Erica's work at Themba Care

For the past three months, I have volunteered every Friday at ThembaCare in BridgeTown. Themba Care is a home for children who are living with HIV/AIDS. Themba Care provides these children with 24-hour medical attention, ARV drugs, and the love and care they need to remain happy, healthy, and positive. Many of the parents who turn to Themba Care are either too sick with HIV to continue to care for their children or are too afraid of their families finding out about their illness or their child’s illness to give their children the proper medical care. Many of the parents are also living in poverty and cannot provide the medical care the child needs. The goal of Themba Care is to temporarily care for a child while simultaneously helping the parents learn how to care for their child’s needs. Therefore, while the short-term goal is to care for the child, the long-term goal is to have the child return to the biological parents when the parents are ready.

My tasks at Themba Care were generally simple—hold the child, play with the child, laugh with the child, and give the child all the love and support that I could possibly give. I would usually volunteer at Themba Care in the morning, so the majority of my time was spent working with infants and babies. While I tried not to get attached, seeing the same child every week makes it very difficult not to get attached. I will never forget my first day working at Themba Care. A baby named Imange had recently been dropped off at Themba Care and he was severely malnourished, with advanced TB (a common side effect of HIV). I remember he was screaming and crying in pain, and so I held him for 4 hours, keeping him close to my chest with the hopes that my heart beat might soothe him. I could feel all the little bones in his body as I rocked him back and forth and tried to provide him with some sort of comfort. When I asked someone how old he was, they told me he was almost 3 years old, even though Imange was the size of a 3-month-old baby. That same day, Imange began vomiting blood and had to be taken to the hospital. For three weeks I returned to Themba Care and Imange was nowhere in sight. I would ask about him weekly, and they told me he was still recovering. Finally, 4 weeks after the first time I met Imange, he was able to return to Themba Care. I’ll never forget what it felt like to see Imange again—his weight had increased drastically and he looked so much healthier than he had before. He even smiles and laughs now!

Before I began working at Themba Care, I had never met anyone with HIV/AIDS. I remember learning about statistics and hearing numbers—X% of children are living with, are dying from, or have died from HIV/AIDS. While I knew about the technical aspects of the disease—how it worked, how it could be contracted, how to prevent it—I was emotionally removed from the disease. I had the privilege of being sheltered from the realities of HIV, just as I was often sheltered from the realities of racism, sexism, and classism, though it existed all around me. But, now, after working at Themba Care, my eyes have been opened, and I am so glad. Working at Themba Care helped me put a face to HIV/AIDS rather than a statistic—now when I think of HIV, I think of Imange, Likolethu, Owethu, Luyolo, and all of the other beautiful babies at Themba Care. I no longer carry the stigma I once had about the disease. Once you feel a baby’s tears on your skin or their laugh in your ears, you no longer associate the child with the disease. You begin to realize that HIV does not define a person, but rather the other way around. This reality was life changing for me, and I am so thankful for my time at Themba Care.

I would like to continue to affiliate myself with this cause when I return back to the United States. Though the statistics for instances of HIV/AIDS are certainly higher in Africa, HIV/AIDS awareness and education is still a huge issue in the United States as well. I plan on making much more of an effort to help others understand HIV/AIDS so that more people can begin to put a face to HIV rather than a number or statistic. Like so many other experiences I’ve had here in South Africa, this experience has forever changed me and made me more aware of the world I live in and more aware of how I can contribute to making a difference.