No place that I would rather be

Today I went into the community with Emily, a nurse with Home Based Care. Despite the fact that the volunteers have not gone into the community for 1.5 week now, Emily went yesterday. Initially the HBC vehicle went out with several people into the community. The vehicle came back, but Emily and Busi with young mothers stayed in the community. They traveled in a unmarked car to see patients and others in need.

There is a rising fear in the community that if the volunteers go out to see patients, then the people who are striking will harm them for coming against their addenda. Please pray against this fear!

Emily asked me to pick up patients who are critical and take them to the ACTS clinic. www.actsclinic.com The first patient that we picked up was a young man in his late 20s and his wife. He had never been tested for HIV, but has been sick for some time. He had been very resistant to going to the ACTS clinic as there is a belief in the community that when you go there you die. Emily explained to him that often people wait too long to get tested and to go to the clinic, so that when they do go, they are often very sick. It is not the clinic that kills them, but the fact that they waited so long to go. After talking with Emily, he agreed to be tested with his wife.

The next patient was a young mother with 2 children. Both of her children came with us, the oldest no more than 10 years old with a baby 6-12 months old. The mother was very sick, too weak to even cough. She was clearly in great distress, even to breath.

The last patient was too weak to walk to the vehicle, she had to be carried. She came with one family member. It was evident that she had been sick for a long time due to her severe weight loss, very thin hair and she was not very responsive.

As we drove back to the clinic, a line in a song came to mind "there is nowhere else that I would rather be, than dancing with you as you sing over me." Please keep in mind, it was just last weekend that I was talking with the Lord about the fact that I have given until it hurts.

There is not one thing that I would have rather been doing than to drive these precious people to the clinic. I was honored to be working with nurses like Emily and Unithi who truly love and care for the community.

I wish I could post a picture, but there is not a picture that could describe what I was feeling in that moment.

Later in the afternoon we went back to pick up the patients. The mother of 2 and the patient too weak to walk were admitted to the hospice unit. We picked up the young man and his wife. We will take him back tomorrow to have a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. We took home the young child, 10 years old or less and the baby. This baby will now be this young child's responsibility. It is possible that the mother could come home. It is also possible that she may not. If she does not, the child cannot go to school unless an adult steps in and is willing to help with the baby.

Emily will make a referral for a the child care worker with the Home Based Care to see this family ASAP as this is a critical situation. The Child care worker will be able to connect the children with programs to help them with food and other resources.

Finally we took home another patient that we did not take to the clinic. A child 10-12 with HIV. She was able to talk about her medication and how to take it with just a glance at the bottles. Clearly these medications had become a large part of her life already.

What a day. Tomorrow we will pick up the patient for a chest x-ray.

On a day when the community clinics are closed, people "busy dying" in the community.

There is no place that I would rather be.