Thursday, May 24, 2007
NGONGA +
I literally arrived from Dar es Salaam on the last day of the rains. I met with our project staff, including Judith Kassinits, an early childhood education specialist from Austria who has been working in Tanzania for the past 10 years. Judith filled me in on the events of the past two months. She told me, “March was a hard month…there was virtually a death every day in the village.” With the rains, and poor housing made of mud and thatch, comes sickness and this takes its toll on the old and the weak, including those suffering with HIV. Judith talked about how almost all the staff had lost a relative and the death of Mama Diana, the woman who we used to stay with and whom cooked our meals.
Six days after my arrival I met with the HIV positive people that had approached Friends of Tanzania the previous year about forming a peer counselling group. The group had a total of 27 members, of which 12 turned up and two had died the previous month. We talked for two hours about what we wanted from the group, conducted a survey and then elected the leadership. As for the Chairperson, the entire group insisted Griphan be elected as he was the driving force behind forming the group. Another gentleman named Fredy was elected Secretary and a woman named Suma (I know her as Mama Happy and Diana) was named Assistant Secretary.
The Members of Ngonga+
We spent time talking about when people first tested positive (all but one in the last two years) and compared CD4 counts. Most of the group members had CD4 counts in the range of 150 to 450, with one person having a count of 45. An uninfected, healthy person has a count of between 1600 and 2000. For the World Health Organization in Tanzania, HIV positive people are put on ARVs once they are below 200, which is considered to be full blown AIDS.
Some group members spoke openly and actively and some listened quietly, but all expressed there happiness with the groups creation. Up to this point no counselling or non-medical services were available to them. This is a place where they can finally talk, a place where they can share their lives with people that they can relate to. All of them have a story that needs to be told, a story that needs to be heard. We ended the meeting with a digital picture which the members were happy to see their faces.
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After meeting the group as a whole I decided to talk to new Leader and Secretary more in depth. Griphan, the founding member and Chairperson for Ngonga’s first HIV+ peer counselling group first came to me for help in November 2006. He wanted help starting a group for HIV+ people and Friends of Tanzania offered what help they could.
Griphan is a simple rice farmer that lives just meters from our Kyela Project Supervisors house. He is 57 years old and has a wife and three children…a 12 year old boy and two girls, 13 and 16. He inherited his wife from his brother who had died and with his wife he inherited the HIV virus.
In 2004 Griphan started becoming weak and continuously fell sick to malaria and flu. Eventually he went and talked to his eldest brother about his illness. His brother suggested Griphan get tested for HIV. In July 2005 he finally got tested. It took one week for the results and when the results arrived it was confirmed that was he was HIV positive.
When Griphan discovered he was HIV+ he had many emotions about what to do. He was “so afraid of dying”. That is what he remembers most about those first days. Eventually the fear of death is what motivated him to move ahead, take the ARVs and hope for the best.
In those dark days Griphan had a CD4 count of 139. Before the ARVs started to take affect he sunk to a low of 110, but after 6 months his count had climbed to 462. Today his count stands at 269.
When asked how his family took the news of his HIV status he simply said, they have accepted the fact I have HIV. As for help, “my brother did help me to get tested, but since then that is the only help I have received from my family.”
After talking with Griphan I met Fredy Mwantomba, the groups newly elected Secretary. Freddy is a familiar face in Ngonga village. However it was not until our first meeting that I discovered he was HIV positive. After conducting a survey of group members at this first meeting I noticed how organized he was and how well he took notes. I suggested he run for Secretary of the group. He did just that and was elected with the vast majority of the votes.
Freddy is a strong person, not only in the physical sense with his broad build and height but also psychologically. Freddy contracted HIV from his wife who turned to prostitution to earn extra money behind his back. Upon making this discovery he was humiliated and hurt. Even worse he was scared…especially ounce he knew who some of her clientele were…some known HIV positive people in the area.
Freddy left his wife in January 2006, but soon after fell ill with reoccurring bouts of malaria and flu. He could not understand his mysterious physical weakness and constant dehydration considering he had a healthy diet, drank lots of water and kept in shape working hard in the fields. It was not until he was finally admitted to hospital that he decided to get tested.
Freddy remembers vividly that time, “I was not afraid to get tested because I already knew I was positive…the medical signs were all their, I knew my wife was a prostitute and I knew who she slept with…I was not scared, but I was upset.”
When Freddy found out his results in June 2006 he was shocked to find he had a CD4 count as low as 120. 6 months later it climbed to 332 and he is poised to get tested again this June (2007).
When asked about his family he said, “I left my wife and don’t talk to her, but I know she is in bad shape and refuses to get treatment.” When asked about children he told me he had five young children, three girls, 11, 8 and 6, and two boys, 13 and 6. None of them have been tested yet, but he promises to get them tested this June and as Secretary of Ngonga+ encourage other members to get their families tested as well.
From Ngonga to Dar…
As always I use my last day in the village for reflection. This time I had a lot to reflect upon. I had indeed learned a lot about people and the HIV pandemic.
I learned that HIV positive people watch their CD4 count like a baseball player watches his batting average…always discussing and comparing with others. A count of more than 400 and it’s a good season, less than 200 could mean their last.
I learned that as desperate as things may seem, people find a way to persevere. Two years ago few people got tested; fewer talked about AIDS and most died in silence. Today people are talking; HIV+ people can get their CD4 checked in the villages and ARVs are more readily available, as are services, such as counselling.
New signs meet you at every junction in Kyela now. This one reads,
I final lesson I learned is that although development practitioners shy away from the use of a terms such as “hope” because it is not tangible or empirical, we should not downplay its importance. Indeed hope exists, perhaps without explanation, but somehow it explains everything. Hope is what keeps people alive throughout the rainy season, when there is no one to talk to, or when there are no medical or social services for HIV positive people. Hope gives people the spirit to keep fighting and trying to find realistic solutions to this costly pandemic. What I discovered with the small group of HIV+ people in Ngonga, if you dig down deep enough you find their very existence is rooted in some miraculous hope for a better future than what they have now.
