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March 17, 2008, The Road to Independence, by Christina McDonald
Most of my family has just recently returned to the Edmonton area after (finally!) visiting and volunteering with our friends the Newtons in South Africa. Our daughter, Danika, remained to volunteer until the end of April. Since Edzimkulu’s inception, we’ve wanted to see the village and country first hand. On a personal note, we wanted to connect with our friends in what has become their second home. We wanted to experience South Africa.
If you’ve read the volunteer postings on this website, you’ll know that most volunteers are struck by the scenery, by the friendliness of the village, by the spirit of cooperation, by the sadness and the joy, by how people survive day to day with so very little. Each volunteer experiences significant moments that stay with them and each volunteer can attest to the contradiction that truly is South Africa.
My own volunteer experience was an extraordinarily intense but all too brief one: I was privileged to be in the clinic, on house calls, in the playground, on maintenance, etc. I was able to join a team of community healthcare workers, home-based carers and Canadians taking a census in the village of Tsawule. I helped distribute food on orphan feeding day. I was allowed to spend a day at St. Apollinaris hospital and attended a Department of Health district meeting.
As one of my tasks, Chris asked if I would write Edzimkulu’s application for the Red Ribbon Awards. It seemed very straightforward: write 200 words in five categories answering specifics that describe the organization, who it is made up of, its goals and challenges, its impact. But with an organization like Edzimkulu there are a lot of directions you can take an application like this. The first is the fact that two communities across the world from each other are working together. The second is that the organization does many things and pushes many boundaries (for instance the distribution of ARVs). The third, and I feel the most significant, is that the clinic and villagers are moving towards sustainability and therefore, ultimately, independence: that this organization is about their grassroots evolution in healthcare more than it ever was about Canadian assistance. But each volunteer will see this issue differently.
I came away from S.A. most affected, oddly enough, not by the HIV/AIDS epidemic; Edzimkulu has proved to me (and to some of the South African Government) that there is hope for managing healthcare on a community basis. The 98% ARV compliance rates, the decrease in deaths from seven or eight a month to two in Ndawana, the 50% HIV testing rate, the steady chipping away at stigma and shame, the HIV support group — all of these are the pillars of our hope.
Rather, what keeps me up at night is the abysmal education system: this to me is the country’s greatest shame, its children’s greatest obstacle in recovery from the health epidemic, the cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face mentality that oppresses whites and blacks in the end alike. Perhaps it is also the best example of the contradiction that is South Africa. That children so eager to learn, that parents desperate to do whatever it takes to get their children to school, that communities so willing to work together simply cannot access meaningful sustainable curriculum, appropriate supplies, adequate facilities and reliable teachers.
Yet there is much to celebrate; we have the health district’s ear (personally I think Chris may have some of their other body parts as well…), the support of two very fine doctors, the community of Underberg’s quiet respect and the friendship of a village of courageous, hopeful people. It is that third direction that Chris, Jim and I chose for the Red Ribbon award application that, for me, rings truest for this time in Edzimkulu’s history in terms of its fight to manage HIV/AIDS. And it’s a pretty sweet sound.
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