The grandmother told us
Lindy loved to go to school, that even though she was too young and was
sick, she constantly whined and begged her grandparents to go to
school. It is a fact that HIV-postive children don’t live far beyond
six years old without ARV treatment. And there was no treatment
available in Likasi. So Hands at Work project leaders told Lindy she
could start attending the Hands at Work community school while she was
still able to make it there. And she did. Little Lindy walked every day
up and down hills for 30 minutes to arrive at school, where she sat on
a small wooden bench with the other students and tried to learn. Every
day she came. She loved it. Then she became sick. As children
get older, the disease begins to liven. And Lindy began to cough too
much to sit with the other children. So the teacher put her in a big
plastic chair off to the side. Still she came every day. Until the
coughing and sickness became too much, and a project worker had to tell
Lindy she needed to stay home until she got better. But without proper
treatment, how could she get better? We met Lindy on a Tuesday morning, when she sat with us for a long time on her couch. The
next day, Wednesday, we were 100 miles away from Likasi in Lubumbashi
city, in a boardroom negotiating a deal to secure a medical doctor and
some counseling staff to travel to Likasi one day per week to provide
ARV treatment to 300 AIDS patients within Hands at Work’s project in
Likasi. All I could think about was Lindy. The partnership was
actually birthed easily, and by the end of the day it was sealed: the
doctor would come; Hands at Work would provide the clinic; he would
provide the drugs; Hands at Work would care for the patients in their
homes, ensuring their overall health and compliance throughout the
treatment. We didn’t see Lindy when we returned to Likasi. We
may never see her again. But we know her name is on that list of 300.
And we’re sure it won’t be long until she’s begging and whining to walk
the hills to sit again in school. *The little girl’s real name has been change.
Lindy and her brother outside their home in Likasi, Congo.In a village called Chitulu, in
Democratic Republic of Congo, on a home-based care visit one day, my
wife and I met a little girl named Lindy. She is five years old. She
has dark, mourning eyes, and wispy little legs that poke out beneath
her skirt. She is HIV-positive. No one seems to know where their father
is, and their very sick mother died shortly after Lindy’s birth. She
has a seven-year old brother who is healthy. The kids live now with
their grandparents.
The grandfather is very old and works each day
farming in their field outside town. He loves his grandchildren very
much, and when Lindy began getting sick, he carried her on his back to
the local clinic. The grandmother is completely blind. She sits on a
soft chair in the middle of their house smiling with her eyes wide
open: creamy white moons leaking slow drips onto her cheeks.
This is
a broken family, but together somehow they are strong. The grandmother
calls out to Lindy: “Lindy, is the door open?” or “Lindy, is it raining
outside?” The little girl is her grandmother’s eyes. The grandfather
relies heavily on his disabled wife for the emotional encouragement to
keep working in his old age. Recently the grandmother became very ill,
and it seemed for a while that she might not live. His old wife’s
illness almost killed the grandfather.