Lauren's Peace Corps Experience in Honduras

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed and experiences described in this travelogue are mine personally. Nothing written here should be interpreted as official or unofficial Peace Corps literature or as sanctioned by the Peace Corps or the U.S. government. I have chosen to write about my experience online in order to update family and friends; I am earning no money whatsoever from this endeavor. Please do not copy or forward any of these contents without my permission.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Hearing their stories...

In the afternoon today during our health tech session we spent several hours listening to the stories of people living with HIV/AIDS. We were visited by 3 women and one child who has HIV.

The first woman contracted the virus through a blood transfusion in 1995. When she got her HIV test later the person at the lab merely handed over her results and sent her on her way, no counseling or anything. She ended up keeping it a secret from everyone and didn't get treatment for several years, depending only on her faith in God. Eventually she came down with an illness and went to her longtime doctor, fearful of telling him she was positive. She ended up having a child with the man she was in love with and her little boy was born negative. However, because she was so excited in general to have a child and the doctor did not communicate the issue clearly to her, she breastfed her son and transmitted HIV to him through her breast milk. Her now 2 and a half year old son was there today, completely adorable. She receives treatment from the episcopal church here, and her son receives treatment by the government, as long as there is money for it, which could be any time. She doesn't regret having him and he is her whole life. Now she is involved with a self-support group, which is now about 15 people in her area. There are soooo many more that don't know they have HIV or refuse to tell anyone. However, through this group she and the others there have learned to go on with their lives, supporting each other and learning that they are not dead, they have a lot of years ahead of them.

One of the other stories was just as sad. She had been with 2 men in her life. The first man left her with 2 children. Her mother didn't help support her so she learned how to support her little family. A few years later she fell in love with a man. They were together for a few years and had a little girl together. The family lived all together and she was very happy. One day he took he aside and told her he had something to tell her. He said he had another family and another woman. She was heartbroken and felt completely betrayed. She told him to leave and go back to his other family, she could take care of herself and her children. But then she got very sick. She was layed up in bed for several days and didn't get better. The gossip mills started running and people were saying she had gotten HIV. She suspected it herself. She went to the doctor and asked for a test. When she found out she was positive she went home and was even more sick. The illness was almost secondary to her heartbreak of being deceived and infected by the man she loved. She was very depressed and finally after being in bed 15 days a friend came and took her to the hospital in Tegucigalpa. She stayed for a month and finally had to get out of there. She came back and decided to go on living for her youngest daughter, the little girl she had with the man she loved. Her mother doesn't support her at all. She looked to be in her 30s but lives with her mother, a woman who orders her around and doesn't let her leave the house without permission. The stigma and prejudice here surrounding HIV/AIDS is very serious. The place she was living before kicked her and her kids out because they found out she had HIV. She was one of the first 4 members of the self-support group, which was started only 2 years ago. Coming out into the open to a group is still a rare and new thing here, and support for people living with HIV is only now coming into the picture. She has a reason to leave the house, a purpose, to go to her meetings and talk to other people like her. She can now tell her story to her group and people like us, a group of gringos in the Peace Corps. Even now, people in their community don't know they have HIV. It is kept within the group. The first lady wouldn't be able to cut hair or do people's nails. The third lady had to quit her job as a nurse because the doctor in charge was going to force her to work in the Hepatitis unit even though she told him it was too risky for her health to work there. She now is the president of the Honduran self-support netwok for people living with HIV.

These people are only a few of the thousands and thousands of people here in Honduras living with HIV. A big thing they are working on is the stigma surrounding it. Most people won't get tested because they believe if you find out you have HIV you will die in 3 months. Another thing they are working on is prevention. And simply to provide an avenue of self-expession in a safe environment. They have a big job to do here. They are looking for ways to become self-sustaining because the Red Cross and some other funding will be ending soon.

Anyway, I wanted to share their stories. It's easy to forget when you hear about the numbers that every one of those numbers represent a son, a daughter, a mother, a brother, a child. It was a really moving experience.

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