Seasons are turning everywhere. Back home, they were bittersweetly) celebrating the last official weekend of the summer, putting on sales at Staples and dusting off the big yellow buses. Soon the hot, humid summer days of Boston will be a faint memory. But here, summer is yet to begin. Only six weeks ago, I was wearing sweaters nightly, sleeping under a thick blanket and keeping a shawl with me daily. But if I thought it was a bit chilly at times, Zambian women were cold. The older women wear plaid blankets as shawls. The fashion for the younger women with babies is to wrap a fleece blanket around themselves and the child on their back, over the tightly wound chitenge that actually hold the babies in place.
In case you wanted a fast lesson, here's how you do it. 1) Lean forward at the waist. Make sure chitenge is within reach. 2) Lift up baby/child and swing them around onto your back. This is the part where you have to balance them there so they don't tumble off. 3) Fling chitenge around you back so that it rests over the child and you. 4) Be sure to tuck it under the child's bottom. 5) Bring both ends of the chitenge around either side of you, and tie them together, slung across one shoulder. Voila! You have yourself a convenient sling in which to carry your child on your back, now completely arms free. 6) Bonus step, when it's cold, wrap additional fleece blanket around you and baby, tying in front, so that baby is now merely a fuzzy hat clad tip of a head peeping out from all the fabric wrapped around you.
These blankets, may I add, are high fashion, and often feature teddy bears, hearts, or cartoon characters. Sometimes if I walked into work in only my short sleeves, the Zambian would shiver just looking at me, “Aren’t you cold?!” they would exclaim. But really, the Zambian cold season is ideal weather for me, sunny, warm, breezy days and delightfully cool nights. Now, though, it’s hard to remember being cold at all. Last weekend was the first official pool weekend here at McMansion.
At the Sunday crafts market last week, the noonday sun burned with enough intensity to drive us inside. At home, we turned on our fan for the first time. Even when we have an overcast day, it’s just a tease. There will be no rain until November or so. Morning clouds always burn away. Zambia has but three seasons- cool, hot and wet.
There’s change at CIDRZ too. On Monday and Tuesday, the long awaited TB/HIV Peer Educator training finally took place. Although I haven’t struggled through the entire two-year process of getting the okay to start this pilot, I felt a definite satisfaction at the start of Monday’s session. Over the course of the two days, the more time I spent with the four new peers, Mary, Stephen, Dennis and Elizabeth, the more I was inspired. By definition, peer educators must be HIV positive. Through this training, through this job, they are making the most of their situation, and their HIV positive status. I thought about this during the opening prayer, when Stephen expressed repeatedly and heartfeltly how grateful they were to be there, gaining this knowledge, learning to help others. During the session on HIV/TB coinfection and drug side effects, I thought about how they know these effects first hand. At the end of the first day, one of them got scolded for having been late that morning. She went on to describe how little she sleeps, how there’s a health problem with her husband, who is positive and on second line medication, and how her children are positive, and how all of them are taking medication every day. I almost wanted to cry right there, for her, for the unfairness of it all. I thought about the courage it takes to not only face their status every day, but immerse themselves in a world of people who share that status, to talk about it, educate, support. I wonder if I could do it myself.
Trainings are a big deal here. When the peers were asked on the first day what they hoped to get out of the training, one of the goals they stated was, “To get my HIV/TB coinfection training certificate.” They did indeed get their certificates, ceremoniously. I almost felt as if I was at a graduation. Each peer got to come up to the front of the room, shake four hands, and receive their certificate. The TB portion of the training was only two days, but they have been through almost three weeks of peer educator training. This indeed was an accomplishment. They have been given the tools-basic medical and medication knowledge, counseling training, health education training, training on clinic flow and understanding of the referral systems. With all of that, as well as with the logbooks I so carefully designed for them to keep track of patient numbers, I’m eager to see how it all goes.
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