Cape Town bound.

Apparently 5-½ weeks is way too long to spend in Swaziland so Walker and I decided to break away a bit early and head to Cape Town, South Africa on Friday (tomorrow!!). I kept hearing “go to Cape Town while you’re down there” and “it’s amazing” and “it’s the best place I’ve ever been.” I told the one person who said all that (incidentally, the only person I know who’s been to Cape Town) that it’s 1,200 miles away from Swaziland (S.A. is a big country) and I doubted there would be time. Journalistically, that was probably true. There are a few things we didn’t have time to do for the HIV story. For sanity’s sake, however, we decided to make like tourists and jet. After all, we may never be closer to Cape Town than this.

It would be much harder to leave if we didn’t have a really good day (for the HIV story) at a testing clinic last weekend – though it didn’t start out that well. We were told to drop by on Sunday because a lot of people come in for testing after church (between the Papal condom prohibition and the guilt factor, I’m guessing most come from the Catholic center in town). For whatever reason, it was not the spree we were told it would be. Furthermore, the people who did trickle in were reluctant to have their testing filmed, as you can imagine, even though we kept promising anonymity and that we just wanted to film the finger prick/blood smear (it only takes 10 minutes to get a result).

Eventually, one lady let me go in to film the test and I was not kicked out so I got the result too (negative). Apparently a lot of women come in after church on Sundays because a) their husbands, many of whom don’t want their wives to get tested, don’t go to church and b) don’t know what their husbands are doing on Sunday mornings while they’re at church.

As we were about to leave, we were told a young man who just came in would allow us to film his test. He was a very easy-going, nice guy and he let us show his face too. I think he was pretty confident that he was negative (which he was), so it wasn’t a big deal. I think he also understood that showing young people getting tested is a step in the right direction and that the awareness of the issue could help the crisis in Swaziland. After the result, we did an interview with him. He said some good stuff – that it was important to know your status, he was trying to reform his life, etc. He also gave the impression that it wouldn’t have been a big deal if he were positive because many people live long lives on ARVs.

That’s a very pervasive idea in Swaziland – that if you’re HIV positive you’re just part of a huge club now and take the free pills that make you live longer. Many people cite a man in Swaziland who has lived with HIV since the early 90s. The problem is that his is an extreme case and people are dying off by the thousands because of the disease. This is especially true in rural areas (mostly in the south) where the infection rate is highest and where people cannot afford the food needed for the ARVs to be affective. Unfortunately, that is where we didn’t have time to go for the story.

I hope Cape Town is worth it.