Highlights of my week....

My week started with a usual request...for money. Almost every day, someone asks me for money. The requests are all the same. They don't have money to go to the hospital. They don't have money for milk. They don't have money to get home. I know that my job here is to care for the sick, and not to provide money as well. But, sometimes I am caught up in a particularly moving story and I manage to come up with the 2 or 3 dollars they are asking for. Well, this past week I had a gentleman who works at our clinic come to me. He is what is known as an "expert client", a person who is HIV positive and open about it. He serves as a counselor and role model to other patients. I partciularly admire this individual as his job as a Swazi man doing this job is extremely important. Anyways, he needs to speak to me about "a personal problem." He proceeds to tell me that his serious problem is, "My cows have been detained." I bite my tongue to hold back the laughter. Apparently his cows were caught trespassing, due to the negligence of the boy watching his cows, and he needs 30 rand, or about 4 dollars, to go get the cows right now. Each day they are detained the cost increases. After the shock had past that all the roaming cows throughout Swaziland could actually be detained, I handed him the money, knowing he had just provided me with the best story of my day.

I have just finished reading a book called "Three-Letter Plague" or "Sizwe's Test" (depending on where you are), written by Jonny Steinberg. This book highlights an ordinary man who lives in rural South Africa, and his struggle to live his life surrounded by HIV. The book also focuses on a particular doctor who works for MSF and was very influential in getting ARVs for rural South Africa in 2005-2007. Well, this doctor now works in Swaziland, fighting the TB epidemic. And somehow, I found myself in the same consulting room with him, counting the pills of our child on XDR TB treatment. This child's mom has to bring a cooler box to clinic with all of his medicines. And every time he comes I have to draw his blood to monitor the many side effects of his medicines. I walked out of the exam room realizing I had just experienced yet another highlight, working alongside a champion of the cause we are all working hard to fight.

Finally, my highlight of today, as you will see in the pictures, revolves around food. One of my patients sent his wife with a gift for me. This man was on death's door. And somehow he made it. And he wanted to thank me. So he sent his wife with a watermelon, some pumpkin greens and some juju beans, all for me. I could barely carry them out to my car, yet this woman had lugged them across the country, on public transport, to our clinic. She was thrilled to have her photo taken for this story. I have a feast awaiting me for the weekend!