Monday

Here it is:

Woke up and went to Mukhanyo Theological Seminary (link is somewhere in a prior post - will take me 20 minutes to find it with our sloooow connection).  Met a woman there who gave me the breakdown on the school.  Nice place, etc.

From there went to Philadelphia (!!!) Hospital (booo...) to check in on a patient that had been dropped off there last week.  She died the next day.  She would have been fine if someone had gotten her on anti-retrovirals (ARV's) a few months earlier, but as it is, she was brought to the hospital in a "moribund" state, meaning that the process of dying had already begun.  Her family is all dead and her three children are now orphans.  We went to her house to check in but her oldest daughter was gone making funeral arrangements and the neighbor ladies were getting some things in order.

Then we went to check in on a guy named "Sam".  He is 24 (he states his age as "1982") and lives with his grandfather.  His grandfather is old enough to receive a government pension which he spends all on beer so "Sam" is starving.  "Sam" has TB and possibly HIV.  Took him to Nakakela Hospice, a MCDC project, to get tested.  Results pending.  When we showed up to pick him up, he was laying in bed next to a big pan of urine, vomit, and blood.  Asshole grandfather was away at the bar.

After dropping "Sam" at the clinic, we (Randy and I) took a lady back to her house from the clinic.  She has cancer in her eye as well as HIV.  She is probably 60 something.  Her eye will have to be removed next week or so.  She was in a lot of pain, but does not believe that she is sick.  She just has an eye problem, she believes.

Back at the clinic, I helped get a patient into his wheelchair to go sit in the sun by the garden for a while.  Here I discovered one of those sad ironies that make the US so beloved around the world.  It is no secret that US drug companies are not eager to give out life saving medicines to people like this patient, however I discovered that his life is not totally void of assistance from America as his pain was no doubt assuaged by the episode of Dr. Phil that was playing on his bedside television when I walked in.  When he got out to the garden I said "Better than Dr. Phil, eh?" and he laughed.

From the clinic we went to go check on a woman named "Glad".  She has been on ARV's for a few months now.  When she started the meds she was bedridden and when we pulled up she was hanging laundry on the clothes line. 

Next we went to one of the orphan centers and I met a really nice young man named Aaron.  He immediately told me that he dreams of being a journalist.  I told him about my little blog and asked him to give me something he had written to put up here.  I also took a video of him, but the sound probably sucks as always.  I was really impressed with him.  He was there teaching the kids English and he's really good at it.  When we were talking, I asked him what he reads and he said it is hard to get books.  He pulled a tattered book of poems from his book and asked if I had heard of it - Langston Hughes.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Sharp dude.  He said he applied for college grants but that the grants are only given to people who want to study social work.  He said that he knows there are a lot of people who need help, but he thinks he can help people by telling the story of South Africa more than by navigating government systems.  Sharrrrp dude.

Finally, we went to a clinic to check on a woman that Randy had dropped there at 7am before I was out of bed.  It was probably 4pm and she was still there waiting to see the doctor.  She finally got seen and even though she is really sick (probably with HIV), the doctor just gave her some vitamin B tablets and told her to go to the hospital.  She'll go early in the morning tomorrow.  She is very weak and losing weight rapidly, but she will still have to sit and wait for two full days to find anything out or get any help. 

Came home and had two bologna sandwiches and tried to fix our internet situation here.  Still pretty bad.  Such is life.  Not much to do here though.  We're on this isolated farm. 

Tomorrow I'm going to go with a guy who is working on building another orphan center.  The orphan centers feed and provide some after-school education for orphans.  The local churches start them with the help of MCDC.  It's a good thing.

I've noticed some other exports of the USA - graffitti saying "Thug Life" and "Fuck You".  I wonder what will happen to all these kids who are watching all their social networks crumble around them.  I worry about gangs and that kind of thing starting to become a replacement.  That's why I like these orphan centers.  They can be like Christian gangs, I guess.  Isn't that what a church does, really?  Get people together and make a group, a social network, a family, whatever?  Someone will need to provide that for all of these kids.  MCDC hopes to start one in each village here.  The sooner the better, in my opinion.

So that's it for now.  Going to try to load a video or two.  No promises.  Here is the link:  www.youtube.com/ninthstreetrecords