Kayley's work at Talfesig Clinic

Living in South Africa while learning about all of the issues it faces can be very frustrating. Our assignment was to pick an area different then our internship, to gain experience in a whole other area. First, I decided that just one activist project wouldn’t be enough and secondly I really wanted to get a different view of the medical field in South Africa. So my activist projects consist of Talfesig Clinic, hopefully Temba Care and Tears Animal Rescue.

I chose to volunteer at Talfesig Clinic because I wanted a different perspective of the medical field in South Africa. A different perspective is exactly what I got.  When I work at the Red Cross Hospital my work consists of mainly; research, and shadowing Prof either in the burn unit or at the Khayelitsha Maternity Clinic.  My time at Talfesig consisted of going out into Mitchell’s Plain and speaking to the community about HIV/ Aids and drug addictions. We set up a tent on an old run down basketball court for free HIV testing. A couple other nurses and I walked around trying to get people to come to the tent as well as speak to them about drug and alcohol addictions. It was really interesting to see how people reacted to Aids. HIV and Aids is so taboo that people are very uncomfortable even talking about it, so getting people to come and get tested is not easy.  Tuberculosis is just as deadly as HIV but it is not as large of a problem, I think because people talk about it openly. It is not as taboo to say that you have tuberculosis; usually people will still accept you. However, if you were to tell people that you are HIV (+), you would be shunned from the community. Both diseases have medication that will help and prevent death; both diseases will stay in your system forever, yet many more people die of Aids.

While volunteering at Talfesig, I realized how interested I was in HIV and Aids. It is such a frustrating virus and an even more upsetting disease. If it wasn’t so taboo and people just talked about it more openly, there would be without a doubt fewer deaths. The problem is talking about and preventing HIV, would question the lifestyle in many of the communities. Many men in the communities sleep with whomever they chose, sometimes consensual and sometimes not. These men feel they do not need to take responsibility for anything, whether it is a pregnancy, spreading HIV, rape or all three. There are so many single unemployed mothers in the communities. Sometimes because the dad didn’t want children, maybe he found a younger girlfriend, or maybe he did infect a family and does not want to be associated with them. Either way it was mostly women coming to the tent to get tested for HIV in Mitchell’s Plain and mostly women in the Khayelitsha Maternity hospital bringing in themselves and their infected children for medicine.

Since HIV/ Aids is of great frustration and interest to me I wanted to also volunteer at Temba Care. I still have yet to go due busy schedules and inclement weather, but I am planning on going either this weekend or next. Temba care is an orphanage for HIV (+) children. These children were usually dropped off at the orphanage because of the issues stated above. Since it is so taboo to have HIV, many families do not want to keep their HIV (+) children because it is proof that they are in fact infected with HIV as well. So many of the children have been dropped off by their families either for fear of what their community will do or say to them, or because they really can not afford to give the child the proper care and nutrition. I hope that I will be able to get to Temba Care in the next few weeks to further my frustration and understanding of HIV/ Aids.

Lastly, I have volunteered at TEARS (The Emma Animal Rescue Society), which is an animal rescue shelter. Their goal is to rescue, reunite and re-home abused, abandoned, or neglected dogs and cats. (www.tears.org.za) After all of the very heavy HIV/Aids activist project volunteering and shadowing the burn unit internship, I really just need to pet a puppy and debrief. TEARs, is the place. They rescue starving/ injured dogs, and cats from the surrounding communities. They offer the animals medical attention and love, and then get them ready for adoption to a loving home. There are so many stray dogs in the communities it is so great that TEARs is there to help as many as they can.

Those are my activist project activities that I have done and hope to continue to do up until the end of our stay here. I think that these activist projects are a great way to learn about other issues that interest us that are different then ones we may be studying. It also a great way for us to go out and talk to other people and make connections.