Mmanoko

On the walk to the office I brought my amazing bubblesword and played with it with the tyre kids for a while. Even though the bubbles don’t really last they loved it, screaming every time and jumping up to try and pop them. It was really fun.
As Martha couldn’t find any other transport, Kabalano drove us all to Mmanoko (it’s much nearer than the other villages). Once again we were based around the clinic, which seemed to be better equipped than the last one (it even had condoms!). The nurse brought together all the older children/young adults (there were about 60-70 in all I’d say), many of whom had babies and toddlers, and we did our talk again. I think it went pretty well, at the end an old man who’d been listening in said that he approved of our talk but not where we cautioned about drinking too much alcohol (we just say be careful and look out for your mates so they don’t do anything stupid). After we helped line up the kids and tried to film/take pictures of them while they were being fed. I think there were around 200 people there, mostly children but also some mothers. One lady tried to get Kate to bring her baby back to England with her.
After all the food had gone we tried to do some interviews to film for the Australian people, but it was pretty difficult – firstly with the lack of English and secondly because it’s such a sensitive subject – are you HIV positive? How many children do you look after? Are they yours or are they orphans? How many of them have HIV? It feels really weird just blurting out questions like that to women you’ve never met before with a camera in their face.
One girl called Catherine came up and gave Martha a big hug. She looked about 10 but was 13. She thanked Martha for giving her the dress she was wearing. Martha talked to us and Catherine (who spoke surprisingly good English) did as well. Her dad is dead, and her, her mother, her brother, and two orphaned relatives all live in the same house, and all have HIV. Catherine has very serious asthma and has had to go to hospital a lot because she also has liver failure (“they told me my liver had expired”). Her little brother has similar problems. She was wearing one pair of plastic-like trainers, with one without any laces, which were her only shoes. She was very sweet and clever to speak such good English. But again, after having a conversation like that with a child, it’s difficult to say “right, can you just repeat all of that while we film you so we can show other strangers how terrible your situation is so they might give money?”