I work at Love Life, an NGO dedicated to education and prevention of HIV/AIDS, with an additional mission of advocating family planning. Yeah, all of that meant nothing to me either when I was first coming here...it makes a lot more sense now. My boss is Fati, an ex-radio DJ and a huge fan of “loving life” – her motto for everything she does. I’m working for the first two weeks with two other interns from Missouri University, Matt and Tess, both of whom are really fun to travel with and are really enthusiastic about our internship. At my first real day at work, Fati, Matt, Tess, and I traveled to the Elmina Prenatal Clinic to educate and screen the pregnant mothers. As part of their prenatal checkup routine, women would form a line outside of our door and one by one we would ask them about what they knew about HIV. Some knew a lot from school, others knew absolutely nothing except that it kills everyone who has it. Our goal was to make them understand that it’s important to keep both them and their children HIV-free. Many of the mothers were 16-20, and those that were older had already had four or more children. We would ask them if they had ever considered using family planning and encourage these options. Then we’d administer an HIV test (just a thumb prick and a chemical solution, kind of like a pregnancy test but without the happy face). Fortunately there haven’t been any positives yet!
We then visited an AIDS patient living with Love Life’s assistance. She lives in a village consisting entirely of a school, a church, and 30 concrete huts. She is a single mother with four children, and her house is the bare minimum – a bedsheet for a door, no mosquito nets and no window shades or mesh. It was heartbreaking to listen to her as she explains that she has only told her eldest daughter about her condition, and the other children wonder why she cries so often. The only assistance we could give her today were some groceries and some people she could talk to openly – few people in the village know she has AIDS and nobody can know what she’s going through. Save for a few tears, she maintains a positive attitude throughout the meeting and jokes about how I will marry her and give her treatment in America.
As we’re walking back to our taxi, school lets out and all of the kids go wild at the sight of us obrunis in their village. They clamor for a picture, demanding to see themselves on the camera and totally overwhelming all of us. Amidst their adamant demands for photos, a bookbag just like mine, and requests for American dollars, I eventually broke free and went home feeling exhausted after a very full day.
After returning from Love Life, I (Canon point’n’shoot) went out on a photo excursion through downtown with Olivia (Nikon D20) and Arthur (Canon SLR). After walking through the markets cataloguing the chaos, we moved to the side streets. There we got to see another side of Cape – the residential area, where people sit outside and socialize after work and kids play football in small lots. We climbed to the top of an old but newly renovated church, and from the top of the bell tower we could see the entire city. It was a very welcome reprieve from the claustrophobia of the city and the smells of the open sewage. The lighting around 5 provided very dramatic shadows and made for a surprisingly pretty scene; even though the city was economically depressed it survives and even thrives, a point of pride for all of Ghana.
Yes, it was a fantastic day. So of course, I had to return home to find the pipe for my bathroom sink busted and my entire bathroom flooded almost to the point of spilling into the bedroom...though Adina says there’s no permanent damage, there are noticeable water stains around the bathroom (no weird smells) and I have to use the shower faucet to wash my hands now.
On Friday in Love Life we went hunting for a woman who tested positive for HIV in May but from whom Love Life hadn’t heard from since. There was some real detective work at hand – we took this absolutely crazy taxi ride (70 km/hr down barely paved roads, avoiding potholes and people with no visibility around the fields of corn and pouring rain) to an even more remote village than our first patient. We asked around and found her sister who led us to her grandmother, who warmly greeted us as she told us she hadn't a clue where her granddaughter was. She still treated us like royalty: we got our own stools under a bamboo shed while all of the village kids who weren’t in school had to stand outside and ogle us the obrunis. Eventually, our patient came back from her farm and we had a conversation about her health and future. She had retested positive and so had her husband, so she was willing to start medication immediately provided Love Life pay for it and transportation to/from the hospital. She seemed very resigned and depressed about the illnesses she’s been experiencing, so we will arrange for a meeting between her and patient #1 so that she can understand that there is life with HIV.
After the meeting we walked to the adjacent village to give impromptu educational HIV discussions with the people there. We started at a bus stop, answering questions and posing some questions ourselves. Only a few spoke English so Fati had to translate any questions Matt, Tess, or I had. We distributed pamphlets and condoms, and suddenly we were swarmed by people. It was suggested we ask the “Queen Mother” of the village for permission to use the community center for a presentation. After sitting with the tribal royalty and discussing the importance of talking about sex with young teenagers, she grants us permission and a messenger runs through the village to gather people for the sudden meeting. Fati leads the presentation entirely in Fante, and the white people were used almost exclusively to draw and hold people’s attention. By including Americans in the AIDS education, it proved that we not only care about changing the current state of affairs but also emphasized that AIDS is a disease that affects everyone, and I think the villagers appreciated this. I could tell by their faces that the crowd really learned a lot from Fati’s lesson, and I went home exhausted but excited.
We took a tro-tro back from the village. I had already taken a tro-tro from the Accra airport on Day 1, but that was chartered. This public transit vehicle had seats that were screwed to wood planks not attached in any way to the floor; the seats were kept from sliding around by only static friction and the massive weight of all of the passengers. Some people had to hang onto the side of the van because there was in fact ZERO space in the vehicle. I’m convinced we only got back safely because of the constant prayers that everyone on the tro-tro seemed to be muttering under their breaths.
Friday night I went out to the Elmina Beach Resort with Fati and friends. Ghana has a decent clubbing scene, and we rocked out to reggae til very late in the night. I got back at 1:30AM to find my house gate was chained shut from the inside! I tried knocking, called Adina, and then frantically called Kirsty. I almost tried climbing up and over when apparently all the noise I was causing woke one of the tenants and I was let in.
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