south african health!

living in south africa for the last 9 months has been a life changing experience in many ways, some preconceived ideas have been blown out the water, others challenged and still others were confirmed.

i (tim) have found it so hard living with all that we have right next to those with absolutely nothing, that could be possessions but also the health that we enjoy and the education that we take for granted...

many people have asked me if what we are doing is really making a difference, aren't 'the people' so set in their ways that they won't change?, do they really appreciate all you are doing?......and sometimes i ask myself that too. why don't these people change their ways, why do they continue to sleep around spreading this awful disease......however when you look at it so many of the people we work with and who we call neighbours have no chance to the news media that we have access to and here in lies a problem.

so much of our info now comes to us via the internet, tv and then radio.....we don't have a tv so i spend my last minutes at night and first minutes in the morning catching up with the news on the national broadcaster (sabc) for the local south african news and then a few minutes each day reading the bbc web pages for a fuller world picture.

the radio station often broadcast info about health, especially hiv, aids and tb and refer to a web site called health-e.......(which is well worth a look at here), the site is full of the basic info on these three major killers here in south africa however those who need to hear often don't have radio and defo no internet, or the education to read english, so how can they read up on this info......aaargh.

life over here is so unfair and as i pack my suitcase for a 6 week return trip to england today my heart is overwhelmed by the problems, are we really making a difference or just putting a patch on a gaping hole....for me i can say that the work is more than fulfilling, that the lives of the children living with us are being changed but we need more hands, more funds to really get the message out there into the communities...informing people of those basic things we just take for granted.....