Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Douala, Cameroon
From the moment we arrived in Douala, tired from the long dusty road and the infuriating police check points during which the Stingray and its passangers mired in a perpetual series of temper tantrums, we knew everything was going to be OK. This is because Francois Happi, a wonderful stranger, a friend of a friend decided to take us under his generous wing and meet us at the city’s entrance. We waited until the cursory greetings and formalities were done with (about two minutes) and then launched into an illustration of our ginormous task list of car repairs, the need to meet with HIV/AIDS organizations, how much we needed internet café and telephone communications and our never ending banking problems. Francois merely said: “No problem. I will help you do all of those. I am on vacation for the next week. I will arrange everything.” Seriously?
Francois did not let us down. True to his word, we immediately sped off to a party being thrown for people living with HIV at the SWAA community center and clinic. Our faces red from dust and slick with sweat from the outrageous humidity that is characteristic of Douala, we crashed the party and were soon sipping on our favorite drink, Pamplemousse (grapefruit juice) and talking to the women who ran the organization.
Francois made everything this easy. He drove us around town ceaselessly to cross items off our task list. The car repairs were the hardest to solve. The repairs turned into a week-long ordeal during which Francois’ trusted mechanic scratched his head and insisted that the car was fine while we tried to explain in broken French how it was not acting ordinarily. Eventually with patience and a lot of test runs, the Stingray decided to expose its secret ailment (which turned out to be small) and be cured by the mechanic’s trusty hands.
Francois also set us up to speak with an organization who is working on providing much needed HIV education and awareness projects to the people of Douala. SUNAIDS, an organization run almost entirely by people living with HIV had been solicited by Douala prison’s doctor to coordinate HIV education and testing of inmates. We were hosted for a remarkable visit to the prison, marking the first time that I had set foot in a prison in Africa.
My work within the jail system in San Francisco prepared me for what we encountered. As Nate and I walked through the prison gates and into the courtyard which housed at least 800 prisoners, I did not feel the least bit nervous despite recognizing that the set up here would be considered a sizeable security risk in the States. The female guard told us to stay close as we walked across the yard of inmates towards the prison’s clinic. Hundreds of eyes followed. In front of the clinic was a man who had a serious infectious disease on almost half of his body. He lay in the shade and did not look up.
The prison doctor (the only one for the city and the only doctor enlisted to provide the entire state’s prisoners with HIV education) was an amicable man who talked about his work with a sense of justified magnitude that I admired. Compared with San Francisco whose jail conditions are exponentially better, the work that this doctor had cut out for him was substantial. With a limited budget for medicines, he spent his days in a perpetual state of frustration, drawing on a strength and conviction that I have previously only ascribed to missionaries.
I had anticipated that the inmates would be indifferent about knowing their HIV status. But upon spending five minutes conversing with a group of four peer educators that had were trained to provide counseling and education to the entire prison population, I began to understand that the program was working exceptionally well. The peer educators ran weekly workshops and periodic sensitizations for the whole prison about HIV. There were no other services or programs in the prison, except for a religious service run by a local church. As a result of these efforts, the prisoners were extremely enthusiastic about getting tested. The numbers of tests performed were staggering. Each week, fifty inmates lined up to complete the tests, fifty being the number of tests available through the grant. I thought this was very impressive.
From the moment we arrived in Douala, tired from the long dusty road and the infuriating police check points during which the Stingray and its passangers mired in a perpetual series of temper tantrums, we knew everything was going to be OK. This is because Francois Happi, a wonderful stranger, a friend of a friend decided to take us under his generous wing and meet us at the city’s entrance. We waited until the cursory greetings and formalities were done with (about two minutes) and then launched into an illustration of our ginormous task list of car repairs, the need to meet with HIV/AIDS organizations, how much we needed internet café and telephone communications and our never ending banking problems. Francois merely said: “No problem. I will help you do all of those. I am on vacation for the next week. I will arrange everything.” Seriously?
Francois did not let us down. True to his word, we immediately sped off to a party being thrown for people living with HIV at the SWAA community center and clinic. Our faces red from dust and slick with sweat from the outrageous humidity that is characteristic of Douala, we crashed the party and were soon sipping on our favorite drink, Pamplemousse (grapefruit juice) and talking to the women who ran the organization.
Francois made everything this easy. He drove us around town ceaselessly to cross items off our task list. The car repairs were the hardest to solve. The repairs turned into a week-long ordeal during which Francois’ trusted mechanic scratched his head and insisted that the car was fine while we tried to explain in broken French how it was not acting ordinarily. Eventually with patience and a lot of test runs, the Stingray decided to expose its secret ailment (which turned out to be small) and be cured by the mechanic’s trusty hands.
Francois also set us up to speak with an organization who is working on providing much needed HIV education and awareness projects to the people of Douala. SUNAIDS, an organization run almost entirely by people living with HIV had been solicited by Douala prison’s doctor to coordinate HIV education and testing of inmates. We were hosted for a remarkable visit to the prison, marking the first time that I had set foot in a prison in Africa.
My work within the jail system in San Francisco prepared me for what we encountered. As Nate and I walked through the prison gates and into the courtyard which housed at least 800 prisoners, I did not feel the least bit nervous despite recognizing that the set up here would be considered a sizeable security risk in the States. The female guard told us to stay close as we walked across the yard of inmates towards the prison’s clinic. Hundreds of eyes followed. In front of the clinic was a man who had a serious infectious disease on almost half of his body. He lay in the shade and did not look up.
The prison doctor (the only one for the city and the only doctor enlisted to provide the entire state’s prisoners with HIV education) was an amicable man who talked about his work with a sense of justified magnitude that I admired. Compared with San Francisco whose jail conditions are exponentially better, the work that this doctor had cut out for him was substantial. With a limited budget for medicines, he spent his days in a perpetual state of frustration, drawing on a strength and conviction that I have previously only ascribed to missionaries.
I had anticipated that the inmates would be indifferent about knowing their HIV status. But upon spending five minutes conversing with a group of four peer educators that had were trained to provide counseling and education to the entire prison population, I began to understand that the program was working exceptionally well. The peer educators ran weekly workshops and periodic sensitizations for the whole prison about HIV. There were no other services or programs in the prison, except for a religious service run by a local church. As a result of these efforts, the prisoners were extremely enthusiastic about getting tested. The numbers of tests performed were staggering. Each week, fifty inmates lined up to complete the tests, fifty being the number of tests available through the grant. I thought this was very impressive.
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