week three- extra

I've got some time with the internet today so here's an extra update, which I felt like writing as I had a confronting experience yesterday.

Yesterday I went on a mini-field trip with a guy called Moses. He works at MMH as an HIV counsellor. This means he is the guy that talks to patients about being tested, does the test, gives the results and then counsels people if they are positive. He is passionate about bringing hope to those affected by HIV/AIDS and lives with some of the consequences himself, as his sister has the disease and is very sick. He now looks after her and her family, paying her kids school fees (as he knows the value of an education) and feeding everyone. He has started a program at the hospital which provides villages with pigs. I didn't quite understand the value of pigs here until yesterday. A pig here is like having money in the bank (which most people don't have). If you have a pig that is healthy, has a good shelter, can have piglets and is taken care of, if anything happens- like you need to pay medical bills, or buy food during famine, you can sell a piglet. This project is a long term one. Moses aims to provide villages (with people, mostly women, affected by HIV or living with consequences of HIV deaths) with a pig. This pig then has piglets, which are distributed to different families in the village until each family has a pig. Then these pigs can have piglets which can be used as a savings fund. Not only is it good economically but having a pig to care for as a community (up to 35 people take care of each pig together) brings people purpose, hope and a common goal.

Anyway, yesterday I went to visit the pigs with Moses, to check that they were still doing well. We went to three different villages on the back of a motorcycle (Mum- yes I wore a helmet). It was very fun and the people in the villages were so kind. Some of the pigs are pregnant right now and are doing well. Others are not as well due to having shelters that are not quite waterproof in the heavy rains we have been having. Moses himself also has some pigs, so he took me to his village to see his pigs, family and house. This was the confronting part. Moses is a super happy guy around the hospital. He is well presented, in a business shirt and nice pants. He works hard. I just never thought that when he goes home at night, he often goes back to hunger. The wages here are pretty low. And he is trying to support an entire family. Right now is hungry season, and he barely has enough money to buy maize flour for his family. His sister is frail and very sick looking. She also has malaria at the moment, but Moses doesn't have the money to take her to the hospital. He built his house himself with a loan from the hospital. It's small and sturdy, but he couldn't afford concrete flooring for the whole house, so most rooms have a dirt floor. His pigs aren't doing too great either as the shelters roof is leaking and the ground is very muddy. He told me about how he can't afford to marry as his responsibilities to his family are already too great.

It was hard to know what to say. I knew I was going home, just a couple of kilometers away, to a house full of electricity and water and bread and milk and beer and coke- enough to feed Moses' family for a week! The cost of my toilet paper here was more than the entirety of what Moses has in his pockets right now!

We always talk about not wasting food at home because of "all the starving people in Africa". It just never occur to me that these people are not all in Somalia in the midst of severe famine. They are all over Africa every day, especially at this time of year. And they are people here that I work with everyday.

Thanks for reading my thoughts- suggestion for how to end world hunger will gladly be taken :)