Wednesday, May 27, 2009

One of the University of Pittsburgh students asked me what I’ve noticed about people’s responses to death here. During his month here, there have been several occasions where people seemed almost blasé about a death, even in times when the person was a close friend or family member. He wondered out loud if death and illness are so commonplace that one has to quickly move on, and said that he has had to check himself a few times when he too quickly accepted various outcomes of poverty and health disparities as “normal.” I noticed that in myself the other day. After interviewing Fani, I looked at the hut next to us and saw a child lying in it. I asked Mara if I could take a picture and took several. The little girl is lying on a cloth on the dirt floor, staring at the camera with a blank expression. There’s a pink plastic bowl nearby, with remnants of nsima I think. She hardly moved in the time it took me to take the photos. I’m going to ask Mara about this child when we go back there on Saturday, and don’t understand why I didn’t at the time.

I should say something about the comment I made about the three orphans we interviewed last week. A couple people have brought up the point that all three, and especially the boy, might have been shy to talk about HIV transmission. I agree, and think that it’s probably the case that they didn’t feel free to speak openly about their knowledge or lack thereof. However, what worries me is that it really seemed that they didn’t have a clear understanding of ways to prevent the spread of the virus because of the disjointed way in which they answered.

I've been trying to get more pictures and even video on here, but it's hard because they take so long to load. The really good pictures you'll have to see when I get back though because I don't want them to be online. :)

Gotta go do some interviews!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

I forgot to say earlier that Mara Banda is the Director of Pendulum Project Malawi. She's been helping by connecting me to the various community based organizations and interpreting during most of the interviews.
Remember the interview I did with the grandmother and her two granddaughters? Well first of all, I spelled their names wrong. It’s Nachiletso, Tiankhulengi and Mwationa. But listen, I asked Arichie what their names mean: Tiankhulengi “they have no voice”, and Mwationa “you have seen us.” He said that often names are chosen to coincide with circumstances present around the time of the child’s birth. What was going on then, and why do their names have such relevance today? It made me stop for a minute, as I thought about these young girls and the work that I’m doing here.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A few highlights this week:

This afternoon:
We’ll go to Mr. Chiunda’s house. Mr. Chiunda is a small, very energetic man who has helped countless vulnerable children and families over the years through, among other things, a breakfast program he used to run out of his house and his former job as National Coordinator of Pendulum Project Malawi. Today he, his family, Arichie and I, and a few young HIV positive people he’s helped over the years will eat a special meal of chapo (a Malawian fish that supposed to be delicious) together and I’ll have the chance to conduct some interviews.

Wednesday evening:
I’ll learn how to make nsima (remember? stiff cornmeal porridge eaten with everything here) from one of Arichie’s friends.

Thursday:
We’ll return to Mitundu area for more initial interviews and some follow-up ones with the two women to whom we gave the cameras.

Friday:
Morning - Paradiso House Home Based Care for a second interview with members of their support group. Last time they drew/wrote a timeline of important things that have happened in their lives (related or not to HIV status) and now all who want to will have a chance to share their stories on the recorder. Something tells me it’ll be everyone. I’ll also collect the Youth Club’s camera.
Afternoon – the University of North Carolina has a clinic at the main hospital here in Lilongwe. I met with the community outreach worker, and Arichie and I will be going out with one of the nurses to meet families and conduct interviews.

Saturday:
Return to Mchenga for initial and follow-up interviews.
Monday, May 25

I just got back from spending a weekend at a town on the lake. There’s a group of really nice University of Pittsburgh students doing work here, so we all went together, along with Arichie (friend, driver, interpreter) and Mara’s son. The lake is gorgeous, and we stayed in a small fishing town, which was interesting after these days in Lilongwe. The children there either shouted the usual “azungu” at us, accompanied by either a wave or a thumbs up, or stared and even scowled. I was even more careful than usual about taking pictures of people after I heard adults making remarks at being caught in the photographs of others in our group. I think people in that area know very well the good and bad sides of tourism. The poverty is palpable as it is everywhere in this country, and whether all those small fishing boats that go out each night will catch anything is unpredictable. I wore my clothes rather than a bathing suit and am glad I did; the only locals in the water were men soaping up and bathing in their underwear, and children. Local women spent hours at the lake washing clothes, and the majority of men sat on the shore making huge fishing nets. For a few really fun hours I played with three local boys on the beach. When I asked one of them why he wasn’t in school, he said that his uniform wasn’t clean, but that he’d be back tomorrow. I’m not sure if he was telling the truth. I showed them how to use my camera and was impressed with how quickly they learned. They were so sweet, playful, and respectful, and almost ran the battery out since they wanted to see and show each picture they’d taken. I was able to communicate with them with what little Chichewa I’ve picked up, which was so exciting. I’ll get to see them again because at some point I’ll be heading back to that area to conduct interviews. A man I met there says he knows people who would want to be a part of this project as it allows local people to have a voice, and that he will start speaking with potential participants today.


Youth Club - women only this time



Youth Club, Paradiso House Home Based Care
Saturday, May 23

This morning we went to Mchenga, a community based organization that helps families and orphans, especially through home visiting and assistance with food security. We conducted two interviews that morning. One was with Fani, age 19, who lost her mother to “sudden illness” in 2005. She began to cry as she remembered her mother and I struggled with whether or not to take a photo. The social worker in me won, but when I later asked Mara what she thought, she said that these emotions are very real and important to capture, and that she’ll mention this to future interviewees so that next time this happens I can more comfortably take the picture. Fani has a disposable camera, which we’ll pick up on Saturday.

In the afternoon, I interviewed the Youth Club at Paradiso House Home Based Care. What a cool ending to the day! They greeted us with a traditional dance and continued to sing and dance as children and orphans gathered around them. This is one way that they educate their community on HIV and other health-related issues. The interview went well, and I can’t wait to bring their message back to the US. They’re so bright and full of energy, utterly inspiring. Also young and insecure. Some of the girls are on scholarship so that they can attend secondary school, but more money is needed to assist the other girls and any of the boys who can’t afford to pay school fees. Most have lost at least one parent to HIV, but some haven’t and are in the club because of what it teaches them about themselves and their lives, and because of the opportunity to bring about positive change in their communities. I gave them a disposable camera to use as a group and they discussed possible themes, deciding to focus on their outreach work. Along with taking pictures, their homework is to think of questions they would like to ask members of their community, as next time we’re going out as a group with the microphone and recorder so that they can take turns interviewing people and learning how to use the equipment.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Everything’s going really well. Pendulum Project people have been gone above and beyond in introducing me to community members, interpreting during interviews, teaching me Chichewa, inviting me to meet friends and family, and answering all my questions. I stayed with this amazing Couchsurfing couple, Frauke and Saqib, the first two nights, and am now at a Malawian woman’s house until June 1. My host works at an embassy here and I’m very lucky because she’s really sweet and my rent includes meals (prepared by a cook), laundry, great company, and a gorgeous garden. Okay, not rustic at all, and a totally different world from the one in which I spend the rest of my time, but that’s just how it worked out.

So right now I’m not going to try to summarize everything that’s happened during the past week. Here’s yesterday’s interviews:

A 16 yr old girl who lives with her 17 year old brother, and has been cared for by her grandmother since the age of 2. Her grandmother is old and can’t help as much anymore, so she spends her day in the fields gathering up things such as peanuts leftover from the harvest. She sells them for food for herself and her brother. Her friends go too, but they use their money to buy little things their parents won’t get them, not staples. Her brother doesn’t do anything but wake up, eat, and hang out with his friends all day but she can’t tell him what to do because he’s older, and because if he leaves she’ll be without a blood relative. We showed her how to use a disposable camera and she tested out two pictures. We’ll pick it up in a week.

A young girl, Irene, and her grandmother, Agnes. Agnes has outlived all of five of her children. She depends on people in the community to help her and her grandchildren, as she dislocated her hip a few years ago. She has been caring for Irene and her cousin since they were toddlers. Irene fetches water, does the dishes and the laundry, and prepares warm water for her grandmother’s bath. She said that what she really wants is new clothes to wear to school, but her grandmother chided her, saying that that their need for food is too great to wish for new clothes.

Tankulengi, 11, Machuona, 12, and their grandmother, Nachuletsu. The girls’ mother died in 2000, so Nachuletsi and their aunt care for them. Machuona’s favorite subject is math. Nachuletsu says that she has never seen or heard of anybody in her village having or dying from HIV. Some die of headache, others of rheumatism, and some just drop dead. She said that four times a year there’s an assembly where all of the kids do skits related to HIV prevention. There’s also a joint session held once a week for all children grades 1-8 (!), but she doesn’t feel comfortable asking questions there. She has questions. It isn’t appropriate in Chewa culture for a mother to educate her daughter on sex – this is the job of aunts, etc – and her grandmother says she’s old and that this kind of thing is none of her business at her age. This question keeps coming up - who is talking to these orphans about HIV and sex?

Liknet, 29, who has two children. She was 25 years old when her mother died and we were incredibly impressed by her resourcefulness, kindness, and strength. She works in the fields and started a small business so she could build a place for herself and her children, but is still struggling to feed her family. From her mother, she learned to be a well-behaved person, to work hard, and to learn from the achievements of others rather than being jealous of their success. She ended the interview with prayers for me and for the American People. We gave her a disposable camera, which we’ll pick up next week.

There was a sixteen year old who didn’t want to speak with us. First she said that she had nothing to say to a white person. Then she said that if she missed work she wouldn’t be able to eat. So we went to the field where she was working and one of the volunteers with us offered to work for her while she talked with us. We knew from the local organization that both her parents had died of HIV and that she lives with her grandmother, who is very sick with the virus. During the brief interview, however, she gave one sentence answers and painted a rosy picture of her life, saying that she was just working in the fields to get extra money so that she’d have something nice to wear to a friend’s wedding. Mara, who was interviewing her, eventually said that “you can’t interview someone if they don’t want to talk with you” and we let the girl know that if she changed her mind, she should let us know. I keep thinking about her though, because it’s obvious that she must have been through so much, and is having a hard time with it all.

People are willing to talk about HIV, but in general terms. Abstinence and good behavior are repeated over and over again. When I asked three orphans ages 16-18 how HIV is transmitted, one girl said through sex, the other “sharp objects”, and the 18 year old boy, who travels back and forth between Malawi and Mozambique for seasonal work, said he didn’t know. As the conversation continued, the girls also mentioned transmission through breast milk (but only after the baby turns 6 months, they said) and blood transfusions. In our conversations, witchcraft is usually at the root of a loved one’s death, and people die from accidents or an unknown, and often sudden, illness. Mara seems sure that all of these deaths are due to AIDS, and it will be interesting to see if people open up about the virus as we get to know each other.
As we went from hut to hut, village to village today, we were escorted by a group of volunteers from the local community organization. They wouldn’t let us carry our bags and a woman in one of the villages made lunch for us (sardines and nsima, the Malawian staple of maize porridge) even though I know she couldn’t have had more food than anyone else we saw.