An inspirational visit
Missy Mallory found hunger, disease and poverty in rural South Africa. She also found gratitude, beauty and hope.
By Missy Mallory (Biology '07)
Posted to A&S Online 4/26/07
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Mallory (Biology '07) |
For two months last spring I went from village to village and house to house in South Africa's Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces, observing the role home-based health caregivers play in these rural communities. I spent ample time, too, in clinics and hospitals, interacting with patients, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. All of this was made possible by support from U.Va's Center for Global Health and the Institute of Practical Ethics.
I continue to search for the right words to describe my experiences. If nothing else, I have learned that a community, working together, is amazingly resilient and that laughter and song are two of our most powerful tools for overcoming challenges. Even in the face of hunger, disease and poverty, the rural African communities here greet each new day with a song, praising God for the gift of life.
Members of these communities welcomed me, introduced me to their families, their church and their traditions. I viewed Africa through the eyes of the elderly, the sick, the homeless and the hungry, but I have also had the chance to witness the warmth of the people, to hear their laughter and to listen to their dreams. I spent time with men and women who have dedicated their lives to saving others, and I know there is hope here in South Africa.
I spent a few days shadowing the head of pediatrics at the Tintswalo Hospital in Acornhoek (located in the Mpumalanga Province). I still recall the children who looked at me with big brown eyes as they pushed red and green plastic chairs across the hospital floor. Playtime and rehabilitation were combined through this process of pushing and often racing chairs from one end of the floor to the other. At one point, I entered into a nonverbal "conversation" with Gladys, a young girl who was wearing a battered windbreaker and appeared to be pouting in the corner. I learned she had been raped the week before and had just now come forward. Many of the children there were rape victims, according to the doctors leading me around. Another young girl, only 4 years old, was recovering from an eye condition caused by a vitamin deficiency. "She's going to lose that eye for sure. It's just a matter of time," I was told. She was starved for attention, clinging to whoever offered the slightest smile, and it was only after I heard her story that I understood why. The little girl's mother had brought her into the hospital for treatment of a respiratory condition but died from what was believed to be HIV/AIDS while waiting for her daughter to recover. Her father was already deceased. For weeks the little girl lay in the hospital alone, without visitors, fighting to beat the illness that had plagued her small body. When I saw her she was almost fully recovered, but the issue now was where she would go once released from the hospital. The hospital administration was able to contact members of her extended family, who then had to hold a family meeting to decide who would have to take in this little girl. No one wanted her, really - she was seen as another mouth to feed, another child to care for. An aunt was finally given the responsibility - I never had the chance to meet her.
Despite many of the overt challenges these rural South African communities are facing, I am continuously inspired and amazed by the community members. There is song practically every day, and the women here all have the most beautiful voices, carrying effortlessly through the air, conveying with each note the conviction and spirit of the workers themselves. Each job is viewed as a blessing from God, each day an even bigger blessing. The country is so full of color and so full of emotion that I can't come close to capturing it here.
The day before I began my journey back to the United States, the sky was a muted grey, the grass brown, yet the trees were an intense green that shone against the drab background. I listened to the ladies of the Tshishaulu community home-based care organization sing "Until We Meet Again" in broken English to me and my colleagues. The community is full of contrasts. There is dull brown and radiant green, crumbling houses and four-story "mansions." There is life here among the dying, emotion and passion here among the silenced. Songs thanking God for his many gifts flow from mouths that may not have tasted food in days, may not have tasted clean water in weeks. I am constantly amazed by these and other contrasts, amazed by the people who live here in single-room houses, people who cannot walk and care for themselves, yet still greet strangers like us with large, sometimes toothless, smiles, offering us their only chair to sit upon.
I am in awe of the children, no older than four years, walking kilometers to the house where the lady sells bread. They offer only a few coins and hope it is enough, even though they know it really costs over two rand. Even so, the lady takes the child's hand and places in it the loaf. I am pained by the old lady who must crawl across the floor on paralyzed legs to move about her house and horrified by how miserable her condition must be during the rainy season when the floor where she must crawl is a wet puddle of red mud. Her house, you see, has only dirt floors, and the thatch roof does not cover everything. And still there are joyous giggles from the children as they run alongside a "makhua" (white person) after they finish their school day. Still, there is encouraging advice offered by a man nearly 71 years of age who tills his own garden, encouraging all of his children to go to university. He tells them that only through hard work and dedication to their studies will they achieve success.
These and other things give me hope. There is the passionate commitment the home-based care workers show to their patients and their community as they work days on end without pay. Hope cycles through the community, reverberating in the melodious songs of child and adult alike. Within this community, where HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and gastroenteritis-related deaths are commonplace, where there are so many disabled and mentally-ill adults and children, there is still life, the most vibrant life.
My colleagues and I gave the organizations we worked with small tokens of our appreciation, including over 300 pairs of medical gloves and safety surgical scissors donated by the U.Va. Medical Equipment Recovery of Clean Inventory (MERCI) project. I only wish I could do more.
The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and they are the radiant green leaves fighting to survive against the drab grey skies of yesterday. The circle has not been broken - the communities are surviving and the cycle of life pushes on. The caregivers here work relentlessly, attempting to provide care to their neighbors and to strengthen their community.
If I had to share just one thought from my time in South Africa, it would be that these caregivers are truly the inspiration which blooms in this region of the world.
A&S Online, April 25, 2007
Missy Mallory (Biology '07)