WEMA and IDP

Well today was our second day at WEMA. It's a clinic in the slums. We work with Dr. George, and he is awesome!! I learned how to put an IV in today. I practiced on Linn and Dr. George. We also helped to treat a little girl with a really bad burn on her arm; it was so bad that her skin wasn't even black anymore. She just had like a mzungu arm, I didn't even know it was a burn until I asked Dr. George. Then we talked to some patients with HIV. One patient has had HIV for 19 years. He told Linn and I all about it today.

In the early 90's, he was in his 20's, and his wife at the time was HIV positive. The doctors knew this, but didn't tell them. They gave them 3 condoms, and told them to come back next month. Every month they would come back, and the doctors would take his blood for testing, and not tell him why. This went on for about 4 months until he finally asked why they kept asking him to come back. Then, they told him he was HIV positive. He believes that the doctors were trying to see how long it would take him to get the virus. A couple years later his wife died. Then in like 1995, he went to the dentist (this was after his wife died). The dentist asked him if he had any health issues, and when he told the dentist that he was HIV positive, the dentist wrote HIV + in huge capital letters on his chart and walked out of the room. The he came back half an hour later, with like 30 other dentists/doctors/nurses and they all just crowded around him and whispered. Then they all left the room and didn't come back. After a few hours, he just left the dentist's, and pulled his tooth out by himself. He decided he would never tell anyone again. So, then like 10 years later his health was really deteriorating, and he had a giant ulcer on his leg. Finally he went to the hospital, and they treated him a little bit better than the dentist had. He still felt like there was a really bad stigma with HIV, but he had to have surgery for his leg, so he couldn't avoid the hospital. When they did a CD4 count on his blood before his surgery, it was 36. He basically should have been dead. So they started him on antiretroviral treatment. ART is very expensive, like thousands/week, but the UK and Canada have started funding some ART in African countries, and this is literally keeping him alive. Within 2 years his CD4 count is up to 240 which is AMAZING! He has remarried, and has 2 kids, and they are all still HIV negative. But he still has very little money, so his kids and wife are living outside of Nairobi, where its cheaper, and he has to live in a slum in nairobi, to be close to WEMA and Dr George. Dr George treats him for free, and everyday he has to have his ulcer dressing changed, it isn't healing well at all. If Dr G didn't treat him for free, he would have no healthcare. He works like 14 hours a week as a security guard, and makes around 4000 shillings a month (around 50 CAD a month) and his rent is 2000, and he sends 1500 to his family, and lives off 500 himself, which is like $6 a month. Linn and I are going to do his home visit on friday, which basically involves making sure he is living in an environment that is clean and healthy (he lives in the hood in africa, so i can tell you already that it will not be healthy at all).

Tomorrow we are going to an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. The IDPs are people who have had there homes burned in the 2007 elections violence. The really super basic story of the election violence is that a Kikuyu presential candidate won by rigging the election somehow, and then everyone else got pissed off at the Kikuyu people and started killing them/burning their houses/throwing bombs at them etc. So all the Kikuyu people who have had their homes burned are living in a little tent village in mid-kenya. The last group of Fadhili volunteers have gone to visit the IDP camps, and basically found out that the government cut off aid. So these people have no food, and live in absolute filth. We have been feeding all the people (around 340 people) and are working on buying them land, and building a mill so they can be self-sustainable. We are also planning on testing everyone at the camp for HIV. The problem is we don't have the money to treat all the people that will be HIV positive.

I can't believe I have only a week and a half left! I'm really looking forward to europe, and I'm going to try and volunteer alot in these last 2 weeks.