A Lost Boy Grows Up
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Sudan was hell. I can't imagine places worse. I saw infants clinging to their dead mother in the street. Diseases that disfigured. Horrible treatment of women and children.
It is not all like that, but there are little pockets of Hell through out it.
I was there trying to help with water purification. I no longer take for granted many things. I know the value of clean water, vaccinations, sanitation, human rights.
I would say that everyone should go there once so they can appreciate how great it is to not be there.
Wow. That gives one a perspective on life.
The Doctors and Nurses barely touch anything, they swear, and I believe them, that a scrape from a railing, or a fall on the stairs can be all it takes to get an HIV infection. Like we think of tetanus they think of Hep, and HIV.
In fact, I assume that the doctors and nurses there are worried about cuts or scrapes not because they think that can get HIV from the scrape itself (no known cases), but because they are often exposed to infected blood over the course of their work, and having an open cut or sore could increase their chances of becoming infected with HIV, HepB/C or other blood-born diseases.
Even that type of caution is a little on the paranoid side. There have been few, if any, documented cases of HIV transmission to medical professional from patients that did not involve sharps incidents. My wife, and several close friends, worked for multiple years among people living with HIV/AIDS in W. Africa, and they know of no one who became infected with HIV via non-sexual transmission not involving infected sharps or other percutaneous medical devices (native Africans and expats alike).
Given his life experiences it is so cool that he refrains from judging people and it's sad that people who have endured much much less feel entitled to look down on others.
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.