Bad News Comes in Threes, Even Here

It's been a tough couple days, full of the typical ups and downs of township life. Let me start with a couple small positive things:

On Friday I got to help a girl see better. One of the women in the HIV support group is caring for her 15 year-old niece and 10 year-old nephew. Their mother died of HIV last year, so she took them into her small shack in Tambo Square (a little village on the other side of the railroad tracks from Gugulethu). Her niece lost her left eye when she was very young. Apparently, she got something in it and no one knew. She rubbed it so much that the item scratched her eyeball beyond repair and the doctors had to remove it. Because of that, her right eye has been working overtime and is now very tired. Her teachers have written home saying she needed glasses but the aunt couldn't afford them. So, she asked me to help and I couldn't say no.

We went to the local optometrist on Friday. The girl got her exam and picked out a nice set of frames. She'll have her glasses next Wednesday and will have a better outlook, in more ways than one.

Also on Friday, the Centre sent six women off to America. They'll be there for 17 days between churches in Dallas, Pensacola and Philadelphia. Three of them had never been to the US before (or anywhere else out of South Africa) so they were pretty nervous. I tried to convince them that Americans are nice people, but I'm not sure they were buying it. Hopefully they weren't basing their opinions just on me!

The tougher things started Thursday and grew to a head today.

First, Rosie. She died yesterday afternoon. She continued to deteriorate throughout the week, becoming almost comatose on Friday. She was very thin and weak at the end, just skin and bones lying the bed. It's hard to believe that just a week ago she was up walking and looking forward to being home soon. I saw her every day, and went with her family yesterday. We left at about 4:00, and by 4:15 she had passed on. It's like she was waiting for everyone to come before she let go.

One nice thing we experienced was when one of the nurses got everyone together and explained what was happening. That was the first time I'd seen any compassion or sympathy in the nursing staff at Jooste. I'm not saying they don't care, because I'm sure they do. It's just that they are so overwhelmed with the patient load that they don't have a lot of time to spare on dealing with family issues. She stayed in the Casualty unit, what we'd call the ER, the whole time she was there because there was no room in the ward. While this upset me at first, it worked out to be a good thing because she had a corner to herself and it was relatively quiet. (Because this is where the doctors hang out, the men guarding the door assumed I was one of them and so I got to walk around and take in the family without any hassles. Being white still has its privileges sometimes.)

The bad thing about her passing was that no one called the family to tell them. They didn't find out until today when some of them went to say prayers over her. When they got there, she wasn't in Casualty. She also wasn't in the ward. After a little while they discovered she had died. That's the third time I've heard of that, where the hospital didn't contact anyone to tell them. I'm sure that doesn't happen in the private hospitals.

The second thing that happened today was a call from Lydia. You may remember her as the mother of Niwo, the boy who is supposed to be having a lung operation related to his HIV infection. Lydia, besides having HIV and the problems that come along with it, also has severe esophagitis, or erosion of her esophagus. She's been in and out of hospital for that over the past couple months and is awaiting an operation to repair it. Today, she called just to say she was in a lot of pain and hasn't eaten for two days. I went to see her, and it turns out she has another problem now. She has some throat infection that the doctor isn't sure of. He gave her some medication but it's not helping. She said she'd go to the day hospital later tonight if it's not better. Since it was dark already and I needed to leave Gugulethu, I left her with her sister. I felt horrible but I didn't have any option to stay with her. She said she'd call me tomorrow and let me know what happened.

The third thing was earlier today when Mogise caught me at church. He's the 28 year-old unemployed man who looks after his household of five. He hasn't eaten for a couple days, again, and needed some food. He was supposed to be getting support from another church nearer to his house, but apparently that hasn't happened yet. He's also supposed to be enrolled in the hospice program, but that's not going either. Or, it could be that he's being helped and not telling me. In any case, we went shopping and got him stocked up on groceries. I'll check on the other support this week and try to get him a long-term plan to support himself.

Mogise is a challenge because he's the first person I've come across who feels like he's entitled to whatever he asks for. He doesn't like it when I say no, or when I tell him I don't have cash for electricity or paraffin. I get the sense he's working the system and getting support without disclosing it, or not following up on his commitments with people to get support. I explained to him today that I cannot support him too the level I am for much longer, but I don't know if he was listening. We'll see how this plays out over the next couple weeks.

This coming week, Tami is off at the clinic so I'm the pharmacist in charge all week. This will be a good test for my job qualifications when I get home. Of course, I'm really only in charge of locking the door when we close because Ntombikayise (the assistant) tells me what to do while we're working!

More to come.