Gogo is Still Sick and Meet My Friend Deli

An update of Gogo’s condition.  A few weeks back I wrote a blog about Gogo being sick and the difficulties in getting transportation for her to see a doctor.  After those initial visits, she was sent back home with an unsure diagnosis and a packet of antibiotics.  Since then, Gogo’s condition only deteriorated and Make took her back to the city hospital where she was admitted.  Gogo has been at the hospital now going on three weeks.  Being at the hospital this long with no improvement, I can only assume Gogo won’t be coming back to the homestead, so I went to the hospital to visit instead.

I took the 9:00a bus to the city arriving at 10:30a.  It is about a 15-20 minute walk to the hospital from where the bus drops me off.  On the way there, I pass the most modern mall in Swaziland, complete with a set of escalators.  Swazis are very proud of the mall and its very common for school field trips to add this mall to their list of attractions so their students can marvel at the moving steps.

Coincidentally, as I am passing the mall, I see my Make approaching me from the direction of the hospital.  She is on her way home to check on the homestead, to arrange for a tractor to come the next day, and then to plant the rest of her fields with maize.  It is planting season, and regardless of Gogo’s health, there will be a bigger issue in the fall if there is no maize.  My family, like most Swazi families is reliant on subsistence farming for survival, and Make does the bulk of the work by herself.

As we finish our short talk on the side of the road next to the mall with escalators, Make gives me directions as to how to find Gogo at the hospital, even giving me the siSwati words to ask for help.  I learn that Gogo’s name is Maggie which makes me happy for some reason.  Make doesn’t seem confident that I will be able to find her room, but she also doesn’t realize is that most people are really eager to help me (especially places where there aren’t usually white people).  So I rely on this expectation that someone will help me and don’t fret about not finding my way.

Upon entering the hospital grounds, I instantly realize that this place is bigger than an upscaled single-hall-wayed clinic that I had envisioned, but this hospital was a maze of corridors (more like covered sidewalks between buildings), a maze, a very similar feeling  to hospitals in America.  I am basing my comparisons on my first-hand knowledge of American hospitals which coincidentally can be counted on one hand (first-hand, one hand… get it!), but also my extensive knowledge of hospital tv shows.

So after being led to the female medical ward by a very accommodating nurse, who I’m sure stopped everything she was doing to walk me to the other side of the hospital, I successfully found my Auntie taking care of Gogo in the female ward.  The ward is like nothing I have seen before.  I walk into a large open room with 16 beds, about half of which were occupied.  There are curtains around to separate the room into 8 – 2 bed ‘rooms’ with only enough room to walk between the beds.  There are large open windows along the long wall.  This day was overcast and cool with intermittent showers all day and they have all the windows open.  This is a room full of sick people and probably the only room in Swaziland with every door and window open.  The people in this country are notorious for shutting the windows on public transport even on the hottest of days, but maybe the open windows here are to suppress the transmission of communicable diseases since there is a pretty high rate of tuberculosis in the country.

Auntie, Make’s sister is staying with Gogo alone now that Make had to take care of business back at the homestead.  Auntie’s responsibilities are to stay with Gogo, change her sheets daily, bathe her, feed her, and make sure she is warm and comfortable.  Meanwhile, Gogo is curled up on her bed looking thinner than ever even under the mountain of at least 5 blankets piled on top of her.  Gogo is on oxygen now and I can hear the air flowing.  It sounds like a pretty high dose from what I can tell.  Gogo has a catheter in; the pee bag is hanging off the side of the bed.  I doubt that Gogo can walk anymore.  The charts are held in a box in the center of the room, so there is nothing I can read to know her diagnosis or prognosis.

I say hello to Gogo.  It is hard to see her in this condition.  She looks so helpless, and yet there is nothing I can do to help either.  Gogo sees me, probably surprised that I visited.  All she says is “oh, intfombi yami” over and over.  “My girl, my girl.”  This breaks my heart, but I am happy she still recognizes me and that hopefully, I brought a little light to her day.

When talking to Mom about my visit, she tells me that this ward-style hospital set-up is much like how American hospitals were set up in the past before it was known that having a whole bunch of sick people in one room didn’t promote health or diminish the transmission of communicable diseases very well.  This type of hospital is a relic of the past, much like cassette tapes, VCRs, $2 bills, and satellite dishes.  This hospital did have a private room section for the patients who could afford it.  The private rooms were probably more similar to the hospitals I am familiar with.  It is unfortunate though that the standard of my Gogo’s care is soley dependent on how much money she has.  If she had more money she could be in one of those private rooms instead of being immuno-compromised in a ward surrounded by a bunch of other sick people.  This isn’t just a problem unique to the third world, however, it’s just magnified here.  You know the whole -cut Medicare/Medicaid benefits because those people are lazy and we shouldn’t have to pay for them- debate.  Just because my Gogo is not wealthy doesn’t mean she should be put in a hospital room that will make her die faster.  The standard of her care should not be decided by money.  She is a person just like everyone else.

Time was ticking now.  I still had some things to do in ton before catching the afternoon bus home.  I say goodbye to Gogo and she reaches her hand out after me, “intfombi yami, intfombi yami.” “My girl, my girl.”  With a wave goodbye, I am off.  I reach the front door and ask for a toilet, I still have a long journey ahead of me.  Again I receive great hospitality.  A simple point down the hall is never sufficient.  The woman gets up from her post and walks me right to the door of the bathroom, offering to stay in case I can’t find my way back, but I politely tell her that I will figure it out.  I know you aren’t to concerned about my bladder, but this trip to the bathroom was significant to me because it was the worst part of the whole trip.  The room itself was clean enough, that wasn’t the problem.  The problem as that this bathroom had no toilet paper and no hand soap! Really!?!  This hospital is among the best health care facilities in the country and they have no soap! No soap dispenser, no soap residue on the back of the sink, no bar to hold a toilet paper roll, nothing!  And upon brief inspection of the men’s room (the door was open), the conditions were consistent, a condition I would expect at a public restroom at a state park or gas station, but not at a hospital in a country’s central city.  Great, even less attention paid to communicable disease.  Thankfully, I was leaving there.  My Gogo may not be so lucky.

The following poem, written by Delisile Simelane, a friend from my community seems to foreshadow my Gogo’s unfortunate situation.

 

Death

When death comes around

He is the only one to boast

He brings rain

Rain rain rain

Rain down every one’s cheeks

Rain of sorrow, reign of despair.

When death comes around

everything comes to a halt.

Life stops, no more breathing.

laughing or crying.

Death is silence.

When death comes around

He leaves a very huge gap.

A hole of hopelessness,

A hole no one else could ever fill.

When death comes around

Peace dashes out through the window,

and immediately he enters through the door.

Death is a silence with no peace.

By:  Simelane Delisile

Delisile is 19 years old.  She dropped out of her senior year of high school when she fell pregnant.  A girl cannot remain in school while she is pregnant, and teachers even have the right to ask a girl to take a pregnancy test if they presume someone is pregnant. Anyways, Deli was at the top of her class when she was forced to drop out.  I met her about halfway through her pregnancy when she approached me to ask for money to pay for her exams even though she wasn’t finishing the classwork.  I had to let her down because I won’t help pay for anyone’s school fees or else I would be bankrupt in no time.  I told her I would help with her studying and English.  We have been friends ever since.  Now we teach an adult ed. class for people wanting to learn to read and speak English.  Deli teaches the siSwati sections and she is doing a great job.  I teach knitting/other hand crafts and supplement the English lessons.  

Deli lives on a homestead with only her father (who she calls ‘the old man’), her younger brother in Grade 4, and sister-in-law who also has a baby.  It is a small homestead by Swazi standards.  Deli’s mother is not around anymore.  I have not asked her directly, but taking this country’s statistics into consideration, HIV might have something to do with it. 

 Deli lives in a stick-and-mud hut with a grass thatched roof, no electricity, and no cell phone.  It is common for a person to have a cellphone even when they have nothing else.  Deli, however, is living with the bare essentials.  Her hut has a bed, a table for a candle, school books and Bible, and a box where she keeps her clothes, that’s it.  No crib, no toys or keepsakes from childhood, no posters on the wall that are typical of regular teenagers her age, nothing. 

I asked Deli about the father of her baby girl, Anale (means ‘enough’), 7 weeks old now.  She doesn’t have many good things to say about him.  When she told him she was pregnant, she said that he got in his car and sped off, literally leaving her in the dirt.  It hurts my heart to think about that image.  It also hurts my heart even worse that 7 weeks ago when she went to give birth, she had to travel three hours by herself on crowded public transport, while in labor, to the hospital where she was to give birth for the first time.  It was a different hospital than the one my Gogo is at, but in a smaller city, so who knows what those conditions are like.  Hopefully they had soap.  Luckily, giving birth there only cost E24 ($3USD).  I hope the saying ‘you get what you pay for’ doesn’t apply here.

 Deli has become a close friend of mine.  She is looking forward to helping me with starting a GLOW Club in my community.  She will be a leader of the group and in January she will be taking part of week-long pre-camp training session to prepare for her role as a counselor at camp in April.  This is an awesome opportunity for Deli, a smart girl in an unfortunate situation.  She already shows promise of overcoming her obstacles and can you imagine how much confidence leading at Camp with 75 girls will give her!  Please help make this reality by donating to GLOW.

 I didn’t mean to make Deli’s story an advertisement for you to donate to GLOW, I promise!  She helps me in my teaching and will help me in my GLOW project while I help her with her writing.  She brings me her poems and compositions that she writes out of her own free will.  I told her I would publish some of her writing on my blog, so here is her writing along with a bit of her back story and coincidentally, an opportunity for you to help her out.

Delisile and Anale in my house.