Two weeks ago Mama and Pastor Tukai had a meeting with the government health services department. Apparently Hai district (our district) has 22 orphanages and the government is convinced that the orphanages are running a dirty business and making a profit. Consequently they plan to shut down many of the orphanages.
With this knowledge, Mama and Pastor Tukai enter the meeting. The bureaucrats on the other side of the table proceed to lecture Mama and Pastor about all of the things that they need to be doing at the orphanage. They say that all orphanages must buy a water storage tank which costs about 600,000 TZS (about 400 USD). They also make some rules about volunteers working with orphanages. It's all a big racket considering the government contributes absolutely nothing financially to the orphanages.
At the end of the meeting, which would be more appropriately termed a chastising, the child services officers say that they have a child that they need to place and ask Kao La Amani to assume the responsibility. Pastor and Monica look at each other with confusion and anger. How could these people sit there and make ridiculous rules and accusations, then change face and ask a favor? The health services officials respond that Kao La Amani is the best orphanage in Hai district and they have nowhere to put the child. They treat the orphanage like a child care program with little regard for the difficulties it must overcome. However, in the end Pastor and Monica disregard politics and agree to take on the child. How can they make a desperate child suffer for the government's bad behavior.
John arrived at the orphanage while I was working at the farm. The sisters gave him a shower, clean clothes and something to eat. Three of the Irish girls were working in the classroom and met him when he arrived. They explained later that he was terrified. The poor kid had never seen a white person in his life and was now in a foreign place with strangers of his color and strangers of another color. John was an orphan that lived with his grandmother. Recently however, they took a bus together and she simply left him as she no longer wanted to care for him.
Over the days that followed his arrival to the orphanage, we have seen John begin to settle in. He has become close with one of the older boys named James and feels comfortable confiding in him. One day he asked James, “do you mean to tell me that they will feed me three meals a day and give me clean clothing, and if I am sick they will take me to the hospital?” This was so foreign to John who was used to being neglected and receiving a maximum of one meal per day.
It quickly became apparent that John's health was not great. Dada Marietta took John to the hospital to get examined. When I returned home from the farm that day the mood was morose. John had tested positive for HIV. The poor kid is eleven years old and cursed with the death penalty. Dada Marietta and Mama immediately took the appropriate precautions and moved him in with the two other HIV positive girls. He now receives daily medication and his health seems to be improving.
Mother to child transmission is one of the largest causes of the spread of HIV in Tanzania and likely the reason why John is HIV positive and has no parents. The scale of the HIV problem in this country and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa reminds me of how important HIV education is. Even if scientists created the miracle cure for HIV today, it would take years (perhaps decades) to eradicate the disease from this continent because of the lack of education. It is a curse with no short term end in sight.
