"Don't lean on your own understanding... things are not what they appear to be."
The team has been busy training. 11 or 12 sessions in 3 weeks! Every few days we gather in a living room or the building behind the Westside King church and my eyes are widened, my head is filled and more often than I imagined- I'm moved to tears.
The sessions have been developed for short term teams by a missions committee through a west calgary church. The term "mission" is pretty strange to me - I don't attend church on a regular basis, I don't pray out loud or tell people they should let Jesus into their lives. That stuff - I believe - is personal and something I'm still making my mind up about.
Good news to that discomfort - is that we're not learning about evangelism. . We've instead learned about conflict resolution, personalities and why we do "missions". We've shared our "life stories" as a means of trying to quickly turn a group of strangers into a cohesive team. We've learned about cross cultural undertanding and we spent a morning talking about spirituality - after all - we're a room of people with a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds (although this particular group has all come with at least - some kind of christian frame of reference).
We've also had two sessions that have shocked and frightened me.
Two sessions that have made me realize just how little I know. Last Monday we talked about Grief and Loss... and last night - for close to 5 hours - we talked about HIV/AIDS.
I'll write that quote again:
"Don't lean on your own understanding- things are not what they appear to be."
That profound little piece of advice came last night from Dr. "B". A practicing doctor here in Calgary - with a practicing interest in HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. She's also from africa (*and has asked for her name not to be used)
I didn't expect to be surprised last night about the facts surrounding AIDS. I grew up in the 90s... AIDS was everywhere. There were characters with HIV on TV. Stone died of AIDS on general hospital and his girlfriend Robin was infected. Dwayne fought with Joey Jeremiah in the bathroom of Degrassi High. He started bleeding and freaked out. "I have HIV," he shouted - crying. "And I got it from a chick." Melrose Place, Life Goes On ... everyone was "tackling" the AIDS issue and everyone wore those red ribbons.
This is my understanding.
Everyone knew you couldn't get it from a toilet seat, you didn't have to be gay to get the virus and as pre teens we knew we had to ALWAYS use condoms. But then... over the last decade, it stopped being our problem. Nobody really talks about it now - unless we're talking about Africa. Why bother? There are brilliant new treatments and people live with HIV for years and years and years.
We don't need to talk about it... we know how we get it, how to protect ourselves and how to treat it.
I went into last night's meeting thinking: I know this stuff, the people in Cork must not - therefore I guess we need to tell them.
That was my first mistake because guess what, my understanding is pretty limited.
Here's what I now know that I didn't 24 hours ago:
- Most people in Africa know about AIDS... little children can draw you a picture of what the virus looks like and everyone knows about condoms (but they're not widely used)
- There is way more than one kind of HIV strain and people can easily become infected with different strains. Therefore people constantly become resistant to these life saving antiretroviral cocktails. (Referred to as HAART for Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy)
- A person doesn't qualify for free treatment until their healthy virus fighting cell (CD4) count drops from the healthy 500 level to below 250. (Usually the level where a person is going from HIV to AIDS)
- HAART therapy doesn't work without food and most of the cocktails Africans are taking come with brutal side effects. These side effects prompt some to stop taking the medicine. This is dangerous because it leads to drug resistance and creates a new more powerful kind of virus that can and generally is - passed around.
Horrifying stuff really... but none of this shocked me. I expect AIDS to be a nightmare "over there".
What shocked me is when Dr. B talked about what she was seeing happen HERE AT HOME.
Here we know to use condoms or to abstain from sex to avoid STI's and HIV.... right? We know this for vaginal sex anyways. However, I know - as a recent teen myself - the most common form of sex among teens is oral sex and Dr. B says too often kids are not using condoms while they're having oral sex. I definitely believe that - and it made me think about my own experience with sex ed ... even in the 90s with AIDS everywhere.
I don't think I was ever told... in a way that I remember anyways ... to use condoms during oral sex. I guess I knew that a person could get HIV or an infection through unprotected oral sex but for some reason - I remember getting the impression that oral sex was different. Safer somehow.
"They still consider themselves virginal," she told us, "if they've only had oral sex."
And so... armed with this false sense of security. Dr. B says she sees girls come in with thrush mouth from yeast or candida infections. Chlamydia, gonorrhea... to the mouth. Girls tell her they don't use condoms because the boys don't like it.
This scares the hell out of me.
She says she's seeing new cases of HIV infections within young people -
here at home...
all the time.
"Its all over the north east, its in Forest Lawn, its in Three Hills Alberta, its in Brooks.... its in MacKenzie Towne."
"Its the girls in youth groups, that go to church."
This shocked me.
I came home late last night and went onto the HIV Calgary website
In 2007 there were 2.5 million new cases of HIV. This isn't shocking - I think of Africa.
In 2006 (no data from 2007 was posted) there was only 197 new cases of HIV in Alberta. 197! That's nothing... so why should we be concerned?
Now I have these questions... and maybe we should all be asking them.
Its 2008. Our city is growing and changing and we are talking about AIDS and HIV less and less. Are we using condoms every time? Are our kids? Are our kids using condoms when they have oral sex? Who are we having sex with? Are we not a city full or newcomers?
Will we be surprised in 10 years by an outbreak of HIV because we "forgot" about it?
Could it be that AIDS is our problem too?
