Part Two: Use Gloves. Please.

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  Kingston, Jamaica
Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Over the past two weeks, amidst classes and studying, I've met with the agency staff at Dare to Care (an orphanage for HIV-positive children) for the volunteering/internship component of my graduate program. The team at the agency's downtown location (a facility for teenage orphan boys with HIV) agreed to meet with me first. To say that I was moved by the experience would be an understatement.

The staff greeted me warmly when I arrived, and spent time with me discussing their work with Dare to Care, and the stigmas associated with having and serving populations infected with the virus. When asked about the most fulfilling part of their job that day, one of the nurses laughed at pinpointing only one aspect, saying, "I love everything about working here."

"When a hurricane comes to Jamaica," she added, "I come here

Dare To Care Mission

. This is my family."

Another piped in, "No matter what happens before I come to work, no matter what I'm worrying about, the children here save me [emotionally]." Several nodded in agreement, saying that the children newly aware of their HIV status often express fear for the welfare of the staff.

"They worry when we drink from glasses they've used. 'Auntie, please don't use that cup,' they say. 'I have used it. I don't want what I have to hurt you,'" one of the nurses recalled.

Even when the nurses explain that they can't transmit the virus through saliva, the boys still see themselves as indirectly harmful to those around them. "Use gloves," the children say. "Please."

Besides medication, the nurses agree that the best thing that they can give to these boys is a loving home. More resources and funding for staffing are needed. As the children learn of their HIV status, psychosocial support is provided by the nurses, but a professional counselor is being sought for the special needs of the children (as they enter not only adolescence, but a life without parents and a life with the virus).

As the security guard of the facility guided me to the main road for a taxi later that day, I asked him about his job responsibilities.

"I am here to protect the facility, the things within it, the staff that work here and the children that live here. The staff, the children...we are a team here. We are a team," he explained proudly.

I shook his hand, honored to have met such good people, and departed as the rain started to fall on the city. Watching the storm drip down the windows of the bus, I found myself holding back a rush of emotion, momentarily choked up at the idea that a child could see themselves as a source of harm, as deadly to those around them. The experience made me that much more happy to help and to be a part of the Dare to Care effort over the next few months.

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