Melissa Edoh
Melissa recently returned to the US following 2 years in Lusaka, Zambia. After an initial period spent researching and documenting the practice of home-based care in various sites throughout Lusaka, Melissa led the establishment of POL’s Arm’s Reach Care Program in Matero. Her experience with community-based work in Zambia has significantly shaped her academic and professional interests and Melissa hopes to move back to Africa upon completing her studies to work in public health with an emphasis on child health and behavior change. An MIT graduate and former Fulbright scholar, Melissa is now a graduate student in the Harvard School of Public Health’s Population and International Health program.
Looking back
When I share with people the nature of the work in which I was involved in Zambia, the invariable reaction is, “That must have been very sad.” To which my always unexpected response is, “Actually, no, it wasn’t.” How could working with HIV-positive children living in some of the poorest areas of Lusaka not be sad work, they must wonder? Because POL’s work is to improve these children’s condition, and because throughout the time I spent in Lusaka, I continually saw the fruits of that work.
Take Charity, for example. I remember when her mother came to be trained as part of the first group of family caregivers we enrolled in the program in March 2005. Charity was one of the difficult babies – always on her mother’s back, wailing as soon as anyone made any attempt to relieve her mother for a few minutes. She was very frail, her head always covered in a bonnet and her face buried in the chitenge (local fabric) and blanket her mother used to wrap her on her back. Her mother said Charity was afraid of all strangers because she associated them with the nurses from the government clinic who always gave her so many injections. Charity was almost 2 years old, but rarely sat up on her own.
Fast-forward to 12 months later. I am meeting with our project managers in the insaka (traditional thatched roof veranda) outside the POL Care Center when I faintly hear a child’s voice singing, “Meyiya! Meyiya!” nearby. I turn in the direction of the voice, and there’s Charity, dressed in frilly pink clothes, happily bouncing along holding her sister’s hand, and waving at me. She is there with her older siblings and a wheelbarrow to collect the monthly ration of food supplements she receives from our program. I see her as she is now, after a year in Arm’s Reach Care and just a few months on anti-retroviral treatment (ART), and remember what she was like when we first enrolled her. And, as if that weren’t enough to fill my eyes with tears, I realize that she knows my name – “Meyiya” is evidently 3-yr old speak for “Melissa”! She comes running into my open arms to give me a hug. That’s my baby, my Charity!
Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean to suggest that working on Arm’s Reach Care was rewarding moment after rewarding moment and joy and laughter all the time. There were intensely sad moments, moments when I despairingly asked myself whether any of what we were doing was even putting a dent in the bigger picture; moments where I and the rest of the team felt completely helpless in a child’s situation; moments when I felt angry at what felt like an unjust plight inflicted on children who never asked to be born into such difficult circumstances…
But moments like the one I shared with Charity that day a few months ago, and with our other children throughout my time in Lusaka constantly remind me that regardless of what is going on in the big picture, there are thousands of HIV-positive children in Matero, right now, who need love and care and treatment and food. And that there is so much that we can do right now to respond to those needs.