The journey to Nhlangano

Photo taken on my journey back from Nhlangano.

I travelled 2.5 hours from Mbabane to the Nhlangano health centre in Swaziland for field work. Today’s field work involved interviewing HIV infected individuals for job position known as ‘expert client’. An Expert client is a HIV positive person that offers counselling, support and advice to other HIV positive people. This initiative came about because research found that it is better when HIV positive individuals get involved in HIV prevention, advice and counselling of other infected individuals.  As you can imagine it’s always easier to open up to someone that is in the same situation and probably knows the difficulties you may face.

When i got there i immediately noticed the long waiting queue just to see a doctor. There weren’t very many doctors and so people had waiting time of over two hours.  This ranged from newly born babies to older citizens. I walked around the health centre really itching to take photos but it would have been a very uncomfortable situation for these people, especially as i didn’t have their consent. Not very ethical i thought, so i put my camera away and instead went on to actually meet these people and have conversations with them.

I spoke to the HIV positive women waiting to be interviewed. They had lost so much weight and all seemed very nervous about the interview. After i shook them and introduced myself, they went on to ask me how many expert clients were going to be chosen. Unfortunately i had no clue as i was not in charge of this. I reassured them all was well and tried to make the nervousness disappear. I sincerely doubt i was successful. Majority of these women were infected through their cheating husbands. What immediately struck me was these women seemed very repressed. The Swazi society is such that women have no say or can’t make decisions.  Perhaps their HIV status also added to their suppressed nature as stigma and discrimination makes this health burden worse. They all needed this job as this was the only form of income they had a chance of getting. One of the women i spoke to was fired from her job due to her HIV status so she expressed how important getting the expert client job was to her. I wished all of them good luck and continued on to exploring the health centre.

I went to the Tuberculosis (TB) wing and immediately i was asked to wear a mask at the entrance. I introduced myself to every one i came across and i was allowed to get into the laboratory...only briefly though!  I spoke with nurses and had the privilege of filming one of the nurses. I asked her TB related questions of which she answered so well. One thing she said that got to me was the fact that most patients are not able to handle the toxic nature of the drugs so most of them end up dying. Bear in mind that those that get admitted into the TB wing are HIV positive. So taking both TB and HIV medication can’t be so easy for people whose immune system is already suppressed.

After speaking to the nurse i noticed a man sitting alone getting some sunlight. I went and sat down with him. He told me he had TB and HIV and that was the first time in weeks he could come out in the sun. My heart sank. He said he had only been on Antiretrovirals (ARVs) just a week ago, and he had no clue he was HIV positive until he started losing so much weight and falling ill. Looking at him, it was clear he had a very low CD4 count and so was very late to get on ARVs. He couldn’t breathe properly and struggled with sentences. He told me to come back in 2 weeks to take a photo of him, that hopefully he would look much better for a picture. I felt so sad. All he wanted was to recover and go back home to his two sons.  I will be going back in 3 weeks to visit him and i hope he will be much better.

This journey opened my eyes to the reality around me. One recurring them was poverty. The HIV positive women and the HIV+TB man had that in common. When i asked, it was confirmed that majority of the patients were poor...very poor.  Some didn’t even have food to eat so how were they supposed to stand the harsh effect of the drugs? I really feel all these programs that focus on uptake of drugs should also consider if people have food because without proper nutrition, the immune system (which is already compromised), will not be able to fight off infections properly.  If organisations really want to help, then they should help properly. Just three days ago a woman in Swaziland ate cow dung because she had no food to eat before taking her ARV’s.  This is the reality over here and it’s so sad. I keep saying, if international organisations are not ready to immerse themselves into communities they do research in and carry out proper needs assessment, then there is no point! I say this because at this rate, they seem to be gaining more from these poor communities than these poor communities are gaining from them.  Organisations should direct funds and energy into poverty alleviation. For example, if funds were directed to education, a whole lot will change ranging from increased job opportunities to gender empowerment.  Only when organisations start doing so will i feel people don’t have vested interest.

A tale of two cities

Photo taken in rural Swaziland. I waited for this sunset and did not regret it :)

I am in Swaziland carrying out HIV research. I have been here for a week now. Due to confidentiality reasons i cannot reveal the names of the organisations i am working with. One is an international organisation and the other is a local organisation here in Swaziland.  I’ve been in the international organisation for a week now and today, I had to come to the local organisation because I’m also collaborating with them. Now bear in mind that what these two organisations do are very useful and do contribute a lot to antiretroviral access and treatment.  The only difference is one has tons of funds and the other doesn’t.

The international organisation as you can imagine has lovely offices.  Floor to ceiling windows, comfortable office chairs, fully fitted kitchen with two fridges filled with food and drinks. The cupboards had all types of tea and biscuits, white or brown sugar, semi skimmed, skimmed or full cream milk and all types of other goodies. Now coming from England this is what i am used to. This is how the offices in England are, except this was in Swaziland.  i felt very comfortable at the office until i saw a Swazi lady cleaning the toilet and washing the dishes people used to drink tea and eat their lunches. That was where the comfort disappeared.  I see Black women doing the cleaning in England, especially on the London Underground but there was something about this particular situation that really made my heart sink. Why was i affected so much by this? Afterall this isn’t new right?  Wrong!

This is my first time of working in the African continent. I have never worked in any African country before. I felt very uncomfortable because a fellow black person was doing the cleaning for a bunch of white expatriates.  That’s what made me feel uneasy but i had to get past it especially as i couldn’t do anything about it. People might say ‘’ at least she has some form of employment’’, but i see it differently.  Doing the cleaning in a foreign land to me is different from doing the cleaning in your own land. I can’t get past the fact that its reminiscent of slavery.  I can’t, bite me!

Then i went to work in the local organisation and the reality was different. The offices were cramped, little ventilation, the kitchen was not really nice and they had no fridge.  They had an old kettle which didn’t seem to work properly. There was an empty tin of milk in the cupboard with very little tea in a tin.  Generally, the kitchen was empty.

Immediately i thought to myself, the empty kitchen cupboard and little kitchen equipment in the local organisation together with the fully fitted kitchen, stocked up fridge and cupboard with a very lush office represented the current situation of science research.  Africans are not able to do so much not only because they may not have the expertise to do so, but also because they don’t have the funds available to them.  A Lack of funds limits Africans who have particular expertise to also engage in proper research.  There is a wide gap that needs to be filled. However, expatriates have flow of funds and are able to do about anything feasible. This of course funds their extremely comfortable lifestyles in Africa which is better than what they get in Europe/America. This is one of the reasons they never leave, they hop from country to country doing research simply because they can and have the funds to back them up. What do we have?

Sitting in this local organisation writing this piece, i feel connected with the problems here in Swaziland because i have liaised with the local public health researchers who obviously know more about their issues than any foreigner would. When i was in the international office, there was definitely a disconnection and rightfully so. Expatriates can and will not understand Africa’s issues more than we Africans. A Solution can only be achieved once the problem is well understood.  With expatriate researchers not immersing themselves properly into the system can they truly have a grasp of the real issues?  The truth is a lot don’t know what it means to live in Africa because when they live here, their reality is very different from the local reality. So i ask, when will Africans truly take over their own problems? 

Chivalry is dead and Nigerian women killed it

Chivalry is dead I say…and Nigerian women killed it. You might be wondering why I feel this way, please allow me recount an incident which I know is a common occurrence in today’s society.

Recently, one of my bootilicious friends gave a presentation to a company committee made up of men in their 50s and early 60s. Her presentation was met with positivity as well as stares at her assets rather than at the slides she used to pitch her proposal. As she left the building, one of the committee members sent his very educated female personal assistant to catch up with her to ask for her number as he was interested in making her his mistress. She narrated this story to me with complete normalcy and was taken aback by the shock and disbelief on my face.

I said stuttering: “H-o-w? Has he no shame?”

Her response was: “Babe, its normal.”

“Normal? NORMAL?!” I responded in a raised voice. At this point I lowered my voice so as not to continue the scene that had already been created in the café.

When did it become okay for married men to chase after girls their daughter’s age? When did all this become normal? Why does a married man feel so comfortable chasing after a young woman as though he is entitled to do so?  So I say again, chivalry is dead, but who died first—the gentleman or the lady? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What are the implications on society of this kind of behaviour? The moral question and the chain reaction it causes must be understood and answered for our generation to move forward. It all starts with US, ‘US’ being my fellow women.

Our society’s moral decay has been catalyzed by the materialistic twist our generation has taken which is further perpetrated by the media.  Sadly, our women have bought into it. Our ladies today do not know who they are. Unfortunately, they are victims and simultaneously the product of TV and the media without a personality to call their own or a sense of self. One would wonder if God didn’t create us with unique finger prints.

These ladies go on to form cliques of non-thinking individuals who further aspire to all the media says they should be.  In the chase to express superficial excess as opposed to inner wealth, they do all they can to keep up.

Herein comes the guy; our society produces boys not men, boys who know how to speak the language of shortcut and ladies who understand this language as well, and are more than receptive. Show me your champagne bottle and nice car and I’ll show you my ass and all things soft and nice. Today’s boys believe by all means money has to be made. Money brings the girls, the cars and the clothes. Our society has turned to one of clones. Once we were all bankers, then we went in to telecoms, diverted into ‘yahoo-yahoo’, now we all sell diesel and make music, yet we say ‘Nigeria is bad’, ‘Nigeria is terrible’ but does Nigeria stand a chance in the hands of our generation of clones?

Materialism is the killer of morality and morality is the oxygen of a healthy society. Without it we can’t breathe. Sadly once you get on the ‘follow- follow’ train it never stops – it’s all about who gets married first, what is his family name, how much does he make, have you had kids, do you have a son and it goes on and on.

Breathe my people, breathe. Chivalry is dead and the Nigerian woman watched it die. We as women control society; we are more than homemakers—WE MAKE SOCIETY. Let’s imagine if ladies in secondary school and university only dated the smart guys who spent their time in the library, it would be safe to say the library would overflow: A-students would triple and men in general would spend more time with their books in a bid to develop themselves internally, as opposed to external ‘bling’ to bait women as though they were trying to catch fish.

Ladies if we demanded class, decorum, humility, etiquette and politeness as a prerequisite to a liaison rather than outward riches, designer surnames and fast cars we might cease to go nowhere fast. Sadly on what basis can we make such demands? Aside from your long Brazilian hair, designer bags and red carpet looks, who are you. WHO ARE YOU??!!

To answer this question, life should be lived as a journey of self-discovery as opposed to a media determined fake reality. The knowledge of self, your true self will show you self-worth. Self-worth will support morals and morals will allow our society breathe again.

Breathe my people, breathe.

New Beginnings

My one year old blog disappeared off the blogosphere..now i have to start all over again. It was a very annoying experience but hey..life has to go on. So here is to new blogging beginnings  :)