Encounters: My Experience of Other Lives and Histories in Cameroon: August 2006

I am so used to life here in Kumbo it seems almost surreal that I have another life awaiting me in the states. I have become so involved in my life here, so involved in my work that these last few weeks have flown by and already they have gone... Perhaps I never fully explained what type of work I am doing…with HIV and breastfeeding.

During my last trip to Cameroon all of my research regarding breastfeeding practices in the Nso tribe kept leading me back to HIV and I became very close to the local midwife and HIV program director of the Catholic hospital in this area. She taught me to help her with her patient load in the anti-natal clinic in exchange for her input in my research project. Together we spent hours discussing the HIV cases and the rising numbers of children born with HIV and those who contract the virus through breast milk. Last year “support groups” for mothers with HIV, most of whom were tested in their 3 trimester of pregnancy, were just getting started. I involved myself a lot in these groups-to encourage these women to live and to do their best to help their babies to live and to grow and if possible to prevent mother to child transmission of the virus. I left quickly last time-- falcipirum malaria proving one of the highest costs of living in Cameroon and was therefore unable to ever complete the research that I was doing and attend the support group meetings I had promised to attend.

In my absence, M. Ita-my favorite midwife and teacher stayed in close contact with me via email and shared with me the growing concerns regarding the support groups and the necessities of getting them in working order…more and more women were delivering their babies and committing suicide to avoid what they understood as an imminent and wretched death from AIDS. People living in isolated situations with this virus become sick at devastating rates, their CD4 counts were dropping drastically, and infections were consuming their bodies….while those who attended groups and established relationships with others living like them with the same illness, instead, seem to thrive along with their children. Madame Ita then asked me to continue my research when I returned with a focus on the group follow-ups to conduct a ‘local needs assessment’ and gather ideas and feedback from patients—it was up to me to design my own method of carrying out this task. I first visited all of the groups on their monthly meeting days and introduced myself and my research goals. I recognized so many of the group members from my last visit to Cameroon-I had helped examine some of them before they had delivered or immunized their infants after birth----we all had a great reunion.

The first day I arrived I started designing my questions with Madame Ita and other members of the support group teams and I hired a research assistant to help me translate and guide my around the villages I wasn’t familiar with. I will call her Ig for now. She is my age with two children. She delivered her first child 9 years ago and the second is 2 years old. Last time I was here she was dying of advanced AIDS. She had lost more than half of her body weight because of tuberculosis and she had given up her fight---and was waiting to die. My host mother’s (Josephine) daughter Suiven, carried food to her everyday-they had been friends since primary school and Sui didn’t want her to die. Sui brought her to the house I am staying at for Pius (my host father a retired nurse of 30 years) to treat her with medicine. Pius could not help her-but Ig had no money to go to the hospital-she was finally carried there unconscious by her mother, by then she weighed less than 60 lbs… The HIV counselor at the hospital told her he wouldn’t let her die-she was put on Anti-retro-virals (ARV’s) and today she weighs 150 lbs. She is hilarious and we spend most of time hiking around the villages laughing and she cares about the patients we see with the passion of someone who has lived many days in their shoes…she loves them like I do. Together we hug and hold everyone we see and all of their children-when we meet people who are too sick to do their farming-we farm for them all day and talk while they sit in the shade of a palm tree. We make jokes with patients about the rather uncomfortable side effects of the ARV’s and we encourage those who feel like giving up.

Most people we meet cannot afford treatment-they start it but they can’t pay the $6/month for the drugs so they stop and get so sick they can’t work their farms-which is their only source of food for their families. Many of them have had to give some of their children to family members because they could no longer feed them and care for them and most people live in isolation with their condition for fear of horrible discrimination by family and community members. We pack bags of food, toys donated from my mother’s nurses, pens (which cost more than a person’s 4 month salary), and lip gloss for the women donated by my Aunt Darlene!! I sit in their homes and gather ideas…most of all I ask them what they want-what they need-what their struggles are. You see…NGO’s and foreign governments can give all of the free ARV’s in the world but without food and clean water people will not live. The area I am working in is made up of 90% subsistence farmers-meaning people work their farms to feed themselves and their families and whatever is left over they try to sell. Most of their farms are on steep slopes that make up the valleys and hills of the Nso area and most people have to walk roughly 5-10 miles to and from their farms…carrying their babies on their backs and the harvests on their heads. So, one can imagine how difficult life becomes when someone is chronically ill and weak.

There is a lot of course that needs to be done to improve these people’s lives and it seems overwhelming when you look at the whole picture, especially from far away…but when you sit up close-close enough to see the crinkles in a person’s eyes when they smile and feel the rough signs of hard work in someone’s hand and kiss the softness of their tiny baby’s head it feels possible to start somewhere and to commit yourself to making a difference---whatever that may be and in whatever way you are able. Some difference making starts with friendships and some personal sacrifices and in the end…after everything…you end up with bonds and ties that create meaning in your life and you feel so honored and so blessed to have the gift of knowing such courageous and vibrant souls.

Meyeh Alexander Ngong asked me to post his photo here...He 54 years old and this is his eighth child Bris, asleep in his arms. Meyeh's parents didn't have the money for him to finish secondary school, so he finished school at the age of 10. His first wife left him, and he remarried a few years ago. His new wife is almost 30 years younger than him and when she got pregnant with Bris and attended anti-natal clinic she discovered she was HIV positive. Meyeh did his test then too and so began their life with HIV...

Meyeh's wife works beside the road selling "sweet drinks" like Fanta and Coke and eggs. Meyeh says, " That is where we get small monies to buy our drugs and our food...oil, salt, and the rest I manage." It is true, he "manages" everything else...including the childcare and all of the farming. He grows everything he can and each day he hoists two 20 liter drums on his shoulders with a bamboo stick holding them together and sets off for the stream an hour away to collect water for his family to drink, wash with, and cook with. He makes this 2 hour roundtip, twice a day...His family needs about 80 liters of water a day to function.

Meyeh wants to live...it is as simple as that. He wants to help Bris get an education before he dies and he wants to watch his children grow...so he works harder than anyone I met along my travels, and he smiles a lot.

Bris was tested for HIV 3 times and each time the result is negative and for this his parents thank God.

Once a month, Meyeh travels about 2 hours on foot with Bris on his shoulders...to the HIV support group meeting where he shares his thoughts and encourages others to dance and sing and to LIVE their lives. That is where I was lucky enough to meet this strong man, a bit shorter than me with the largest laugh in Kumbo...he asked me to tell you his story.