At weekends, the profile changes a little. The joggers are no longer exclusively white. There are a few Indians. I decide that the Indians have less leisure that the Whites, but more than the Blacks… So they can run at the weekends but on weekdays they must work. This is not a mixed society. Indians have been in South Africa for 150 years. Brought from the Raj, from Southern India, to administer the colony. The Indians we see here are comparatively affluent. I do not know if it is always so. Indians live in their own towns and settlements, and have their own shops and entertainments. The nearby casino, a perfect monstrosity, is almost entirely frequented by Indians. Michaela, Alaena and Danielle went to visit, attracted by the unusual buildings - expecting a hotel, they found a glittering palace full of gamblers, and a ghastly “switched-off” atmosphere - a place where men could be made or ruined and no-one would notice.
We go to the beach at nearby Umdloti. For the first time, we leave the built up coast and are in real countryside. It is beautiful. From the motorway, a vista of golden sand and blue sea. An occasional peppering of surfers. Umdloti is the next village. A strip of holiday apartment blocks. These are new, expensively built, staggered like Aztec pyramids to maximize exposure to the sun and views. These views are to die for. This beach is special - we can swim, in a natural pool, sheltered from terrifying waves. Actually, the waves aren’t so very terrifying, in Umhlanga, but for most of our visit, we couldn’t have swum because of the sharks - which follow the sardines, along with the dolphins. There are always sharks, but the make a special effort when sardines are around. There are shark nets, inside which swimming is permitted, but those are taken up when the sardines come, because the fish get stuck in the nets. The water is quite nice. Not many people are swimming though - it is the middle of winter. My burn has recovered enough for me to join in. Earlier, in the cold water of the pool, it leaked in a most unsettling way, the rocks here are stunning, and I would like to come back. I could sit here and drink cocktails whilst the sun went down. It is a particular pleasure to watch a group of black boys play. I was about to say that I had not seen enough black children play - this is the first time, at the beach, but actually, I have not seen enough groups of children playing, with other children. Mostly, when I see children they are with parents, grandparents. This is not a place, and probably not a country, where (white) kids can hang around on their own. I am sounding very judgmental, and it does disturb me. This is not what I want for our world. And I miss my own children.
We have to go. I am to meet a wonderful man who has helped HIVEX a lot in the past, and Michaela is to interview his daughter. I will not name this man, because he has suffered enough. He has known HIVEX from its earliest days, and introduced many people to the clinical trials. He speaks of an early group of 45 people, treated many years ago some of whom were so ill that they had to be carried into treatment. He says that 36 are still alive. One, a sex-worker, died two weeks ago. She was reinfected. He doesn’t think that any of the others died of AIDS related illnesses. What a shame that thee has been no money to monitor any of this. Our man’s job is to work on social wellbeing and development. With that in mond, we worked with HIV suffers, and with HIVEX, until he was removed from the role, for caring too much and being too close to his charges. He explains how hard his job is. He does it 24/7 - visiting the ill, the bereaved, those who have been raped, imprisoned by the children (seems a common occurrence) helps people get ID (a hard task, and one which is necessary if any kind of pension is to be claimed). Workers in his position are no longer allowed to phone others, and so he instructed his charges to call him. But sometimes they text him instead, and he is charged, and the charges run into huge amounts... Our man helped HIVEX collect 1,000 potential patients for the big clinical trial, in two weeks. And recently, he bought his 24 year old daughter, 8 months’ pregnant with his first grandchild, for treatment.
Whilst I talk to her father, Michaela interviews the new mother. She has a strapping baby. He looks far older than his one month. A bruiser. Certainly not wasting away. He doesn’t look like an HIV positive baby. But his young mother is traumatised. Shocked. She may be physically Ok, but she is carrying around a huge burden. She hasn’t told anyone except for her father about her HIV status. Not her partner, the baby’s father, from whom she almost certainly contracted the disease. She can barely talk about it, and needs comforting. No emotional healing has taken place yet. I am persuaded of the value of carrying our this treatment in groups. Convinced that if this young woman had experienced the care of a group, the strength and courage of similarly infected people, she would have garnered the confidence to talk to her partner, to insist that he is tested.
No comments:
Post a Comment