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Helen in Africa
Things seem to be looking up. Today Shiama and I designed and organised a project to work on while we are here. We have set up a mobile HIV/Aids clinic that will travel to remote villages where people have no access to HIV testing, offering free tests, counselling and follow-up treatment and refferals. Our team consists of Shiama, myself, two Kenyan HIV counsellors and hopefully a driver. We have managed to obtain testing kits and other instruments from the local district health board and have support from them and from NASCOP. One of the women from our placement who is trained in Aids treatment is even giving up her job for 4 weeks to come with us. We have really had a lot of help and support from Kenyan health workers.
So we have a little more planning to do but hopefully we will be ready to go a week on Monday and will be gone for a month. This means I will have no access to internet or phone. We are self-funding the project. Although the counsellors have agreed to come on a voluntary basis we will have to pay for their and our accomodation and food and some of the necessary equipment. Unfortunately we do not have the support of our NGO. This is not a problem for us as we have support from other organisations and to be quite honest it feels good to be breaking away. However, getting even some of the money we paid back from them is proving difficult. They tried to use the excuse that the family we were meant to be staying with are relying on the money. This seems unlikely seeing as they have a huge house with three TV's, two landrovers and a maid. But really their HIV programme was dreadful. We sat around doing nothing all day. Irene seems to hate her job and only be concerned with money. Not giving her support to this project which everyone else seems to thinks will be great for the Kenyan people only makes me believe this more. I will contact GVN and try and sort something out with them. They are more reasonable.
We are torn between going to the Masailand in the south or to the drought ridden deserts and refugee camps of the north. There are problems with Sudanese Janjaweed and Ethiopian malitia in the north (Helen's parents, please don't worry) so it could be too dangerous but the Masailand is also very needy.
We are calling the project 'The Milly Katana HIV/Aids Project'. We took inspiration from Milly, from Uganda, as she is one of Uganda's leading activists. Diagnosed with HIV in 1995, she immediately became an advocate for millions of others like her. She was the first HIV positive person to sit on the board of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. She also co-founded the Pan African Treatment Access Movement, which is dedicated to getting drug treatment to all in need. She said that the work she has done with others with HIV has helped her 'regain' her life.
Donations for our project would be gratefully recieved. Just email me.
Enjoy the Iona beach party next week if you go...I'm so jealous
Lots of love,
Helen xxx
Ps. This is a link to a report from the BBC about the Kibera slum. It's very accurate and a really interesting read.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2297237.stm
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