A thousand names for rain
on M&S Diary (Sierra Leone), 01/Sep/2006 13:38, 34 days ago
It poured last night– and when it pours in Freetown it really pours. Walls of water fall from the sky, thundering onto the corrugated iron roves of the city. Last night also saw our first electric storm. In September and October people tell us we will see a lot of them. But I should put this rain in context...It has been raining almost constantly for five days. I arrive home each afternoon with my feet and legs stained with red mud. Clothes damp. Everything damp. The pictures we have put up in our room curl away from the walls. But the rain does have two important benefits. The first is that it keeps the temperature down. The second is that at night it drowns out the sound of generators, barking dogs and the pop music which crackles from makeshift radios. In Freetown at this time of year, everyone goes everywhere armed with an umbrella. If the Eskimos have a thousand names for snow, Sierra Leoneans should have at least as many for rain.I have spent this week trying to meet as many people working on HIV and AIDS in Sierra Leone as possible. These have included civil servants at the National AIDS Secretariat, nurses at the Marie Stopes clinic and programme coordinators at Christian Aid, UNICEF and the National Churches of Sierra Leone. I have learnt a lot about the scale of the problem. People talk about the lack of knowledge, negative attitudes, absence of sufficient care, support and treatment facilities, fear, stigma, discrimination and the list goes on.A national survey done last year indicated a prevalence rate for HIV of about 1.5%, rising to 2.5% in urban areas. Many people think this was an underestimate. What is clear is that Sierra Leone could see a rapid increase in infection rates if urgent action is not taken. All the conditions are here to support an explosion of the epidemic. It’s hard to imagine how the poorest nation in the world could survive if it was hit on the same scale southern African nations have been. Life expectancy is already only 34 – what would it drop to if one in four people were HIV positive? And how do you stop that happening? One of the biggest problems seems to be not just a widespread lack of knowledge about the disease but a sense that people just don’t have space in their lives to worry about anything else. A UNICEF representative observed that one of the greatest problems as he saw it was related to the incubation period of the HIV virus. If you receive no treatment you can still be infected for up to eight years before developing full blown AIDS. In a population where most struggle to survive from day to day, it is difficult to get people to care about what might happen to them in a few years time. As he put it “why bother wearing a condom today when you might be dead next week.” And that’s supposing you have access to condoms and know that they can protect you from HIV – which 88% of the population do not. There is also the fact that you might find yourself homeless and shunned by friends and family if you do admitto having the virus. So where is the incentive to be tested or even entertain the thought that you might need to be? I have a lot to learn from a lot of very committed and inspiring people.On the home front, last Sunday witnessed the arrival of a new addition to our household. Patricia or“Aunty Pat” as she likes to be known is a retired primary school teacher who has just returned from 15 years in the Gambia where she went to escape the civil war. Patricia lives in a room on the ground floor and is employed by NEC to look after the house we are living in – quite what that involves apart from bossing Francis about, I’m yet to discover. She is a big presence but very friendly, with a loud voice and an even louder laugh. So now there are seven of us; me and Simon, Simon’s colleague Mr Matea and his wife Aminatta, Patricia and the two boys, Edwin and Francis. A motley crew! For those of you who are wondering, things seem to have resolved themselves a little with Edwin. We explained we couldn’t pay him and that doesn’t seem to have got too much in the way of us developing a friendship. We’re hoping to go with him to see Sierra Leone play Mali at the National Stadium on Sunday!