By Leigh Heeter, '04
Funding: Tucker Foundation
During my junior winter, I spent the term as an intern at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation as part of the Dartmouth Partners in Community Service program. During those ten weeks, I spent half of my time researching, planning, and implementing HIV/AIDS outreach, prevention, and education programs in the Bay Area. The other half of my time was spent as an anonymous phone operator on the nation-wide California AIDS Hotline, providing countless strangers with HIV/AIDS resources, referrals, and counseling. Some people called, worried that they had put themselves at risk for HIV infection and wanting to know where they could be anonymously tested. Some called, knowing that their lifestyles were putting them in danger and wanting to know how to better protect themselves. Lastly, and most difficult, some called because they were walking out of a testing clinic, with the news that they were HIV-positive and didn't know where else to turn.
Everyday that I worked on the Hotline, I dealt with heartbreaking situations-parents who had lost their children to AIDS, newly diagnosed twenty-two year-olds who felt there was no reason left to live, couples who were terrified to have children, fearing they would pass on the virus. These were situations that neither I, nor anyone else, had the ability to "fix." There are no easy answers, no quick solutions. My time working on the Hotline, experiencing how this disease effects people on a personal level, strengthened my resolve to help fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is for this reason that I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, my junior summer to work for the Treatment Action Campaign-an organization striving to provide education and outreach programs to prevent new HIV infections, to make good, affordable treatment a reality for all South Africans affected by HIV, and to combat the belief that an HIV-positive diagnosis is a "death sentence." I was granted a Tucker Fellowship that made my trip possible and enabled me to continue my HIV/AIDS advocacy work in South Africa. There, not only is the epidemic dramatically more widespread than in the U. S., but the organizations working to combat it are also more seriously understaffed, under-funded, and in serious need of volunteers.
Anti-retroviral drug therapies exist that can dramatically extend the life of a person with HIV, make him or her more comfortable, and reduce the chances of mother-to-child transmission. The goal of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is to convince the South African government to create a national HIV/AIDS drug treatment plan that will make these medicines available to all South Africans living with the disease.
During my internship at SFAF, much of my work had focused on the ways in which HIV infection effects women, specifically. I learned how gender dynamics often place women at greater risk for acquiring the virus, as well as at a heightened disadvantage for receiving timely and effective treatment. As worrisome as these problems are within the U.S., in Africa they constitute a major health crisis. Twenty percent of South Africa's adult population is currently infected with HIV/AIDS, and the country's highest infection rates are among women. Furthermore, women are susceptible to a number of social, cultural, and economic factors that prevent them from securing the prevention information and treatment they need. It was for these reasons that I chose to work specifically with the Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) Women's Health Issues Coordinator on a number of projects aimed at educating women about HIV prevention and providing them with better treatment options. During my internship, I wrote TAC's first series of informational publications about a wide variety of women's health issues to be distributed throughout the country through grassroots TAC branches.
In addition to working at the TAC's National Headquarters in Cape Town, I traveled to Durban to attend the TAC's National Congress, which turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The long weekend was filled with panels, discussions, and speakers-Apartheid freedom fighters who had turned their attention to the struggle against AIDS, grassroots leaders who had devoted their lives to the fight, and volunteers who joined the cause after losing loved-ones to this disease. The most inspiring moments of all, however, came when, after each speaker, the crowd would spontaneously spring to its feet, erupting into song and dance. I found myself surrounded by hundreds of people clapping, stomping and singing together-in Xhosa, in Zulu and, very occasionally, in English. I was pulled from my seat by multiple hands and, swept up in the emotion, attempt ed to sing and dance in rhythm, studying people's lips and trying to imitate their words.
Countless hours at the Congress were spent on these irrepressible, spontaneous song and dance sessions. From an American perspective on efficiency, it seemed as if, at that rate, nothing at all would be accomplished. It didn't take long, however, to realize that through these outbursts of emotion, things were being accomplished. The songs were the same as those sung during the long years of Apartheid struggle-songs about suffering, hope, and solidarity. By leaping to their feet and singing together, people were mourning their losses, supporting one another, and expressing their collective faith in the TAC and their hope for change in the future.
My off-term experiences in San Francisco and Cape Town were both amazing, and I cannot imagine my time at Dartmouth without them. They shaped my Dartmouth experience and effected my life in ways that I never had imagined possible.
