|
A Far Cry from the Forum: in Africa’s Warm Heart
All too often, our work as interpreters keeps us at arm’s length from the people who are supposed to benefit from the strategies and grand designs of the organizations we work for: how salutary it is, therefore, to experience life at the sharp end every now and again.
In October last year, Martyn Swain, who represents Calliope Interpreters in Southern Africa, accompanied a group of French-speaking Africans from Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville on a visit to an HIV-AIDS project in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. The following is a short account of the visit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The bus bounced and banged along the rutted track, children raced out of their dusty yards to wave and shriek in excitement as the bus passed. As always, I couldn’t decide what was worse; keep the window closed and cook in the sweltering heat or slide it open and choke on the dust being hurled up in thick clouds by the wheels.
Soon, though we reached our destination, a home-based care project for what are now, somewhat controversially called People Living with HIV and AIDS, on the outskirts of Malawi’s capital city, Lilongwe. The only sign to indicate we had arrived at the project was a group of some 30 women swaying and bobbing in the middle of the dusty track in the crushing afternoon heat, singing at the tops of their voices to welcome our group: we had barely managed to alight from the bus when the crowd of women thronged around us with songs of praise and welcome.
We were led up a narrow path to a large brick building with more openings in the walls than would ever be needed for windows, no ceiling under the corrugated iron roof and nothing on the ground save some straw mats where the women settled after the visiting “dignitaries” had taken their seats on low benches facing them.
Our Malawian hosts explained to the women in Chichewa, the local language, why we were there. Officially, according to the title of the meeting, we were there to “Scale Up Community Involvement in the 3x5 Initiative”, a tag hardly likely to bring our welcoming committee leaping to their feet: such, however, are the ways of the WHO (World Health Organisation) and, formalities over, we were invited to watch a short piece of theatre telling a cautionary tale of the risks of unprotected sex with multiple partners.
Questions and answers followed in which I put questions from the Congolese and Cameroonian delegates to the Malawian hosts, who then translated them on for the women: they were simple questions such as “What motivates you to do what you do? What reward is there? And more importantly, what do you need to make your work easier?” To the last question came the simple reply, “Some food and a bicycle to be able to transport our patients/clients to the clinic.” The HIV clinic where counselling, testing and treatment is done, is attached to the Lilongwe main hospital: it had taken us about half an hour to get from there by bus along rutted dirt roads: it didn’t take much imagination to guess at how long the journey would take by bicycle, two up, in the blazing summer heat.
Our next stop was to visit one of the patients receiving Home-Based Care. A group of 4 or 5 of us, - the interpreter following the Congolese and Cameroonian delegates, - walked along a track through the shambles of shanty dwellings, filling our turn-ups with orange dust, to the house where the patient lived.
The house was a tiny more or less solid dwelling surrounded by a large yard and a fence beyond: the yard was swept immaculately clean, whether for our visit or not, was hard to tell.
One of the women from the project first went indoors to find out whether it was convenient for us to visit, then ushered us into a tiny, dark, sitting-room where we were squashed on to a sofa with our behinds so close to the ground the sofa cushions might as well not have been there: the Congolese delegate sat to my left, more or less on my lap, and the Cameroonian, to my right, more or less on my lap as well. The patient sat quietly in an armchair opposite.
After introductions, the delegates to my left and right started asking questions: both the Congolese and Cameroonian delegates were HIV-positive, and had been for a number of years: what was life like for their Malawian counterpart, they wanted to know? Did he feel ostracized? Did he still work? Was there an earner in the household? When and how did he find out he was HIV-positive?
My impression was that, at first, our Malawian host was confused by the process of speaking through an interpreter and that I, the interpreter, was identified wholly with the messages I was conveying on behalf of my clients. I was the one who had, therefore, been HIV-positive for more than 10 years and I had just recently retired as chief engineer on the Congolese railways: I had also, even more confusingly, discovered I was HIV-positive when my husband started to become ill, after I had had my third child. The heat in the tiny room was overwhelming and after about half an hour, we all began to flag, including our host who had begun to fall rather silent.
The Congolese and Cameroonian delegates were effusive in their thanks and departed saying that our host should not despair because it was possible to go on living a more or less normal life. We said our farewells, leaving our host sitting in his armchair in the tiny, dark, sweltering room, while we returned for more singing and farewells from the project women.
We then boarded the bus and banged and bounced back to our clean, air-conditioned hotel and to a formal discussion that, from then on, seemed significantly more focussed and better informed than it had been before the visit .
Martyn SWAIN
Member of Calliope in South Africa
Back to Table of Content
|
|
