Rest and Recuperation

After the crazy launch week, we were really fortunate that the Friday was a bank holiday to celebrate King Sobhuza II’s birthday.  He was the previous king who ruled from 1921 until he died in 1982, and negotiated Swaziland’s independence from Britain in 1968.  I hadn’t really realized that it was coming up, but luckily for me some others were more organized and arranged a trip to Blyde River Canyon in South Africa (apparently one of the largest in the world).  It was great to see some on the area near Swaziland, do some walking and have a very relaxing weekend.

Below are some views from our walk.

The Launch

It had been a very late night and a very early start for us all, the aim was to get everyone on the road at 7am so we could be at the site by 9am.  It did not start alarm’s not waking people up.  Then when we started to pack up the cars, the at our office wouldn’t let us out the doors with all the boxes and bags without a signed letter, despite the fact that they see us every day….  So everything was stopped while I got my computer out, wrote a letter, checked it would be okay and then dashed back to the office to print it!  While that was going on we also found that the minibus driver only had a permit to drive via Pigs Peak which is a takes significantly longer and a far more winding road than the other route, which would mean that most people were going to be even later ….

Anyway we eventually got on the road and could have a couple of hours to relax and then plan what we needed to do when we got to the site.  It was promising to see people when we arrived, as there was always the worry that no one was going to turn up!  We then had a frantic hour of moving some tents around and setting up tables for the information tent and for distributing the scratch cards and trying to encourage people to write on a Dream Wall which was aiming to capture and create a collage of what peoples hopes and dreams were for Swaziland in relation to the HIV epidemic.  There was an entertaining half an hour with the team trying to attach large pieces of cloth between two very old basketball poles and then pin all the smaller pieces of cloth to them.  Then even more of an initiative test to work out how we could keep the poles upright without the wind catching the cloth and blowing them over, there was a danger that it was going to become a dream carpet rather than a wall….  Luckily someone thought of tying the poles to the stage and we were sorted minutes before all the guests of honour such as the Minister of Health, one of the Royal Princes arrived, the President of CHAI etc! 

Waiting for the Guests of Honour to arrive

The event was very successful with a mix of speeches, entertainment and a quiz the scratch card raffle.  It seems that everyone in Swaziland is mad for free branded goods we had a few bandanas and t-shirts which as a helper I had to wear and the number of requests I had for me to give them to people at the end of the event was unreal.  However this mania for goods did mean that there was great participation when the Minister of Health did a quiz with questions on HIV with the potential of a free t-shirt if you go the question right!  

The popular gospel band Emagawugawu got everyone up dancing, including the Prince (the one in the red traditional dress) and his police protection officers!

The event has generated a lot of energy and the challenge is for the team at CHAI to capitalize on that and move forward the key projects. 

Preparation for the Launch of Max ART (Anti-Retrovial Treatment); For better health and zero new HIV infections

19^th July 2011

This week has been an interesting week, I have been taken off my main project to help with preparation for the community launch for this project.  It seems as though it has been quite a challenging event to coordinate as it involves so many different groups.  As it is a Swaziland initiative it needs to be seen to be lead by the Ministry of Health, but the key partners who were granted the funding are CHAI and a Dutch group called STOP AIDS NOW! who do not have anyone based in Swaziland.  This has lead to some interesting debates where things that the MOH and CHAI were really excited about and supportive of, may not be seen the same way in Europe by SAN!, which can make it very challenging to get even the smallest thing agreed to!

Also as it is a community launch so the aim was for the community to lead the organization of the event, however when we went in to go through the last details it was clear that not everything is quite as sorted as we hoped.  CHAI has agreed to fund the food for the event, it turns out that to cater for the anticipated 2000 people we need to purchase two cows.  It seems that as we are paying for these then the activity cannot be delegated to the Indvuna (the chief administrator for the region) so today (the day before the Launch) started with us getting up very early to view, negotiate for and purchase cows, negotiate the price for transporting the cows to the butcher and then negotiate the price for the butchery of the cows.  It now transpires that we have to get a representative to the butchers at 5am tomorrow morning to watch the butchery of the cow to make sure there are no disputes later about if we received all our meet!  You can see the photos of one of the cows we bought!!

Trying to Get away ….

Things are definitely happening in african time, we arrived at the location of the launch at noon hoping to check that the toilets had been dug in the right place (they were going to be done ‘first thing’)…. It hadn’t started yet and the tents were due to arrive at noon …. It’s 3pm and counting!!

Waiting for Tents

Well the tents eventually arrived at 4 15pm, then it was a race against the light to try and make sure they were up, in the right place before it got dark.  We stayed to make sure that the tents were at least up in the right place and then left to head back to Mbabne, to find out what last minute things needed to be done back in the office before the launch event.

There was lots of last minute preparation … such as stapling raffle tickets to the back of 2000 scratch cards which we had designed with questions relating to facts and myths about HIV!

Stapling Scratch Cards late into the evening ....

Initial Impressions of Swaziland

Swaziland is a small landlocked country in Southern Africa, it has a population of approximately one million and it is estimated that HIV prevalence in 15-49 year olds is at 26% and 41% of pregnant women have the virus.  The high HIV infection rate has devastated the country it estimated that orphans and vulnerable children account for 15 percent of the total population and the life expectancy in the country has dropped from 56 years in 1997 to just 49 years in 2008, one of the lowest in the world.   I am working with CHAI (Clinton Health Access Initiative), they do significant work with the Swazi government and Ministry of Health to improve access to HIV testing, treatment and care.  They have recently received a new grant from the Dutch Post Code Lottery to dramatically increase efforts to improve access to care across the country, with the ambitious target of ensuring 90% of those eligible for treatment are on treatment by 2014.   I will be working to strengthen the laboratory supply chain systems, they are a crucial function to support all the testing that is required for treatment of people who are HIV positive.

Swaziland seems different to some other African countries I have been to.  Over 80% of the population live in rural areas, and even the capital city (Mbabane) is not really a city more a small town.  The CHAI offices are 5 mins walk from the centre of town and on my first day at the office I one of my colleagues took me out for lunch to give me a bit of an orientation a walk around the ‘city centre’ which comprises of two malls across the street from each other took a maximum of 15 mins and I had been pointed out the major sites ie the best place to do most of my food shopping, where was good to eat lunch etc. 

The thing that really struck me was that there wasn’t the huge density of people that you often experience in Africa, India and other areas and that there was virtually no ‘hassle factor’, just about the level of begging you may see if you walk around central London.  Which if you consider that approximately sixty percent of the population live in poverty, it is slightly unexpected, but probably due to the fact that most of the people with really low incomes live in rural areas and not in Mbabane.

My first week in the office has been really focused on increasing my understanding of the HIV landscape globally and in Swaziland, and also getting an appreciation of the other organizations working in the same area.  Also there is another language related to HIV and specific Swaziland terminology and abbreviations.  If you though GSK has a lot of acronyms then you’ll understand what I’m experiencing now!  My current favorite is  SWANAPPA (The Swaziland National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS).  I’m sure it will all become clear before I know it, but at the moment I am asking a lot of questions!  Another challenging factor due to the number of NGOs you very rarely just interface with the MoH because there is often another NGO working in a similar areas so there needs coordination to ensure all parties are on board and we’re not duplicating.

The team at CHAI have been really welcoming and great in including me in weekend and evening activities and making sure I’m not too isolated during my move.  So far they have introduced me to the weekly activity of ultimate frisbee and African drumming, which were both new experiences which I really enjoyed!  If I have the time they are going to feature in my weekly activities….

Here are are a few photos from my first weekend in Swaziland.  It is winter here at the moment, so everything is very brown and dry.  Mbabane is in the highveld so although it the weather is quite nice during the day if it is sunny, it is cold at night ... a lot colder than I imagined Africa would be!

Getting Ready for School on Monday