O Coração: Você É Uma Coisa Muita Frágil

On Mother's Day my parents called me. It started out well, but then my Mom said, "You Dad has some news for you." Her tone of voice was not good. It was the same tone, and almost the same words, she used when she told me she had cancer (my Mom is in remission).

My Dad is 80 years old. He has had 2 (or 3?) heart attacks, open heart surgery for a triple bypass, a couple of stents, and a pacemaker. He also has prostrate cancer, but lots of older men do. They usually die of old age first. In the past few years, Dad has gotten more fragile (cracked ribs). He falls a lot because the medications he takes make him dizzy. Despite all that he was still climbing up on the roof to replace shingles last fall.

So I waited for the news I knew that I was going to dread. The only question being, what is going to bring an end to my Dad's life?

"My heart is fibulated." Huh? His words, which may or may not be a complete understanding of what the doctor told him. The top chambers of his heart no longer work; the muscle is all stretched out like a rubber band. The bottom (larger) chambers are the only part ensuring that blood still pumps through his circulatory system. The doctor disconnected the pacemaker wires to the top half to save on the battery (Save on the battery? WTF?). There is a lot about artial fibulation online, but it is difficult to sort through. I'm still reacting right now.

My Dad tried half-heartedly (bad pun, but my Dad always appreciates a pun) to crack some jokes. I told him to take it easy because I want him to see me walk at graduation. He said he would be there regardless. It made me think of my friend Li-Kuang who just graduated with her doctorate from UGA. Her father died while she was in the process of writing her dissertation. During her defense, she placed a photographed of her parents (both are deceased) on the stand so that they would be with her in spirit. I'm being selfish, but I really don't want to put a photograph of my Dad on the lectern when I defend. I want him there to give me a hug.

I think that my Mom started to sense I was dissolving into banshee wailing mode. I do that sometimes - like when my parents tell me they have a potentially terminal illness, and I can't fucking do a thing because I'm not a deity and I live on the other side of the planet. They got off the phone in a hurry, despite having spent an hour trying to reach me.

My Dad kept telling me not to come home and that he is very proud of me. That I can't do anything. I don't know what to do. I would rather see him now while he is still alive and we can enjoy one another's company. Once he's gone, it is too late and I don't want to regret that for the rest of my life. We don't always see eye to eye, but he is still my Dad. Still the Dad that built me a tree house, put up with all my questions about how stuff worked and why, taught me to fix things around the house and on my car, shared music with me, pulled me out from underwater under an overturned tractor, told me stories and sang me to sleep when I was little...

I've known my Dad's time was getting close for a while. He's 80 years old and doesn't follow the doctors orders about his diet or health very well. It still sucks.

I haven't been sleeping well, but last night and tonight I can't sleep at all. When I am alone, all I want to do is cry. My chest feels all hollow and it gets hard to breathe.

My Dad will find out how long he has on 25 May. Meanwhile, my younger brother is considering quitting his job to go home and help my parents out (depending on the news). He lives in Pennsylvania and is a little closer to them. This is the downside of my work - being far from my family when they need me most. I don't know what to do.

Are you HIV positive?

Sometimes conversations can be real downers. Yesterday, I had one of those talks with my friends Natalina and Ventris. They are visiting researchers in political science and history from the U.S.. Natalina has been studying Mozambique's informal markets, and grassroots organization for HIV/SIDA support and education. During the course of her market research she kept meeting HIV positive women trying to support their families. This led to her current exploration of the HIV/SIDA crisis in Mozambique. She interviews HIV positive individuals (mainly women), as well as medical staff at hospitals and clinics throughout the country.

We were talking about marriage and living apart from your spouse for long periods for research. Like Chris and I, she and Ventris were apart for a long period when she first came out to Mozambique. So Natalina has a sympathetic ear when it comes to me talking about missing my husband.

I mentioned to her a conversation that I had last weekend with my husband Chris. I told him that he didn't need to ever worry about me cheating on him in the field because (1) I love him very much, but also (2) the first thing I think when I meet someone new here is, "Are you HIV positive?"

I feel horribly guilty admitting this, even though it in no way affects my interaction with a person. The reason I think about their HIV status is because I wonder how long I will be able to interact with them and enjoy our potential friendship. They could get hit by a truck tomorrow (and so could I, given the driving in Maputo), so really, their HIV status doesn't matter. However, I am sensitive to other people's pain. It saddens me thinking about the illness that they will most likely experience in the future if they are HIV positive (or the pain of losing a loved one to the disease). I don't know if that makes any sense, but there it is.

I felt guilty admitting this, but Natalina and I are good friends. We have had many conversations on a lot of strange topics. I felt a little relieved when she said that she often thinks the same thing. But she says that it is worse for her. Working with HIV positive people makes you hyperaware of HIV/SIDA's symptoms. Natalina says the number of people walking around in Maputo with symptoms of HIV, if you know what to look for, is shocking - much higher than the official rate would indicate.

The official rate given by the CDC for Mozambique is around 16%. The real rates are much higher than the official counts. Many people refuse to be tested, and others refuse to admit that they are sick (particularly men). These selfish individuals continue to have unprotected sex (with both spouses and others), thus spreading the virus even further. Serial killing wife after wife after girlfriend. According to a 2006 UN report, the rates for pregnant women ages 15-45 have increased dramatically since 2000 (countrywide 11% in 2000 to 16% in 2004). In Maputo province, the rates for pregnant women rose to 18-27% in 2004. Most of the official statistics are based on HIV rates in pregnant women, since they seek treatment to prevent their unborn children from being HIV positive.

Unofficially, the rate for Maputo Province is probably around 45% - based on observations by medical personnel. That means that every other person I meet is probably HIV positive. Natalina interviewed a public clinic nurse on Ilha de Mocambique (Nampula Province, up north) who says in 10 years (maximum) that the island will be empty of people. Everyone the nurse has tested has been HIV positive, and she has worked around HIV positive people long enough to know the symptoms and diagnose the effects of the virus in the untested.

Many in the aid community and Mozambicanos believe that people up north have lower rates because they are Muslim. Bullshit. Men sleep around. So do some women, although it seems to be more common among men (but who are those men sleeping with?). It doesn't matter whether they are Muslim, Christian, or practice traditional religions. It doesn't matter how faithful a person is if their spouse sleeps around. In many cases here, a woman cannot ask her husband to use a condom for fear of being beaten - even if she knows that she is HIV positive. Women can be kicked out of the family compound when their husband dies from SIDA related complications - blamed for his death and left with nothing. SIDA orphans wander the capital barefoot, begging for a few metacais to buy bread to eat and picking through the garbage to find food and valuable things to resell.

I remember a long time ago in junior high school when AIDS was a new thing. That was a very long 23 years ago.