The Little Man and the Mattress

Well, I just finished translating a 10 page grant proposal from Portuguese to English.

Riveting. And full of HIV jargon. For example, OVCs – a friendly term which conveniently allows you to talk about orphans and vulnerable children without actually having to picture in your mind their skinny sad little faces, and big round malnourished bellies. Although, even I have become a little numb to seeing children obviously suffering as they go about their daily lives with bodies as thin as my index finger, or covered with often bloody AIDS sores.

This isn’t normal in the sense that I see it every day, that I don't notice, or that I don't feel this little surge of grief which almost compels me to just scoop up the child, sores and all, and (probably ineffectually) try to nurse them back to health.

But, it is normal in the sense that such encounters – which happen a few times a month – have lost their shock value. Just last weekend, I went to Xai-Xai to buy a new mattress. And then I paid what at first I thought was an ecstatic little boy 10 mets (like 25 cents) to carry my mattress from the store to the chapa stop.

Well, I soon realized he was actually an ecstatic emaciated (and I am assuming HIV positive) young man, probably my age, that hoisted my mattress up onto his head to make the trek down the bustling, sandy, sidewalk-less, Xai-Xai street, probably pondering just how he would spend that Mozambican dime.

And that's another thing. During such an encounter, I quickly make assumptions. And I am probably right. But in an environment permeated with life-ruining stigma, I fear that I am contributing to the problem.

I know that this is a somewhat irrational fear, because I am not judging or discriminating against the people. I don't shy away, and I dart to rip the mattress from the frail little possibly HIV positive man’s head.

But that's because I have all the right information. I know more about HIV then any normal person really needs to know.

So my fear of contributing to the problem is perhaps just a pang of realization, as I notice something, and know that the majority population of Mozambique will notice the thinness, or the sores, and castigate the individual as if everything they touch is contaminated by immanent death (and many will actually believe this).

So what do I do to change this when I can’t even get my students to raise their hands in class? Like they literally just stampede to the board at times to fill in the blank with the correct verb conjugations… and then I have to herd what seems like teenage boy cattle and try to stave off absolute chaos as I kick them out of the classroom for not following the rules.