29 August 2005 - Flailing no more!!!!

It looks like your humble correspondent is actually now a professional correspondent.

I just filed my first story from Rwanda earlier today. If all goes well, I should hear from my Catholic News editors back in DC whether it’s going to run. To be honest, it’s a little nerve wracking. When it goes onto the wire, I’ll post the link.

Here's the story: I went with Rebecca and some of her CRS colleagues last Tuesday to see a rural health center where anti-retroviral drugs are being handed out to HIV/AIDS patients. It’s something new for Rwanda, within the last year. Previously, people either had to come into Kigali, or they were even further out of luck.

It was the first time out of Kigali for both Rebecca and me, and Kigali is definitely not like most of the country. Muhura, which is in Byumba province near the border with Uganda, is dirt poor and mountainous, around two and a half hours from Kigali. The roads are made of hard, red clay, winding through the mountains and with the necessary complement of ruts, grooves and divots. The four-wheel drive we traveled in seemed to find every hole, or perhaps there was no flat road to find. We bounced around within the confines of our seatbelts, and I couldn’t write as I interviewed Andre, CRS’s program manager for the rural ARV treatment project.

The people in Muhura are subsistence farmers, growing potatoes, corn, cauliflower, sorghum and sweet potatoes. Banana trees and coffee plants lined the road, and people picked bananas for eating and selling. People live in dusty shacks with corrugated metal roofs. If ever there was a picture of African rural poverty, Muhura was it.

HIV and AIDS aren’t the problems in the countryside that they are in the city. Only about four percent of the rural population has the disease, whereas the city average rises to 11 percent, parts of Kigali up to 17. But in the cities, people had access to medicines rural populations didn’t.

Muhura health center, where we went, is run by a group of nuns who struggle mightily with their burden. More than 30,000 people fall under their care, and malaria, tuberculosis and violent diarrhea are constant threats to the population. The compound of buildings with green courtyards has separate wards for HIV, and the capacity to have around 20 people in need of urgent care. There is also a maternity ward of 12 beds, and they are almost constantly full, Sister Eugenie, the center’s director, said. They are also building a much-needed tuberculosis ward.

Anyway, I won’t say too much about the HIV/AIDS program I saw because I want you to read my story when it’s posted. But I met the first people I knew had been condemned to death. I interviewed several AIDS patients who are on the anti-retrovirals. The drugs hold off AIDS, sometimes for several years, but each person has their own expiration date.

It’s odd looking into the eyes of someone you know is going to die, maybe soon, but who appears to be in fairly good health. It’s more discordant than sad. The people I spoke to all retained their hopes for the future, even though it may be short. It’s hard not to get caught up in that hope, even if you doubt how long the future will be for that individual. It's not like talking to someone with cancer, either. There's some hope with many cancers. Not with HIV. As I said, the drugs merely hold off the disease for a while, but a person's not getting better, no matter how healthy they look.

Before we got there, I was nervous about meeting my first person living with HIV/AIDS. But after I got over it and remembered that I was talking to a human being with the same hopes and dreams as just about any other human being, albeit with a huge anvil hanging over their head, I was fine.

I just forgot to get the last names of the nuns, which delayed publication by about four or five days while I scrounged around for them.

So, yeah, work is officially off the ground and running. I am picking up my press card tomorrow. It turns out that it’s $300 for two months, not three. The prices really are extortion. That's making me feel a lot better.

So has running. I began this morning a little after six (what have you done with Evan!) with the cry, “Let’s take that hill!” and off I went.

The hill in question is the one leading down to our house. It’s the Darth Vader of hills, twisted and evil. It’s the same red clay found throughout Rwanda, packed tight and hard, almost to the consistency of asphalt. I think it may have been paved at one time; Bec differs on that score.

The hill is at a 45-degree angle if it has any slope at all. It seems to go on forever. It is rutted and rocky, dangerous to drive, death defying to walk.

And I plan on running it every chance I get.

The first time I did it, last week, I thought my chest was going to explode. I almost didn’t make it up. But I did, passing workers as they trudged with their tools and school kids in their uniforms, rushing off to class. All of them had a look of, what is that crazy white boy doing?

I made it. And then I basically dragged myself for a couple of hundred meters to catch my breath. I walked past a brother and sister, waiting for their ride to school. “Run, run,” the older girl shouted. All I could do was wave and smile. I didn’t have the air for words.

I was eventually able to capture oxygen again and ran back down the hill. Jean opened the gate with a look of surprise that I made it home alive.

Today was a little easier. It didn’t hurt as much, and I was able to pick up my jog a little faster. I hope to be able vanquish the hill soon.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to post more often – I didn’t realize I had fans! I’ll also keep you posted on my travels. Possibly Burundi in the next few weeks to find out about the new president and hopes for peace there.