inspirational colleagues

We work with 3 (hopefully soon to be 4) volunteers in our clinic who are really inspiring; Fatu, Justine and Dala (left to right - seated in our one room clinic). They get a stipend but I think its really small. But Monday through Saturday they are there from 7am to 2pm rarely with a break.

They work for an "association" - a local HIV related NGO, called REVS+. This is a group that was started here by people living with HIV/AIDS for people living with HIV / AIDS. They have foreign funding (and even a Canadian CUSO volunteer) but they are really Burkinabe through and through.

These intelligent, motivated women saw a problem in their own city and decided to do something about it. REVS+ provides monthly food supplementation (donated by World Food Program - though there is never enough), infant formula for mothers who choose not to breastfeed, some medicines for opportunistic infections. They organize testing days, educational sessions, support groups and income generating activities.

But the HIV Counsellors is one of the most interesting programs. There are about 45 counsellors working in various health care facilities - maternities (birthing centers), clinics and the hospital. They help with voluntary testing and counselling, adherence counselling, social support, drug distribution, and a myriad of other tasks. Until we started, the pediatrics counsellors had the only record system for children with HIV in Bobo; they have a series of notebooks with the names of kids and why they came written in order of their visits (so its hard to find any given entry if you don't know the date they came in). Now that we're here, they also act as our translators - and we would be absolutely lost without them. They translate both language and culture - for example, letting us know that the mourning period (time when a new widow is unable to leave the house) is 40 days, or the best way to ask a certain question. And we're going to train them to take the height / weight and vital signs.

Sometimes they wonder why we are so detail oriented (who cares about development or TB history, anyhow), why we want to know certain things. And we frustrate them when we're not willing to prescribe antiretrovirals to Pr Nacro's patients without knowing anything about the child.

But it is such a key relationship, and we are really lucky to have them working with us. And the city is lucky to have such a system that provides services to various health centers.

A totally Burkinabe initiative - the kind of development that is more sustainable than a foreign idea imposed on Burkina.