Where has the time gone?

I really can’t believe almost 6 months have gone by since I arrived back in South Africa and first began working at m2m. It especially does not seem like the Holiday season here, as the incredibly warm weather and lack of Christmas commercialism (at least in comparison to the States) can make a person nearly forget what time of the year it is.

These past 2 weeks have been very busy in the office. Last week, Nzwaki was visiting from East London (she’s based at the Innovation Center in East London and we’ve spent quite a bit of time with working with each other over the past months) to work with Monica and me on wrapping up the Baby HIV Test Study. To remind you, the Baby Study is the first study to take place at the Innovation Center, which is a group of 10 sites where m2m can pilot and evaluate new initiatives before rolling out new protocols to all 600 sites. This particular study aims to see whether Active Client Follow Up activities (phone calls and home visits) help increase testing for babies (a major drop-off point in the PMTCT care continuum). The study is also trying to elucidate what the major barriers to testing are, and to evaluate the cost of ACFU activities in relation to beneficial outcomes. I’m really happy I’ve been able to become more involved in the study and am glad I’m getting the opportunity to learn about different kinds of research other than just what goes on in the lab. I’ve been sifting through our final database and working on all the analyses (and learning a ton about Excel in the process, haha!), and when we come back in January I’ll get to jump into the writing stage of things. It’s been really fun to work with Nzwaki and Monica on this project and I’m excited to see how it turns out. And it was really nice to have Nzwaki in the office last week – too bad she’s based in East London!

Last Friday everyone in the office had the afternoon off for the annual office Holiday party. This year it was hosted at the castle across the street from the office. (Yes, there is a castle in Cape Town. For your history lesson, it was built from 1666-1679 by the Dutch East India Company and is the oldest surviving building in South Africa.). After an inspirational office-wide meeting where Gene presented all of the year’s progress (expansions, number of women reached, famous people who visited, etc.), we all walked over to the castle and enjoyed a lovely sit-down lunch together. It always takes a while to adjust to a new environment and workplace, so it’s nice to realize that I finally feel like I really fit in the m2m community. I’m just glad my upcoming trip home isn’t the end of things and that I get to come back after Christmas – the longer stay, the more excited I get about our projects and the more I value my time here, so I feel very fortunate in that respect.

Yes, it’s that time of year when it’s impossible not to sit back and reflect on how fortunate I am to have access to the opportunities I’ve had. Living here, where millions of people are faced with a very different reality, really puts things even more in perspective. And here’s a shameless plug – if you want to make a holiday donation this year, consider donating to m2m! :)

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone at home in just a few short days! More to come in January once I return…

View of the castle courtyard where we had our holiday lunch


A good crowd!


Nzwaki and me

Concerts galore and related epic disasters

This last weekend was actually rather tiring, seeing 3 concerts in 3 days (though obviously not something I can complain about, haha). After Friday’s World Cup Draw party, on Saturday, Julia, Wenli, and I spent the entire afternoon sitting outside listening to various bands play at an outdoor restaurant in Hout Bay. Even though we had seen Freshly Ground the night before, it’s always a pleasure to see them and this time there were just a handful of people between us and the band, as opposed to thousands, haha. (For anyone who doesn’t know Freshly Ground, you should check them out – they’re great fun!) It was a perfect way to spend a sunny summer afternoon – outside, on the beach, listening to music. Despite applying layers and layers of high SPF sunscreen, I still got a little burned, but that’s ok – maybe this means I won’t be the pastiest person in the room come Christmas time, for once :)

Hout Bay, where Saturday's festivities took place


Just before Freshly Ground went on, there were some really great dancers imitating the MTN robot

And finally, Freshly Ground!



To round out the weekend, on Sunday, Byron, Julia, Wenli, and I went to see The Killers play at a vineyard in Paarl (a wineland area about an hour outside of Cape Town). Huge international bands don’t come to Africa that often, as you can imagine, so everyone around here was rather excited. The show itself was pretty fun, and of course it was quite unique to see them play at a vineyard, as opposed to a concert hall or regular indoor venue…but I don’t think I would ever, ever do something like that again. Confused? Well, let me take a minute to explain...

Julia picked Byron, Wenli, and I up at 3pm and we jovially embarked on what we thought would be approximately an hour-long drive to Paarl. We anticipated some parking issues, so we figured if we arrived at 4pm we were allowing ourselves plenty of time to deal with crowd issues before the 6pm start time. If only we had foreseen what was coming.

Shortly after 3:30, traffic came to a grinding halt on the freeway, and we inched (quite literally) along for, oh, a mere 3.5 hours or so. Being stuck inside a hot car and really having to pee isn’t the most fun thing in the world, as I’m sure you all can imagine. However, once we exited the freeway and reached the road the vineyard was on, our good spirits returned with the excitement and anticipation of the concert inspiring us. Noticing tons of cars were just parking along the side of the road at this point, and having read online at the vineyard website that the venue was 3km from the freeway exit, we opted to park as well, looking forward to stretching our legs a bit, still seeing nothing but a slow-moving, endless line of cars ahead of us, and assuming we would then be able to beat the traffic on the way back if our car wasn’t jammed up in a vineyard parking lot.

Thus, at 7pm we abandoned the car and joined forces with the hundreds of other concert-goers walking to the concert. Hearing music far off in the distance, we were sure we were missing the concert and walked as fast as we possibly could to make it to the venue. We walked along the main road for quite sometime and finally saw a sign for the vineyard up ahead, turning onto a smaller paved road. Then we once again walked for quite sometime before seeing another sign for the vineyard, this time turning onto a small dirt road. Do you see a theme here? Once again, we walked for quite sometime before we finally saw signs of concert life. Oh, did I mention that Byron and I have lately been having knee problems? Yeah, Byron tore his meniscus about 2 weeks ago and I’ve encountered some knee pain that has forced me to stop running for the time-being. Yes, considering that half the people in the car were icing their knees during the drive to the show, it wasn’t exactly an ideal situation to be walking for hours on end. (Thankfully, my knee caused me no problems whatsoever yesterday and is doing fine today, but I have to say, I don’t know how Byron made it, limping along and visibly in pain for the whole time. You amaze me, Byron!) Suffice it to say the vineyard was most definitely NOT less than 3km from the car.

So, let’s see…at this point it was about 8:30pm, we were hot, sweaty, hungry, and tired, etc. and there was no band onstage. Though we missed the opening act, luckily The Killers had not yet come on and by the time we arrived, we only had to wait about 15 minutes for them to start playing. It was a huge venue, and I think I would have actually appreciated the surroundings had I not just spent over 5 hours trying to get there. Yeah, that kind of put a damper on things. In the end, I did enjoy the show, but I think that’s beside the point as far as this nightmare is concerned.

At 10pm when the band finished, dreading the walk ahead of us, we somehow managed to find the energy to trek for however-many odd kms back to the car, in the dark. It only took us 2 hours though! (That was sarcasm, in case you didn’t catch the tone.) Haha, it sort of felt like we were participating in some sort of “Night of the Living Dead” ordeal, walking in pitch black darkness across fields and along roads in the middle of nowhere surrounded by hundreds of half-dead (from exhaustion) concert-goers. Well, by the time we reached the car, most of the traffic had cleared and it only took us 45 minutes to get back to Cape Town. I guess that’s one thing to be appreciative of? (We talked to a woman from work this morning who said she was stuck in her car for 3 hours trying to exit the venue.)

So, to sum up, 4 hours waiting in traffic to get there (or sort of near there) + 3.25 hours walking back and forth + 0.75 hours driving home = 2 hours watching the band? Unfortunately, I think it’s quite obvious that one side of that equation far outweighs the other, especially when you consider that I actually forked over $50 to participate in the madness…

Can I just say, if you have a vineyard, perhaps the kind that only has one entrance, and if that entrance consists of a one-lane dirt road, it might not be the best place to hold a concert with thousands of people attending? Yeah, it definitely does not take much thought to see that one coming. I had gotten my hopes up with the relatively smooth operation of the World Cup Draw, but this is case in point why I’m a bit concerned about how South Africa is going to handle hosting a World Cup. I hate to be this scathingly critical of event planning in a developing country, but the thing is, this situation would not have been that hard to avoid if someone had just sat down and thought about it for approximately 2 seconds. Anyway, I sincerely hope the “park and ride” trend catches on in Africa before June.

Well, I think about the only thing we have to be thankful for was the band coming on hours late – given the trials and tribulations we went through to get there and back, I hate to think how we would have dealt with things had we missed the show. Haha, at one point the band even apologized for being late, explaining it was due to the fact that “yeah, we were on the same one-lane road you were.” In conclusion, as refreshing as the open air was, having now experienced what a never-ending walking tour of Paarl is like, I think we’re all in agreement that next time we’ll be doing all vineyard sight-seeing by car.

Ok, even though it was a hike to get to the vineyard, I admit the view was quite nice

It's hard to get good pictures in the dark, but it was fun to see the band. I guess.


And now for this upcoming week, I’m looking forward to resting (at least socially speaking)! Should be a very busy week at work, as Nzwaki is visiting Cape Town to work with Monica and me on writing up the report for the big study that recently wrapped up at the Innovation Center in East London. More to report on that later!

World Cup Draw

As an avid soccer/football fan, needless to say, I’m quite excited that my time in South Africa coincides with this country’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Yesterday the World Cup Draw was held in Cape Town, as I’m sure many of you know. Feeling as though this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that simply I could not miss, I donned my South Africa jersey and decided to brave the crowds and chaos and head out to Long Street to take part in the festivities (and thanks to Wenli and Julia for sticking it out with me!), despite not having the greatest confidence in the South African police force and its ability to manage crowds.

So, anyway, after work we headed directly out to Long Street…along with about 30,000 of our best friends. Though a bit crazy at times, it was really fun to get caught up in all of the excitement. To use South African slang, it was quite “vibey.” Long Street is known as the party street of Cape Town, lined with numerous bars, restaurants, and shops. Oh yeah, and it’s long. Though many of the bars have second story open decks, we had no chance of making it inside anywhere by the time we arrived on the scene, so instead we just kept fighting our way towards the top of the street where they had set up a big stage and huge TV screen. We actually managed to get relatively close, at least close enough to have a decent view and hear everything. Yes, despite the annoying Afrikaner woman wearing a giant orange pumpkin hat with a stem coming out the back that kept poking me in the face, it was a relatively pleasant experience considering the number of people present. Before the draw began, bands were playing and everyone was just dancing in the street. I was really happy to see K’naan (a Somali-born musician that I like), and it turns out one of his songs is the official song of WC 2010. Watching the draw was fun too, except for the fact that South Africa received such a disappointing outcome. The U.S. certainly did alright, but it was way more fun to spend the evening showing my support for South Africa than the U.S., as you can imagine! Following the draw, Freshly Ground (my favorite South African band) played as well. After 5 hours on our feet, we finally decided to call it a night. Everything went very smoothly, raising my faith in South African police security just a little bit and making me even more excited for next summer. All in all it was a fantastic evening and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to participate in the revelry! Ayoba!

Starting at the back end of Long Street, we have our work cut out for us to make it closer to the stage



Well, at least the pumpkin hat wasn't this big (yes, that's a hat)

Looking back at everyone behind us - finally, some progress!

Watching ourselves (well, the crowd) on screen

K'naan singing the official song of WC 2010, "Wavin' Flag" - hence all the waving flags

The crowd went absolutely wild when Madiba came on screen

Charlize Theron wasn't actually that exciting as an MC, but the I guess new ball looks cool

Julia and Wenli with Pearl, a coworker we ran into. Oddly enough, amidst that huge crowd, we still saw 4 separate people we knew. Once again, Cape Town can be a very small town.

Freshly Ground on stage

At one point some people on the street started singing the South African national anthem with a bunch of people on the decks above. This picture obviously doesn't convey much, but it was really fun to see everyone get so excited about the upcoming World Cup. Only 6 more months!

David Beckham visits m2m!

This was a particularly big week for m2m. On top of World AIDS Day publicity, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador David Beckham went on a visit to Site B Clinic in Khayelitsha last week (see link). As my dad commented, those are some of the most intelligent quotes to ever come out of Beckham’s mouth, haha! But even if it’s just due to really good PR on the UNICEF side, it’s so nice to have his support, and it’s such an important message he’s sending. The only downside is I’m still dying of jealousy over the fact that only a few very senior m2m people got to accompany him on the visit. Sigh. But there are obviously tons more important things in life, as I am reminded every day I live here.

Apparently he was very humble and really great with the kids, so further kudos to him.

Here’s a link to more pictures, if you’re interested.

World AIDS Day

Tuesday, December 1st was World AIDS Day. If you had asked me a year ago when World AIDS Day was or what I did to commemorate that day, sadly, I really wouldn’t have been able to respond. This year was certainly different, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

I think it’s important for all of us, no matter where we live, to be reminded of the realities of HIV across the globe. 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, 2 million of which are children and 22 million of which live in Sub-Saharan Africa. 2 million people died last year, and 2.7 million more became infected. 1.4 million HIV+ women gave birth last year, and over 400,000 children were infected with HIV, primarily through vertical (mother to child) transmission. In South Africa alone, 5.7 million people are living with HIV – roughly 20% of the population. In some places in South Africa, 40% of pregnant women are HIV+.

Those numbers are just unreal. Sometimes the scale of the epidemic can make it hard to wrap your head around it, especially when living in a region like the U.S. where being faced with the effects of HIV is not a daily reality for most people. For me, living in South Africa and working for a public health NGO, these numbers are no longer abstract. Being here, working for and with HIV+ people, has really put a face to the name of the epidemic, to speak in cliché terms.

There are more people living with HIV in South Africa than in any other country. Mbeki (South Africa’s former president, for those of you who don’t know) has a lot to be ashamed of. Once an instrumental freedom fighter with the ANC who helped end the apartheid era, he sadly turned into a mad man, denouncing that AIDS is caused by a virus. As a result of his ignorance, the epidemic has had an even more damaging effect on this country, and there’s a lot of catching up to do in terms of removing the stigma, making sure people are tested and knowledgeable of transmission, and providing ARVs to those in need. Despite holding very worrisome stances on HIV in the past (he once admitted to knowingly havnig sex with an HIV+ woman but said it was ok because he took a shower afterwards), Zuma (the current president) unveiled a very broad-reaching and positive policy on HIV/AIDS this week. He pledged to provide ARVs to many more South Africans and is also launching a big campaign for everyone to get tested. Though there are a lot of logistics to be worked out with this policy shift and its effectiveness obviously remains to be seen, it was still very inspiring to hear Zuma. Just having leadership in this country that TALKS about the epidemic is an incredibly important first step.

At the m2m office, all staff convened to commemorate World AIDS Day together. A few people from senior management spoke, and a few HIV+ women shared stories. One woman broke down crying as she was reading us a poem about being strong, which was very painful to witness. Although I cannot understand first hand what it means to live with HIV, over the past few months, I have gained so much insight into this epidemic, and I will never forget who I’ve met, what I’ve seen and learned, and how I feel. Though our office commemoration was sad, the ultimate message was that of hope – of what good people and good organizations can do. (And on that note, an m2m promotional plug: Without any intervention, mother to child transmission is roughly 30%; with the proper antiretrovirals and knowledge about breastfeeding, MTCT can be reduced to under 2%. mothers2mothers, started at one site in Cape Town in 2001, now reaches 300,000 HIV+ women per year by employing over 1500 HIV+ women to act as mentors across nearly 600 sites operating in 7 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.)

Of course it’s hard not to get emotional and dejected when you hear story after heartbreaking story about the effects of HIV/AIDS, but it really is so important not to assume a defeatist mindset. I will never forget the incredible women I’ve had a chance to meet and work with and I truly thank them for their inspiration. I hope the rest of the world doesn’t forget about them either.