A Day in the Life

About a week ago I joined Mr. James, the head master of my school, on one of his out reach programs. Mr. James works with various programs in the area to help support people living with HIV-AIDS in the villages out side of town. Last Tuesday Mr. James, a couple other volunteers from the school, and I took a dala-dala up to Marangu, about an hour north of Moshi.

Up in Marangu, which is higher up on Mt. Kilimanjaro but still very much in the jungle, Mr. James works with a program called the Hope Foundation. We were introduced to the woman who runs the foundation there and were served tea and fried banana. The Hope Foundation runs an orphanage there and helps to support the local people with HIV-AIDS.

We met with a woman named Esther at her home, and brought a bag of donated clothes for her children. Esther was her husband's second wife, the first had died after having four children. Of those four children two died of AIDS. After his first wife died the man married Esther. He died one year later, and Esther was pregnant. When her son was born she had herself and her son tested and they were both positive. Esther has to work to support her son Gideon, and one of the children from the first marriage who still lives with her. The older of the two children from the first marriage is away at school, the younger who still lives there is also positive.

We sat in her home, a dark and cool concrete room with a tin roof, on little stools. Her son Gideon is about eight now, and you wouldn't know by looking at him that he is sick. Gideon sat on one of the other volunteers lap's while we talked, and the other child stood behind her mother in her blue school uniform. Esther cried a little as we gave her the clothing, and as Mr. James read her letters from her pen pals in America. Mr. James asked us if we wanted to say anything, but I didn't know what to say.

Later we went to visit the kids in the orphanage. There are 28 children at the orphanage we saw that day, 11 of whom are HIV positive. Mr. James had letters for one of the positive girls who was about 11 and in grade 4. All of the letters came with stickers, and one was a letter that played music. One thing you don't expect to here in a situation like that is "Who let the dog's out."

After running various errands with Mr. James I got back to the CCS house a little after 5:00. I sat on the back porch and read a book. Megan and Nikki got home around 5:45 and joined me there. They had just come back from visiting the kids at the Kili Kids orphanage, but first they had gone to see little Parcely in the hospital.

Parcely (actually spelled Parcel but pronounced like parsley the food) has been in the hospital for a couple weeks because of a rash all over his body. The rash is a reaction to his AIDS medication. We had visited him several times before, each time he had gotten a little worse, and this time was no different. Megan showed me pictures of Parcely, covered in a white lotion and with a feeding tube in his mouth. His lips are so chapped that he cant open them. They bleed sometimes. The girls told me that he could hardly hold him self up because he was so weak.

That was a long day. Some day's are just like that here. But you get through them. Going to my school or to Kili Kids always helps my mood. And if you get too depressed you wont be any help to anyone. You take these things one day at a time.