Home Visits

As we are spending more time here in Jos, working at the clinic, we have had the opportunity to observe and help with more aspects of the daily tasks of the care. We have spent time in HIV counseling and testing (a person must see a counselor before and after getting tested to educate them on what HIV/AIDS is and to help them live a more safe lifestyle with their positive/negative results), sat in with the doctors who see patients for their routine visits as well as walk in's, spent some time in the lab where they run the tests and bloodwork, the pharmacy to help fill prescriptions, and in the monitoring and evaluation (record keeping) department so that statistics can be given to the donor agencies on the amount of people served and it what capacity. We also had the chance to go out on a "home visit" through the home based care department which is where clinic employees visit patients who are either too sick or live to far away from the clinic to travel, which had a very real impact on both Kristen and I.

We drove probably a half hour to the outskirts of Jos to a run down urban area where the roads are more jagged rocks than pavement, and the sewage flows down the streets, and sometimes under people's houses. We were visiting a 13 year old girl named Ayse who is HIV positive (not sure how she contracted the virus, but this situation is not too uncommon here), and had been at the clinic a week ago. The doctor had given her family some money out of his own pocket to get the girl something to eat because she was severly malnourished (as is often the case with HIV patients). When we arrived, the girl was not there. The home based care worker then told me that she had come to visit a few days before, and found the family had used the doctor's money to feed themselves, and the girl had not received any. The home based care employee realized that the girl had an infection, which is potentially lethal for a malnourished HIV patient, and needed to go to the hospital. The worker brought the girl to the hospital, and had the family admit her. After talking with some of the neighbors at the girls house, we found out that the family took her out during the night because they didn't want to pay the hospital bills. The mother took the girl to her home village outside of town so that the girl could die. This 13 year old is most likely dead now because her family chose to pay the rent than her hospital bill, partially a victim of poverty, partly a victim of an uncaring family.

The second home we visited was another 45 minutes from the outskirts of town, where we visited a women in her mid thirty's who had lost all appatite due to the advanced nature of her condition and had diarriah due to her medication. Her family however, was doing a much better job of taking care of her. She was too weak to help out in the village, but people still cleaned her home (a 10 by 10 room with a thatched roof, a mattress on the ground and two chairs) and always made sure that she had something to eat, no matter how little everyone else had. Despite the good care, her condition had deteriorated from the last visit, and the doctors were trying to see what they could do to change her medication so that she would stop the diarriah. The woman, despite her condition invited us all in and was asking how we were. She was thankful for us coming to see her, that we would take the time to visit. We prayed with her for healing, for her appetite to return and the diarriah to stop. Despite her condition, she was thankful. It is really hard to imagine how someone who is in such a situation can still be thankful, but that is the case here in Jos, people are thankful for every day despite their conditions. They rely on God because they have no other choice. Amazing people. We have a lot to learn from them.

Thank you for sharing in our experience, and I hope this post finds you well.
Jon