Sleepless in Siteki.

I woke this morning well before dawn, most unfortunatley, dawn comes at about 4:30am. As I lay there awake, a bit restless and congested from the fan blowing on me all night I debated whether to take the half of a Xanax on the night stand (you know the one that is there for just these times when the mind refuses to be silenced) in hopes of getting a couple of hours more of sleep. Instead of taking the assistance of the little blue (or sometimes white) pill I opted to let my mind revisit life in New York and what my previous days use to be constisted of and how much it has now changed and remained the same. I still worry and fret about many of the same things and like-wise find great joy in what I have always found joyful. I could go on and make a long and arduous list of my worries and concerns and also people, places and events that give me great joy. While some of you might find it quite interesting as many would find it boring and unnecessary and then I would leave someone significant out and potentially hurt their feelings so I will just move on and share someone of the highlights of last Saturday with you.
David and I started out with our usual breakfast (cereal M-F and eggs and such on the weekends) at home. Well, the vast majority of all of our meals are at home. We have been cooking more in these last three months than we have in the previous seven years. No, I really don't think that our cooking has improved much but we are certainly more grateful for the food that we do have.
Anyways, two Saturdays ago one of our little friends from here in the community came up to us here in town and solicited our help. By 'little friend' I mean a very casual acquaintance who has befriended us so-to-speak, seems to always know our whereabouts and greets us with a great big smile and handshake. Thabiso is a ten year old Swazi boy, who is quite friendly, always hungry (as young children are) and always in need of a good bathing, he speaks quite good English especially for his age. It is certainly good enough to gets his needs known to those of us who do not speak his native language. He immediately shared with us that his mother was sick and needed money to see the doctor. Now this is nothing unusual, we are very often comfronted with such requests and it certainly comes as no surprise given what we see when making home visits to the homesteads. So we asked Thabiso some more questions about his mother and who was at home with her and so forth. In short, within a couple of minutes Thabiso was climbing into the back seat of the car, although he much prefers the front seat with David or I driving, he hasn't expressed a particular preference for who drives although I wouldn't be surprised if he did so sooner rather than later. Thabiso had said that his mom was at home with his younger brother, the 18 months old toddler who can eat an ear of corn in no time and given that none of the children wear diapers here, he thinks nothing of urinating right in front of you onto the ground while you are saying hello in your limited SiSwati. It still makes me laugh to see how free the children can be with their bodily functions. It took me holding about three different babies out on the homesteads, for me to figure out that the wet spot that they had left on my t-shirt was urine. Now, I generally hold them with their back resting against my chest or side rather than holding them face to face. Anyways, Thabiso gave excellent directions to his homestead, showing us the water hole where he fetches water along the way. Fortunately, there was water to be had at this water hole, unfortately there were two cows drinking from it as well.
We reached his homestead after about ten minutes, driving through waste high grass and up and over many rocks and minor ditches. His mother was in their one room homestead, basically unable to come to the door. She was febrile and weak, quite pale and rather dazed, wondering where these two white men had come from. We explained how Thabiso had asked us to come help her and her initial reluctance faded rather quickly, possibly from the amount of fatigue she was suffering from. Busisiwe was not willing for us to take her to the hospital at the time but said that if she was not feeling better by Monday then she would come to the hospital. It was clear that she wouldn't have the energy for the walk to Good Shepherd Hospital so we arranged to come by their homestead Monday morning to further assess the situation.
After several trips to Good Shepherd Hospital, the ER, the clinics, the X-ray department, pharmacy, waiting rooms and on and on, what came as no surprise Busisiwe was diagnosed with pneumonia, a urinary tract infection and HIV/AIDS, with a CD4 count of 150. We haven't even considered addressing the medical needs of the children yet given how overwhelmed she is, the children will need to be tested but we have to be patient and stablizer her situation first if there is any hope of moving forward with the childrens health care. Busisiwe is feeling a little better, she is taking her Septra/Bactrim and erythromycin as ordered, I made a little chart for her to keep track and it seems to have been effective. David and I have committed to providing our support which will consist of obtaining counseling for her regarding her HIV treatment and ARV's, getting her TB test arranged, helping her to navigate the chaotic medical system here and making sure the family has food to eat. Which brings me back to what I started to write earlier about being in town on Saturday morning to do some shopping for Thabiso's family. We have found that it is often better to do the shopping on our own rather than have a family member present because to becomes too obvious to those in the store and community that we are providing assistance and we unable to get out of the store without being asked by another two or three people for help with food and it just gets overly complicated. Additionally, we have enrolled Busisiwe into the Home Based Care program to assist her with her medical needs.
Well, I have now run out of time here at the internet cafe. This isn't the story I planned on telling you about it's where I have ended up. So in short most of the last couple of weeks have been occupied with work and maneuvering the medical system or lack there of here in Swaziland. I will finish up later.
Peace,
Scott