What?

I don't get why it won't let me copy from MS word unless I right click and change the "encoding" to "Western Europe (windows)"
Un Myste're

Haiti!

Hello dear readers I am welcoming you to another of my blogs. I want to start with a reflection on my week, but before let me just underline the disaster in Haiti and how our response is needed. Imaginate, non ci rendiamo conto del fatto che mentre che ci occupiamo di impegni quotidiani e affair della nostra vita, tante gente cerca di sopravivre, una vera lotta per la vita. Anzi, cene rendiamo conto solo quando siamo davanti alla TV, guardando le notizie del giornale e poi continuamo a vivere come sempre =( Imagine we do not realise that while we are occupying ourselves with our day to day business, we do not realise that people are struggling to survive. Actaully, we do realize this, but only when we are in front of the TV watching the news and then we move on.

How did we become so inured and desensitized to disasters? Anthropologists probably have looked at this phenomenon to understand the social structures and cultural constructs that allow us to bypass any serious, long term engagement with people who are suffering in places removed from our world, such as on the island of Haiti. In any case, I donated U$5 to the relief efforts in Haiti, it was online and took me less than 5 minutes.

Sunday January 31st

Hello dear readers I am welcoming you to another of my blogs. I want to start with a reflection on my week, but before let me just underline the disaster in Haiti and how our response is needed. Imaginate, non ci rendiamo conto del fatto che mentre che ci occupiamo di impegni quotidiani e affair della nostra vita, tante gente cerca di sopravivre, una vera lotta per la vita. Anzi, cene rendiamo conto solo quando siamo davanti alla TV, guardando le notizie del giornale e poi continuamo a vivere come sempre =( Imagine we do not realise that while we are occupying ourselves with our day to day business, we do not realise that people are struggling to survive. Actaully, we do realize this, but only when we are in front of the TV watching the news and then we move on.

How did we become so inured and desensitized to disasters? Anthropologists probably have looked at this phenomenon to understand the social structures and cultural constructs that allow us to bypass any serious, long term engagement with people who are suffering in places removed from our world, such as on the island of Haiti. In any case, I donated U$5 to the relief efforts in Haiti, it was online and took me less than 5 minutes. Please donate – whatever it may be – to save lives. It really makes a difference.

I am writing now after a long Sunday. I went to mass in the morning with my mother and I was supposed to meet up with an Italian lady, Barbara Castelli, that I met here in Windhoek (at the Aataba Contemporary dance performance in July 2009).

She did not make it, had to pick up her daughter from a farm nearby Windhoek in the morning. The friends of the daughter were apparently going horse riding and they could not take her with (kind of rude). I then went to the youth mass at Corpus Christi parish in Wanaheda, Katutura, what some may call the Ghetto side of town. The taxi driver I was in from Pioneerspark (where I always go every Sunday , usually with my mother) told me the history of the church in Pioneerskpark in relation to the one in Waneheda. Both are Catholic, but the one in Pioneerspark is just a road crossing away from the suburb of Hochlandpark. This suburb was called the Old Location, where black people used to live before the forced remove of 1959. One of our Namibian Heroines protested against this forced removed, and the police shot at her and the crowd. She fell and died amongst others that fled for their lives, their blood – as is in the Namibian National anthem – waters our freedom. People were forced to move to Katutura, which means “the place we cannot stay in Katutura”.

The youth mass in Wanaheda was resounding, it was loud, I heard the reverberations of dozens of voices of young men and women, blending together, alivening the whole church, reaching every one of the four walls and the slanted roof. The voices, so deep of the men were under the high voices of the ladies, it was rough, rugged, not professional, and full of life and potential. The church was really African for this reason, and that we also danced, in steps, during the offertory procession and as we stood in pews, singing songs in indigenous tongues. And there is the rhino stone for an altar. Covered in cloth, this black rock really made it all African.

When I was in the first mass, sitting next to my mother, I thought of the things I set myself. The goals and I have and I wondered whether I am living according to God’s Will or to my own, as the priest talked about in his homily (preaching). I though, all of a sudden of Dror, as I looked outside the rectangular window of the church, and how the peach brown hues of the wall broke to the light bright and blue of the world outside the window. The “bird of freedom” that is what his name means and I wondered to what extent he continued to dialogue with people, as he did at Brandeis under the DOME (Dialogue on Middle East). I wondered what he was doing and whether he found a job. I meant to write to him, but just as many other thoughts that flutter into my mind, it passed and it came again. The computer screen and the internet are not there at the instant – when I want to put my thoughts to posterity – so I am writing it now in my blog.

As far as the United World College experience is concerned, two experiences of the day come to mind. The first is a girl in our Catholic Youth Group who applied for the UWC scholarship, cause I announced in our group, it was advertised in the paper. I wonder whether her application made on time and whether she called the number in the add to make sure. The guys on our national committee, who select, are busy putting together a framework for it all, the selection process, rather than just making it up as they go along. Then, there was conversation I had this afternoon with the Bulgarian consulate to Namibia. He is a friend of our family – even before he became the consulate – and he told me about the genocide in Serbia. The international community – except Namibia – condemned the actions of the Serbian government against the Muslim (Albania) minority and voted for the sending of troops back then, in 1999. He told me how the genocide was a reaction to the killing of Serbian civilians – women and children – by the Albanian minority, who were instigated and armed by the US, according to him. Retribution followed swiftly and the international response completely ignored the fact that Serbs were also killed, that this was not a one dimensional ethnic cleansing inspired by some hate of Albanians. I think now to major conflicts in the world, and always when I have spoken to the people most viscerally affected – such as Palestinians or Orthodox (should I call them Zionist?) Jews – I always come away with the feeling of sympathy for the affected group and how unjustly they are treated. It is rare to find someone who can explain the position of his or her people while taking into account the view of the “other”.

About the “other”, I wrote about it in an article on non-communicable disease and AIDS, which I will soon send to the HIV clinicians’ society and a non-profit called Management Sciences for Health, with whom I want an internship. I wrote about how the Non-communicable disease are literally relegated to the “other” category of the patients health care card for ART treatment and how this categorization compromises surveillance efforts for chronic illnesses such as diabetes or heart disease. I guess I could have written more than just a paragraph about the “other” in this huge article, it reads like a major review on non-communicable diseases, but I think that would be a literary article as opposed to public health one.

Then, there are the flies, Drosophilas, in my kitchen. Our kitchen. I live at home, if you don’t recall. We have a peach tree and we collect small peaches, with small seeds inside, they are a mini variety. They rot quickly and flies congregate around them, flying over them. These fruit flies remind me of my lessons on development of the Drosophila melanogaster. I want to go into detail about the different genes, such as bicoid, hunchback, even skipped and the segment polarity genes, as well as shibire, a gene involved in the pinching on the

Christian salvation!

Last Sunday I read the Bible and more often than not, reading the Bible leaves my faith shaken, as was the case then. I read a part of the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans , chapter 9 verses 19-24:

“quote”

I find this verse very disturbing. It seems St Paul is telling us that God can choose to make two pots, one for keeping and the other for destroying (verse 19-22). As humans, we have no right to ask God why he does this. But of course we do! The whole idea of creating pots for destruction which are compared to humans is cruel, in my opinion. It is like we were made for hell and verse 24 corroborates this.

I felt increasingly frustrated with this verse, but then I read further. In Chapter 10 St Paul speaks about how he prays for the Jews to be save “quote verses 1 to 2”

I compare this to our Catholic Prayer, The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, which has the principal words of “For the Sake of His Sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world”. So if St Paul can pray for salvation of others. Chapter speaks about the unification of Jew and Gentile in Christ and how the message needs to be proclaimed “God is the same Lord of all and richly blesses all who call to him. As the scripture says, ‘Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved?’ ” (10:12-13)

So then he speaks about spreading the message and how that is necessary for people to be saved. However, then it makes no sense with what was said earlier. No-one can be doomed to destruction, because really, does it not mean that we can all be saved, so God does not purposefully make us for damnation.

Concerning the Jews, in Roman 12 Paul affirms how that even though the Jews may reject the Christ, God cannot break his first covenant, His promise to them and reject them “ Romans 12 verse 29-32”

Again, the universal mercy is reaffirmed here.

It just makes more confused. Perhaps this faith is syncretic and there are elements that are not completely consistent. Nonetheless, I am in love with Christ and I believe he will figure it all out.

I just remember the talk I had with David Lewa, I think the last day of reunions 2009, we were outside Spelman and he was about to leave, to take time off. We spoke about this and we prayed, we stretched out our arm and held them and prayed. I was questioning this idea of condemnation and he prayed for me. David Lewa is a great guy, another example of a Christian that draws others to Christ by virtue of his sincerity.

All theology boffins, Zach Marr, JD Walters, Jay Han would you comment on this? Morgan, my friend from Namibia, please also comment on this, you too are a theology student. I have great admiration for you, I personally could not study this “professionally”, it would drive me mad.

Heart diseas and Mondesa

When we think of heart disease, we think of heart attacks and strokes – something white people tend to suffer from. We the logo of the heart association on tubs of unsaturated (expensive) margarine, the kind used by white people on television adverts. Indeed, those we consider as white people are often genetically predisposed to suffer from heart disease. In South Africa, for instance, it was found that 1:200 Afrikaaners have a family history of coronary heart disease. However, let us not delude ourselves into thinking that cardiovascular illnesses – a blanket term for several heart diseases – are limited to whites only. The risk factors necessary for the development of cardiovascular illness are a diet high in fat and refined carbohydrates, smoking, alcohol consumption and lack of exercise and these cut across racial lines. A confluence of these risk factors occurs in the township, where people have few dietary options, live amidst substance abuse and rarely have access to recreation facilities for exercise. Therefore, the finding that most deaths due to cardiovascular illness occur in the Kayletchia township of Cape Town and the fewest in the wealthier southern suburbs was not surprising for South Africa. So infact, it is poorest people, who are often black, who are most risk of cardiovascular illness.

It is against this background that the poor community of Mondesa in our very own Swakopmund, Namibia, is loosing an outlet for soccer playing, for recreation, for cardiovascular exercise.

I planned to finish this letter above to The Namibia, but I opted to write an article on chronic diseases instead, where I will tie in this travesty of closing the sports filed.

Visit to the AIDS clinic

I walked in fleeting steps through the L shaped corridor, blue walls with doors every so often on either side, it resembled any other corridor in the central hospital, but it actually was the antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinc where AIDS patients pick up their medicine and see the doctor. I turned into the longer arm of the corridor looking for room 8. Locked. So I headed for the open door of room 9 where I could see nurses in white uniform talking inside. Just outside the room sat a young man, in his twenties, perhaps only a few years older than me. He had a clean haircut and a body to die for; he did not look like an AIDS patient. He looked to meet my eyes from where he was seated and I turned away. Did not want to stare. I thought about the way he looked at me, as if to ask “Who are you and why are you not seated waiting, like the rest of us?” Really, what was I doing there? I was looking for a doctor at the clinic so I could interview her “Do you know where Dr Miriam is, because room 8 is locked”, I asked the nurses inside room 9, “Go to the other side”, a young lady told me and so I headed back to the shorter arm of the corridor. On my way, I looked around and saw that it was a normal day at the hospital, patients were waiting outside almost every door and I would have to wait. Perhaps I could sit down and talk to them, tell them about my article on chronic diseases and how these illnesses changing the normal way we deal AIDS patients and how they cope with their illness. “Pharmaceutical governance of the body through ART and medications that fight cholesterol would become difficult for AIDS patients”; I would explain, “because of the adverse interactions between the two medications.” “Take it from me, its going be much harder living with AIDS now that you have to cope with risk factors for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer,” I would say. Honestly, how could I even ponder this? I do not even have HIV, I have not worked in their community, nor do I have a degree in medicine. All I had was shirt, black, with “the words fighting AIDS together” written in orange. This was from Princeton, from when I did the AIDS walk in New York City with other students in 2008. Had I started that talk, I would have come off pretentious.

So I just continued on to room 9 and 10 on the other side. There was no room 8. I figured that since patients were sitting on a bench outside room 9, the doctor is probably seeing somebody there. “Is doctor Miriam inside?” I asked a man seating in front of me, “Yes doctor is in” he replied pleasantly, “Is Dr Miriam?” I posed to make sure I was at the right door “I don’t know” he answered as I turned back to the other room 9 to ask the nurse for more specific directions. As you might expect, I was escorted back to room 9 where the doctor was and I sat down alongside the other people. People indeed, because if HIV becomes merely a virus kept at bay by the drugs in their bodies, there is no need call them AIDS patients.

I was next, and I entered to speak with Dr Miriam. I introduced myself and told her how I was writing an article on chronic diseases under the auspices of the HIV clinicians’ society. I pulled out my notebook and began with the questions I had prepared, so as not waste any time. She assured me that I was not obstructing her patient flow, which put me at ease. We spoke about Dyslipideamia, otherwise known as abnormal metabolism of fat, and about cardiovascular disease. It was a conversation I tried to guide, but then I realized that me saying less allowed her to say more. Obviously, but I just had to add to nearly everything she said. Most notably, she talked about her periodic assessment of the cause of death in ART patient booklets of deceased perons “ Once a month I go through the files to see what could have happened to kill the patient. I do this informally, by myself.” In the context of our interview about cardiovascular disease and ARV, she said “ it is not easy to see that this patient died because they started this ARV or…” and I cut in saying “because the effects of ARV, lack of exercise and diet are synergistic and bring about chronic disease” and she just affirmed it say “yes exactly”. But why did I just not let her go on? This was not a showcase of how much I know about. I probably would have learnt more had she continued that sentence, but now I will never what would have followed that “or”. On the other hand, my familiarity with the material at hand allowed us to establish a rapport quickly and she spoke to me as if I was a health practionner “ Yes, you are right, we do see dyslipidaemia, in our case lypodystrophy with patients that have been on NRTIs for 10 months or more.” I knew what lypostrophy was and so I only needed to clarify which NRTI (nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor) she referred to and she told me “especially stavudine”. But this was just to break the ice between us, to open up the forum, not to show off.

At the end of the interview, I assured she would just remain a “Medical Officer at ART” clinic. I sensed she was reluctant to answer the question “Can I use your name in the article?” which prompted me to offer he confidentiality. Trust was fostered and at the very end she shared her perspective on the whole exercise “You know I really like this research you are doing, because I think it is important. I worked at a district hospital before I cam here and people are just so focused on HIV and TB only, they really miss out on the non-communicable diseases. I remember there was one patient [HIV positive] who was loosing weight and the CD4 count was high. I don’t know how many sputums were collected, but the patient did not have TB. Then someone did a blood sugar test on this patient and it was 34.”
“Is that high?” I asked to understand the patients ailment. “Really high!” she exclaimed in reply. I then tried to determine what the normal range for blood glucose what were the units of that 34, but I realized it was not important. Clearly, the patient was suffering from diabetes, because their glucose was not being used by the cells, which resulted in the wasting away of the patient, since the body breaks down fats and proteins for energy. Indeed, the wasting syndrome is typical of AIDS patients suffering from communicable disease such as TB and so the health providers at the district hospital were fixated on that possibility. I wonder to what extent this has to do with the fact that the patient ART booklet provides a list of opportunistic infections the patient may suffer from and TB, while all chronic conditions such as heart disease are relegated to the blank space next to the word “Other”. It is up to the doctor to then detail this “other” condition on the following pages in the ART care book. Absolutely, I suspect that the list of AIDS opportunistic infections that was compiled by the CDC in 1987 impinges upon the inclusion of chronic conditions in the idea of AIDS.

If you were thrown in jail

“If you were thrown in jail, and you were innocent, what would your first though be?” was the question I heard on the radio, from a man, clearly a journalist.
“I dunno, but I hear that people get raped in there and I would not want to be raped,” was the reply from another man and it came with a bit of chuckle. Though I do not know who the respondent was or the context of this interview, both of them are more than aware of fear of rape in the prison.