I always have trouble trying to decide what to blog. I realize that I still need to clarify how the whole program actually works but at the same time, we're exposed to so many different experiences that I feel I have to record those before the initial emotions fade away...
So I'll have to write about the program structure later - that's less meaningful and interesting than this.
It's interesting that I go to school in one of the most HIV/AIDS prevalent cities in the US and yet, I am most consciously aware of the issue when I'm an ocean away in a country that suffers from the same disease. We started a "mock unit" on HIV/AIDS and this involved visiting a hospital to meet with volunteers of TNP+ - Thai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. I don't think I've ever consciously been in a room with so many HIV/AIDS victims who regularly talk about their personal struggles, their roles in a greater organization and their efforts in communities and governments.
Their struggle is a unique one, considering the national culture and traditions that surround and challenge them. Since it's such taboo to talk about sex and drug use, it's just as difficult for people to talk about preventing HIV/AIDS or dealing with it. The TNP+ volunteers all went through some sort of discrimination, isolation, depression, judgment or loneliness because their community or hospitals were uneducated about the disease. It's terrible to hear how often these victims have considered suicide before finding support in TNP+.
But it isn't the exchange with TNP+ workers I want to blog about...
It was the home of a villager with HIV/AIDS that really opened my eyes.
Different groups visited different individuals and my group visited an older woman - her name was Meh (mother) Tong Sai. She was probably a little older than my own mother - she looked fragile, tired and her cheekbones were sunk in as a side effect of the medication she was taking.
She told us she had just gotten back from a religious ceremony and she was a bit worn out.
That's quite a shock considering that 15 years ago, her community didn't allow her to attend religious ceremonies because she had HIV.
Her community also wouldn't let her make food. She had to wash dishes with gloves because she had HIV.
Her community condemned her because she had HIV but her husband and children didn't.
Her community never stopped by her home to visit her when she was too sick to work and laid in her dark room alone because she had HIV.
Her community wouldn't buy food from her because she had HIV so she had to travel to other markets where they would't recognize her and she could tell observant strangers she just had diabetes.
She had no idea until her fourth and last child was born with a cleft lip and the doctors had her tested. Once her village found out, the discrimination was instantaneous. She quietly cried as she told us her children were bullied, abused and harassed in school. She didn't care that her alcoholic husband gave her nothing from the money he made, she didn't care that the house was still spinning while she told us her story, she didn't care that she could die tomorrow - all she cared was that she would live for her children. She is staying in her marriage and she is still struggling to travel and sell her goods at different markets for her kids - so that they'd grow up and find happiness. Without TNP+, she wouldn't have had the strong medical and moral support she needed to get her though this. Her older children still pay the tuition for their younger siblings and they often send money back to her - they have been her strongest lifeline these 15 years.
There's nothing we could really say for a story like this and at some point, I didn't know if I wanted to cry out of pure sadness, empathy or outrage. Ignorance couldn't possibly be bliss - not if it meant an entire community would ostracize an innocent woman and her children. I think a lot of us just felt helpless in that situation - how could we show empathy or support? We couldn't do anything but tell her how much we admired her for her strength and wished her and her children the best.
In response, she told us that she wanted to be an example for the younger HIV/AIDS victims - to show them how to survive.
how your heart will survive.
I took away from that experience a humbling lesson.
Even as privileged Americans, there was nothing we could ever offer her, but we had everything to learn from such a life - you could really see such solid strength and calm hope in her fragile body and her silent tears. An incurable disease, an entire community of ignorance and discrimination and a neglectful husband couldn't break her down - not when she had her children to love.
I don't think I would've been so lucky to have such an experience had I learned about HIV/AIDS in DC. To be surrounded by what we would classify as poverty and yet, be blind to all of that in comparison to this woman of unshakable faith and strength...
this must be how you really live and learn.
There's much more about HIV/AIDS I learned that day that I could write shamefully long blog entries about but I'll save that for a rainy day...For now, this was what mattered.
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