacy of chicken feet.
so, as you can guess, this whole experience was quite a stretching one for a former vegetarian. but as someone said that day, if you're willing to help eat the chicken, then you should be willing to help kill the chicken. and after all, i'm strangely proud of the fact that i now know how to turn a pecking, clucking bird into something that you could buy packaged in the freezer section of the supermarket. you never know when these things will come in handy...
so, the adventures continue. think of this as you're all eating your thanksgiving turkeys - someone spent an hour plucking that bird! unless someone invented a machine that does that, which i sincerely hope they did.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
happy birthday wandile
on wednesday my little brother wandile turned 10. my responsibility for the celebrations was was to bake a birthday cake. usually my family just buys birthday cakes, which are expensive, and not nearly as good as homemade cakes anyway.
so when i got home from work on wednesday, i could see the black column of smoke rising from the stove pipe as i walked down the lane towards the house. it was ridiculously hot - the temperature was such that starting up a wood stove went against all instincts of self-preservation. nevertheless, there was a task ahead, so it had to be done.
the first minor panic came when i realized that the baggers at shoprite had neglected to include the small packet of baking soda in my grocery bag the previous day. but never fear, the birthday boy was dispatched at a run to the neighborhood store to buy "cooking soda" (after we established that this term did, indeed, refer to a fine white powder that made things fizz). the second, more severe panic, came when i discovered the lack of measuring cups. and then the distress only intensified when i realized that we did in fact have a measuring cup, only it was in milliliters. how to convert? thanks to my handy-dandy agenda (those lists of weights and measures in the back are actually useful in some instances, like baking a cake in swaziland!) i discovered that one cup = 240 ml, and after some quick mental math, i was able to proceed.
so i mixed the ingredients without further ado and then the real test came: how to bake a cake in an oven without temperature settings? as i realized, it's simple. this is what you do: start the pan on the bottom shelf for "a little while" (translated into numbers this means about 10 minutes) and then move it to the top, and simply keep checking and sticking a match in the middle until it comes out clean. no problem! both the cake and the cupcakes turned out beautifully.
while the cakes were cooling, my sister zinhle whipped up some liphalishi on the stove - usually in hot weather we cook in the outside kitchen over an open fire. we also fried up some boervos (afrikaans for spicy sausage - delicious and a staple at any braai, or barbeque). by the time our birthday feast was ready, it was 8:30 pm!
we sang happy birthday and took lots of pictures and just had a really fun time celebrating together. the funnest part was the process though, with all the kids in the kitchen peering over my shoulder as i baked and eagerly waiting to lick out bowls - which is the best part of baking, by the way. it just felt like such a special day and i was struck by the importance of taking time to celebrate the important things in life.
during our nightly prayer, as got down on our knees and all spoke our prayers out loud at the same time, i thanked god for this special time of celebration with my family and asked him to bless wandile and this next year of his life, as he continues growing, learning and loving.
Monday, November 12, 2007
judea church in zion
i'm singing in the choir. this was our "christmas for the elders" sunday, where all of the gogos in the congregation got recognized with a gift of a bag of sugar, a bag of rice, and a bar of soap. i'm well dressed for the occasion thanks to my gogo, who sews uniforms for all of the church members.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
mimi and a swazi princess
this is me and sane, a fellow fbs intern, and a princess at the umhlanga (reed dance). the red feathers in the princess' hair tell you that she's royalty, and sane and i are wearing emahiya, traditional swazi attire. stay posted for my pictures of king mswati the second...
home visits
so, my job at fbs is not very defined. this fact has resulted in confusion, frustration and boredom at times. however, it also allows me more freedom to choose how i want to spend my time. this last week was really exciting as i got to accompany the home based care coordinator, make ndzimandze, on home visits.
i really love getting out of the office, and getting to see what the every day experience of living with hiv/aids is like. it's such a privilege to be able to enter someone's home, sit down at their bedside or on their couch or outside on the grass, and listen to their story. i've probably been on about 15 visits so far, and there's been such a range of everything: ages, severity of symptoms, level of wealth, friendliness, family situations... it's just helping me to realize that the hiv virus is just a sickness, like any other disease. people live for years with it, and many people are still going about their daily lives as before, keeping their status a secret - if they even know it themselves. most of the patients we saw were unable to work though, and stay at home, some of them confined to bed and too weak to even walk.
i've learned some of the warning signs, so that i'm beginning to be able to guess who is positive before they reveal it. the open sores on the legs and feet, that attract buzzing flies that the patient is so accustomed to that they don't even bother to swat them away anymore. the white tongue, a symptom of thrush, which coats the whole digestive tract, weakening the taste buds on the tongue to suppress the appetite, and lessening the ability of the intestines to extract needed nutrients from food.
many of the patients have another condition as well as being positive. one of the most common opportunistic infections to accompany hiv is tb. the amount of drugs patients need to take for this is ridiculous. at one patient's house, a soft-spoken, bed-ridden young man, he reached to his bedside table for a box containing 10 different packets of pills. managing this cocktail of drugs when you barely eat in a day is a challenge. there's an equally staggering number of drugs in the combination of antibiotics and vitamins given to prepare the patient to receive anti-retroviral drugs (arv's). many of the people we visited were at this stage. this treatment is supposed to get rid of any infections and strengthen the body before beginning the arv treatment, which is very harsh on the body.
however, the sad thing is that many people get to this stage, their bodies get stronger and they feel much better, and since they don't feel sick, they don't go back to the hospital to get the arv's. then after a while, their bodies will get run down again, giving hiv more of a chance to reproduce and get stronger. the arv's function to keep the virus at bay, allowing the disease to exist in the body but stopping it from reproducing, which allows the body to gain back strength and function as normally as possible.
there are also people that know they are positive, and so they go to get tested for their CD4 cell count. these are white blood cells that fight hiv - here they're called emasolja (soldiers). but then they never go back to get the results of the test, and without knowing your CD4 cell count, you can't begin treatment for arv's. the government will give you arv's once your count drops below 200. a healthy count is roughly 1500 - 2000.
so i've learned a lot from these visits, as you can see. all of these details of hiv are things that i probably read at some point in a textbook or magazine article, but could never manage to remember. how easy it is to recall them now that i've visited person after person whose futures depend on these numbers! my teacher has been make ndzimandze, a retired government nurse who is now the hbc coordinator at fbs. her wealth of knowledge about hiv, nutrition and basic healthcare combined with her huge network of relatives and acquaintances and her friendly and caring personality make her the perfect person for this daunting job. i feel so lucky to be able to have such a wonderful companion on these difficult visits.
the visits are mostly to homesteads in rural areas, and are conducted entirely in siswati. this has been excellent for developing my siswati. it's so rewarding that i am now able to follow the general gist of a conversation. then afterwards, as we head to the next patient, i get the details and explanations from make. at times my language "handicap" is also an advantage. we visted one middle-aged man who greeted us from bed as his relatives showed us into his room. however, as soon as the interview started, his family and even another care-giver who were accompanying us were required to get up and leave the room. he was positive, but had not come out to his family yet, and so the meeting had to be confidential. i tried not to let on how much i understood of the conversation, looking around instead at the magazine pictures that plastered the walls.
out of all the patients i've seen so far though, ncobile (i changed her name) stands out in my mind. she welcomed us into her one-room apartment that she shares with her 12-year old son and her grandbaby. she looked far too young to have a grandchild. she had received a food parcel from fbs last month, and expressed her warm gratitude for the gift. as she began talking though, her beautiful big eyes filled with tears and her thin frame bent over with sorrow as she told us her story. her first child is a daughter, who at 12 years old had been raped by an uncle. because of this, they left their family home and went to live with some friends in a nearby town. here, the daughter fell in love and had her child with one of the young men from the family they were staying with. however, she then left him for his twin brother, which caused hard feelings in the family and they had to move again, to where they live now. the family also denied any responsibility for the child. the mother, ncobile's daughter, now works in another town, living with another man, and her mother only ever sees her when she's drunk and needs money. however, ncobile has nothing to give her, and can't afford to send her son to school, rent her flat and feed the three of them. she hates the thought of it, but is looking for an orphanage for her granddaughter, since the child's mother doesn't take any responsibility for her. ncobile used to take in sewing, but she is hiv positive now and has been unable to work for a long time. last week when she went looking for work, she found she had lost all of her old customers. they hadn't eaten anything yet on the day we visted, at 2 in the afternoon.
i caught this story in bits and pieces, and sat there in silence, watching her cry as she held her granddaughter on her lap, who was also crying. make and i listened to her story, which spilled out as if it had been bottled up for a long time. at the end, when make asked me to pray for ncobile, i didn't even know what to pray for. i don't remember what i said, and i couldn't think of anything to say to ncobile as we walked out the door. i could only think to give her a hug, but couldn't even express my full sympathy and love in this way because she felt too frail to squeeze very hard. back at the truck, make and i dug into our purses for enough money for a meal, and when we left this with ncobile, she smiled and waved as we pulled out onto the road.
in the truck, i had no questions for make this time, and i thought that maybe she would be used to the emotional stress of home visits by now. but make, normally very chatty, was subdued, and said only, "this is why i hate home visits." we talked about providing help for school fees for ncobile's son through a partner organization, and make said she knew of a good christian orphanage that she would look into. this was the first home visit of the day, and i very much just wanted to curl up into a ball on the seat and not face the world for a little while.
however, we still had a list of patients, and so we pulled up in front of edward's (name changed) house. this was the third time we had come; the previous two times he wasn't there, and we'd been informed by a neighbor that he was visiting the neighborhood beer hall. but he was perched on a stool under a tree with his brother. edward was a tiny, wrinkled, little man, who had a sparkle in his eye as make lectured him on eating spinach and peanut butter to give him good protein. edward gave me hope again though, because on the last visit he had been very thin and weak due to malnutrition. fbs had given him a food parcel, and you could clearly see the result, this little man sitting quietly, but showing definite sparks of life. as i sat there under the tree, looking out at the vibrant green bean field stretching down the hill side, i felt like i wanted to continue to hear people's stories, even the difficult ones. even though they don't all turn out like edward.
i really love getting out of the office, and getting to see what the every day experience of living with hiv/aids is like. it's such a privilege to be able to enter someone's home, sit down at their bedside or on their couch or outside on the grass, and listen to their story. i've probably been on about 15 visits so far, and there's been such a range of everything: ages, severity of symptoms, level of wealth, friendliness, family situations... it's just helping me to realize that the hiv virus is just a sickness, like any other disease. people live for years with it, and many people are still going about their daily lives as before, keeping their status a secret - if they even know it themselves. most of the patients we saw were unable to work though, and stay at home, some of them confined to bed and too weak to even walk.
i've learned some of the warning signs, so that i'm beginning to be able to guess who is positive before they reveal it. the open sores on the legs and feet, that attract buzzing flies that the patient is so accustomed to that they don't even bother to swat them away anymore. the white tongue, a symptom of thrush, which coats the whole digestive tract, weakening the taste buds on the tongue to suppress the appetite, and lessening the ability of the intestines to extract needed nutrients from food.
many of the patients have another condition as well as being positive. one of the most common opportunistic infections to accompany hiv is tb. the amount of drugs patients need to take for this is ridiculous. at one patient's house, a soft-spoken, bed-ridden young man, he reached to his bedside table for a box containing 10 different packets of pills. managing this cocktail of drugs when you barely eat in a day is a challenge. there's an equally staggering number of drugs in the combination of antibiotics and vitamins given to prepare the patient to receive anti-retroviral drugs (arv's). many of the people we visited were at this stage. this treatment is supposed to get rid of any infections and strengthen the body before beginning the arv treatment, which is very harsh on the body.
however, the sad thing is that many people get to this stage, their bodies get stronger and they feel much better, and since they don't feel sick, they don't go back to the hospital to get the arv's. then after a while, their bodies will get run down again, giving hiv more of a chance to reproduce and get stronger. the arv's function to keep the virus at bay, allowing the disease to exist in the body but stopping it from reproducing, which allows the body to gain back strength and function as normally as possible.
there are also people that know they are positive, and so they go to get tested for their CD4 cell count. these are white blood cells that fight hiv - here they're called emasolja (soldiers). but then they never go back to get the results of the test, and without knowing your CD4 cell count, you can't begin treatment for arv's. the government will give you arv's once your count drops below 200. a healthy count is roughly 1500 - 2000.
so i've learned a lot from these visits, as you can see. all of these details of hiv are things that i probably read at some point in a textbook or magazine article, but could never manage to remember. how easy it is to recall them now that i've visited person after person whose futures depend on these numbers! my teacher has been make ndzimandze, a retired government nurse who is now the hbc coordinator at fbs. her wealth of knowledge about hiv, nutrition and basic healthcare combined with her huge network of relatives and acquaintances and her friendly and caring personality make her the perfect person for this daunting job. i feel so lucky to be able to have such a wonderful companion on these difficult visits.
the visits are mostly to homesteads in rural areas, and are conducted entirely in siswati. this has been excellent for developing my siswati. it's so rewarding that i am now able to follow the general gist of a conversation. then afterwards, as we head to the next patient, i get the details and explanations from make. at times my language "handicap" is also an advantage. we visted one middle-aged man who greeted us from bed as his relatives showed us into his room. however, as soon as the interview started, his family and even another care-giver who were accompanying us were required to get up and leave the room. he was positive, but had not come out to his family yet, and so the meeting had to be confidential. i tried not to let on how much i understood of the conversation, looking around instead at the magazine pictures that plastered the walls.
out of all the patients i've seen so far though, ncobile (i changed her name) stands out in my mind. she welcomed us into her one-room apartment that she shares with her 12-year old son and her grandbaby. she looked far too young to have a grandchild. she had received a food parcel from fbs last month, and expressed her warm gratitude for the gift. as she began talking though, her beautiful big eyes filled with tears and her thin frame bent over with sorrow as she told us her story. her first child is a daughter, who at 12 years old had been raped by an uncle. because of this, they left their family home and went to live with some friends in a nearby town. here, the daughter fell in love and had her child with one of the young men from the family they were staying with. however, she then left him for his twin brother, which caused hard feelings in the family and they had to move again, to where they live now. the family also denied any responsibility for the child. the mother, ncobile's daughter, now works in another town, living with another man, and her mother only ever sees her when she's drunk and needs money. however, ncobile has nothing to give her, and can't afford to send her son to school, rent her flat and feed the three of them. she hates the thought of it, but is looking for an orphanage for her granddaughter, since the child's mother doesn't take any responsibility for her. ncobile used to take in sewing, but she is hiv positive now and has been unable to work for a long time. last week when she went looking for work, she found she had lost all of her old customers. they hadn't eaten anything yet on the day we visted, at 2 in the afternoon.
i caught this story in bits and pieces, and sat there in silence, watching her cry as she held her granddaughter on her lap, who was also crying. make and i listened to her story, which spilled out as if it had been bottled up for a long time. at the end, when make asked me to pray for ncobile, i didn't even know what to pray for. i don't remember what i said, and i couldn't think of anything to say to ncobile as we walked out the door. i could only think to give her a hug, but couldn't even express my full sympathy and love in this way because she felt too frail to squeeze very hard. back at the truck, make and i dug into our purses for enough money for a meal, and when we left this with ncobile, she smiled and waved as we pulled out onto the road.
in the truck, i had no questions for make this time, and i thought that maybe she would be used to the emotional stress of home visits by now. but make, normally very chatty, was subdued, and said only, "this is why i hate home visits." we talked about providing help for school fees for ncobile's son through a partner organization, and make said she knew of a good christian orphanage that she would look into. this was the first home visit of the day, and i very much just wanted to curl up into a ball on the seat and not face the world for a little while.
however, we still had a list of patients, and so we pulled up in front of edward's (name changed) house. this was the third time we had come; the previous two times he wasn't there, and we'd been informed by a neighbor that he was visiting the neighborhood beer hall. but he was perched on a stool under a tree with his brother. edward was a tiny, wrinkled, little man, who had a sparkle in his eye as make lectured him on eating spinach and peanut butter to give him good protein. edward gave me hope again though, because on the last visit he had been very thin and weak due to malnutrition. fbs had given him a food parcel, and you could clearly see the result, this little man sitting quietly, but showing definite sparks of life. as i sat there under the tree, looking out at the vibrant green bean field stretching down the hill side, i felt like i wanted to continue to hear people's stories, even the difficult ones. even though they don't all turn out like edward.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
ncp
last saturday i had the priveledge of getting to visit a neighborhood care point, or ncp. these are stations set up around the country to help care for orphaned and vulnerable children (ovc). this particular ncp was at hope house, an assemblies of god church. the pastor also runs an orphanage where they care for 36 children.
we got to meet his wife and relax in their home and enjoy tea and biscuits and watch finding nemo with two of their adorable children, deborah and abigail. this is because we showed up at 11, thinking that there was a service before the children began arriving at 2. unfortunately, there was a miscommunication, so we were left standing out on the hillside until someone spotted us and directed us to the pastor's home. but the wait was lovely, as it was a gorgeous sunny day and we had hiked halfway up a mountain to get there, so the view was just spectacular.
it was also interesting to talk with the pastors wife about the orphanage and the challenges that they face. it was also a good connection, since when she found out where i was from, she invited the fbs health team to come and do a presentation at their church.
the church women who do the cooking arrived around one, and started a fire under the huge black three-legged pot donated by unicef. the pot contained 8 packets of protein-fortified dehydrated vegetable blend, and ahuge quantity of water. looking at the flakes in the boxes donated by usaid, i was skeptical. but as the pot began to bubble, the contents started smelling rather delicious.
the kids began arriving and were herded into a half-finished concrete structure, which will become the new ncp kitchen when it is completed. (for now, they just cook outside.) for half an hour, i enjoyed singing praise songs and listening to the children memorize bible verses. the atmosphere was really fun and upbeat. it was also encouraging because i could sing along to most of the songs, thanks to our nightly prayer times at home which always include a lot of singing.
then the food was ready, and the children lined up with tin plates and spoons to receive a ladle of veggie blend. as they settled down to eat, i peeked into the pot and saw that there was quite a bit left. i scrounged up a cup and the ladies laughingly dished some out for me. i was pleasantly surprised, since the mixture turned out to taste like mashed potatoes with carrots and beef added. which is exactly what it was, fortified with a bunch of b vitamins. apparantly the kids really like it too, because quite a few of them headed back for seconds.
besides getting a solid meal, the ncp also keeps track of vital health stats for the children, and these statistics determine how much food the ncp receives. if a lot of the kids are malnourished, for example, the ncp will receive more food next month. my fellow salter trevor/themba works with the church forum on hiv/aids, coordinating the monitoring of ncps. so after this experience, i'm totally jealous of his job!
so after spending five hours on a mountainside in motjane (just 10 km from the south african border) i was quite sunburned but also very encouraged. it was wonderful to see such a concrete expression of love and care. joy was evident in every party, from the kind and energetic sunday school teacher to the enthusiasm of the children to the care and concern of the pastor and his wife to the friendliness of the cooks.
we got to meet his wife and relax in their home and enjoy tea and biscuits and watch finding nemo with two of their adorable children, deborah and abigail. this is because we showed up at 11, thinking that there was a service before the children began arriving at 2. unfortunately, there was a miscommunication, so we were left standing out on the hillside until someone spotted us and directed us to the pastor's home. but the wait was lovely, as it was a gorgeous sunny day and we had hiked halfway up a mountain to get there, so the view was just spectacular.
it was also interesting to talk with the pastors wife about the orphanage and the challenges that they face. it was also a good connection, since when she found out where i was from, she invited the fbs health team to come and do a presentation at their church.
the church women who do the cooking arrived around one, and started a fire under the huge black three-legged pot donated by unicef. the pot contained 8 packets of protein-fortified dehydrated vegetable blend, and ahuge quantity of water. looking at the flakes in the boxes donated by usaid, i was skeptical. but as the pot began to bubble, the contents started smelling rather delicious.
the kids began arriving and were herded into a half-finished concrete structure, which will become the new ncp kitchen when it is completed. (for now, they just cook outside.) for half an hour, i enjoyed singing praise songs and listening to the children memorize bible verses. the atmosphere was really fun and upbeat. it was also encouraging because i could sing along to most of the songs, thanks to our nightly prayer times at home which always include a lot of singing.
then the food was ready, and the children lined up with tin plates and spoons to receive a ladle of veggie blend. as they settled down to eat, i peeked into the pot and saw that there was quite a bit left. i scrounged up a cup and the ladies laughingly dished some out for me. i was pleasantly surprised, since the mixture turned out to taste like mashed potatoes with carrots and beef added. which is exactly what it was, fortified with a bunch of b vitamins. apparantly the kids really like it too, because quite a few of them headed back for seconds.
besides getting a solid meal, the ncp also keeps track of vital health stats for the children, and these statistics determine how much food the ncp receives. if a lot of the kids are malnourished, for example, the ncp will receive more food next month. my fellow salter trevor/themba works with the church forum on hiv/aids, coordinating the monitoring of ncps. so after this experience, i'm totally jealous of his job!
so after spending five hours on a mountainside in motjane (just 10 km from the south african border) i was quite sunburned but also very encouraged. it was wonderful to see such a concrete expression of love and care. joy was evident in every party, from the kind and energetic sunday school teacher to the enthusiasm of the children to the care and concern of the pastor and his wife to the friendliness of the cooks.
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