My USB has an STD!!

(sorry this is an old entry from November that never got published yet!!


Yep that’s right, Katie informs me it is called herpegonorrsyphillaiditis!!! Well people that is what you get what you go around sticking it in every internet café computer in town! What a home-hitting lesson to learn on the week of HIV Voluntary Counselling and Testing Day!! You get a virus on your USB…next thing you know the brand new camp laptop has it, someone else’s flashdrive has it, and you can’t get rid of it because there is no internet at camp to update Norton Anti-Virus!!! Anyways the point of all this is to not only introduce my first ACTS HIV testing day experience but also to provide an excuse for my retarded lack of emails and pictures posted as my USB disease tries in every way to thwart me including shutting off the computer RIGHT BEFORE I POST MY PICTURES I SPENT 4 HOURS UPLOADING!!!!!......can you feel the tension?
Ok more importantly, I participated in our monthly HIV testing day recently. ACTS collaborates with the Aids Information Centre (Mbarara Branch) to provide free HIV counseling and testing for anyone who comes to our announced dates! It is done monthly and we facilitate the day by paying for the outreach personnel from AIC (counselors and lab techs) and all the tests for anyone who comes willingly to be tested. This was also a special day as it was the first time children of our HIV positive clients were going to be tested in the field (meaning we didn’t have to pay transport for them to go all the way to Mbarara for testing)!! This was a big deal, a new breakthrough in our partnership with AIC, and also an opportunity for many more children to be tested! AIC was willing to test as many children of our clients as showed up, and provide specially trained child counselors.
There was, to start the day, a little general info session for the people that had gathered (which apparently included…roughly translated….a talk about how bedroom walls should be built all the way to the ceiling instead of halfway so children don’t learn about sex too early because….as our worker Rose pointed out….sometimes you just can’t help being noisy?!?! I guess we don’t have to consider this so much in Canada with insulation, full walls, and all). Next on the agenda…..every person to be tested gets a form from AIC, then sees a counselor before testing to discuss psychological issues around testing/possible results etc. to prepare each person for their test. Then they line up for the lab tech, which is who we spent most of the day watching. He tirelessly and proficiently drew blood from all 99 people before he began to test the serum. We were able to watch him run the tests which were quite simple, drop some serum on the strip and if a bar shows up it’s positive, if not it’s negative. Kind of like a depressing version of a pregnancy test and I have to say it was a strange feeling to watch a bar appear, knowing what it means for that persons life. The first strip of 10 tests we watched three were positive and two were children. Any positives are then set aside and retested using another type of test for verification. I believe at the end of the day 12 out of the 99 people were positive, 8 female and 4 male. I am not sure how many were children. After all the tests are finished and verified each person returns to their counselor to receive their results. We didn’t sit in on this part, I don’t know if many people would like a couple foreign observers when they found out if they have HIV or not! It was a long day but an interesting experience and we had the chance to get to know a few of our clients by name, and even practice some traditional dancing during the waiting time!

Waiting for results to be given out.