Road Trip! And, an emotional evening

Spiwo, Edwin, Xolani May and I went on a trip to Ceres yesterday. Ceres is part of the Witzenberg area, about 90 minutes (beautiful) drive northeast from JL Zwane. The area has about 86,000 residents in 5 towns, with Ceres being the largest. Over 13,000 people in the area, or about 17%, have HIV (keep in mind the US rate is about 0.3%, and Minnesota's is even lower).

Ceres' main industry is juice. The Ceres Food Group is based there - you may have seen their products in your favourite grocery store. They have a 55% market share for juice and juice-related drinks in South Africa. They are part of an even larger food company here, making them a real powerhouse both locally and nationally. CFG employs only 450 people to produce 8,000 pallets of juice per week, as their plants are fully automated and no person touches the product from the time the fruit is dumped into the line until the product is shipped out.

Our objective is to bring Siyaya, the singing/dancing/drama HIV education group from JL Zwane, to Ceres to put on a show for the community. We met with staff from the municipal offices and workers from a local HIV advocacy group. We had a great meeting, and it looks like the show will happen in July after the winter school holiday. We'll be focusing the show on the local youth, but everyone will be invited and encouraged to attend. A local youth dance group will probably be opening for Siyaya, which should help draw the locals in. We're hoping CFG and other local businesses will get involved financially and in marketing the show to employees and residents. I'll keep you informed as we go.

This nice day followed a depressing evening. I went to two homes on Wednesday with Yvonne and Nomokwazi, a woman who works with the Centre. The first was to see a 26-year old woman with advanced AIDS who lives with her mother. She has had HIV since 1996. She now has lymphoma of her central nervous system, for which she recently had a week of chemotherapy. She goes back to the hospital next week to see if it was effective. Whatever the outcome, she is in tough shape. To relieve her mother, who is visibly tired from caring for her daughter non-stop for the past two years, Nomokwazi and I washed the woman's feet and hands, clipped her nails, and rubbed warm Vaseline on them. She talked non-stop the whole time, partly because we were listening and partly because (I think) she's suffering from a mild stage of AIDS-related dementia. After about an hour, we left for house #2.

This house was Sophie's and Sam's. Sam is the 4-year old with HIV who has not been doing well lately. We were at the house as part of a prayer group, made up of men from the Men's Auxiliary from JL Zwane church. We prayed and sang for about an hour as Sam sat on Sophie's lap and she cried. The men, plus Yvonne, all spoke for a few minutes between songs, and quite animatedly at that. It reminded me of a being at a revival meeting except that there were only 9 of us in a small living room in a small house in the middle of Guguletu. Sam had a doctor's appointment yesterday and I'm waiting to hear how things went.

It's going to be cold this coming weekend, with highs of 55 or so and lots of rain. I'll be at the store buying sweaters before long.

More to come.