What to say?

I was going to use this blog entry to talk about some of the more frustrating aspects of living in Kenya, as I had been kind of feeling like I've been focusing on some of the more entertaining things about living here. I was going to spend a bit of time whining about the staring whenever I leave my house, the constant calls of "Mzungu!" and so on...

Well, in the past few days, I've had something so much bigger dropped into my lap, as the universe tends to do when you get too focused on the petty annoyances in life, if only to remind me of exactly why I'm here, and of what really matters. I was hesitant about writing about this, but I think I'm going to do it anyway, if only to give people an idea of what the reality of life in Africa is like, and to help me process the past couple of days.

To start it all off, my community based organization works with a few women's groups in and around the Meru area. In one of these groups, there is this older Mama, a grandmother who started caring for her grandson after he was orphaned, I think, due to AIDS. As if that weren't heartbreaking enough, it turns out that this 10 year old boy was HIV positive himself. When I visited Meru in July, I went out to this group's meeting and met the grandmother, and learned of the boy's condition. He had been ill, but had recently improved, and was doing much better. As a part of my community entry, I was planning on making home visits to the members of the groups I'll be working with, including the home of the grandmother and her boy. However yesterday I was told by a coworker that he had taken a turn for the worse, and that I would be going with her to visit him in hospital.

First of all, if visiting an American hospital is a disconcerting thought for many, then hospitals in Kenya are, well, really hard to cope with (and the hospital I went to yesterday was by Kenyan standards a good one). The wards are just large rooms with rows and rows of beds lined up against the walls, all of them full-in one ward, I saw 3 children in the same bed. And you can easily guess which patients are there for AIDS-related illnesses- most people have seen photos of AIDS patients in Africa on the news, right? Well, don't think that the photos of immobile, skeletal figures are exaggerations... they were certainly there when I went walking through the wards. If you've ever seen a person die from AIDS in the developed world, then you may have a tiny idea of what is happening here... but dying of AIDS in Africa is so, so much worse. Lack of access to treatment and sheer volume of people needing treatment mean that your options are severely limited if you find out that you are HIV-positive.

Getting back to this boy, I said that he was 10, but as I approached his bed, he looked so much younger. As his grandmother helped him into a sitting position, I was shocked to see the size of him-his upper arms seemed smaller than my wrists. I was left completely speechless as I watched this boy being supported by his grandmother- she just sat behind him and allowed him to lean back against her. Here is a woman who by all rights should at this time in her life be taken care of by her children, and she was quietly shouldering a burden that would have broken many others with a grace and dignity that is incredibly humbling.

What can I say? That it's not fair? Of course it isn't. But when I said I wanted to come to Africa, and to do something about the AIDS crisis here, I knew that I was setting myself up for a certain amount of heartbreak. It doesn't make it any easier though.