Sister's Of Charity

I do not have much time to write because in a few minutes Michael and I will be heading to Sodo to see Dr. Ruth and Sophie and to see his birth family. This is the same drive we took about 8 years ago in search of some answers and to see where M and Y came from. We have been looking forward to this all week. Yesterday we spent with the Sisters of Charity which was a long and rough road out towards the far reaches of north west Addis. In the car was an NP who is here studying some natural pathic remedies and an Ethiopian Pediatrician who does a lot of teaching on HIV in the outskirts of Addis, Bekah, the nurse I am staying with who is working on a TB/HIV project. There used to be a nun who gave the kids a mixture of Aloe and Honey before ARVs were available and she swore by its ability to slow the progression of HIV. That nun is no longer there- but the ghost of the once lively Aloe field shadows over the new clinic where they will only give ARVs and do not believe in alternative or complimentary therapies. The complex where these kids live is absolutely beautiful. They grow their own food. Have a state of the art school on the compound where all 361 kids with HIV who live in the orphanage attend along with uninfected children from the community. Early on they tried to send the kids out to schools which created a stigma- clearly someone very smart and very wealthy said- "hey if we build the best school you can find in Ethiopia - those kids will WANT to come to school here no matter what." and it worked- not kidding the school might as well be DSST its so nice.

The clinic is also state of the art and they have started caring for women ad children from the community. Most of the cases were TB cases. On 16 year old who looked about 5 at the most- no body fat who had horrible disseminated TB. She was left to die for a year before her father brought her in. When she whispered that she was 16 my heart sunk. A baby with congenital cataracts which looked possibly like something secondary in my inexperienced opinion who was waiting to get fat so she could have surgery. She kept kicking her leg as if to say "Would one of you people please do your job and pick me up!" She was darling and as we got close- she knew- because she beamed at us with a toothy grin.

The orphanage itself has a few dorms, some nice play grounds, soccer field and basketball fields. The actual dorms are packed with bunk bends flush to one another. So a long room with 15 bunks right next to each other along each wall- 60 kids in that room...then the next room the same...the next room the same...it never seemed to end. It was meticulous. The laundry system was amazing, the dining halls were all clean, the kids uniforms were like brand new, the kids seemed happy and playing as they left school. It appears that they have taken a horrible situation of having too many HIV+ children without parents and have built the best physical complex they could. But I couldn't help but think as I saw the rows of bed and rows of table that there cannot possibly enough adults in these kids lives to provide them with the love they will need to really make it in the world. All the HIV medicines in the world just wont do the trick if you don't have someone who loves you enough to see you through the tough times and to laugh with you during the good times.

In some was- even though it was beautiful- like the best summer camp you can imagine...it really made me feel sad...because these kids will not get on a bus in August and find a mom and dad and big sister and Brother waiting to pick them up and take them home. They are doing the best they can with what they have. My advise would be to break up those big rooms into smaller family unites with consistent caregivers. They have the land and ability to do this. They have a transition house for the 18 years olds and so far it has not been successful...as you can imagine...but if they started early with a family unit- and those kids grew like family they could all transition together. Better yet- these kids need real families. So I would look into which agencies have started pairing with this agency and go from there- if you are ever so inclined to adopt a child living with HIV that is.