AIDS Walk NYC: Team KCA Update

May 17, 2009, marks AIDS Walk NYC. Keep a Child Alive has the opportunity to participate in the walk, and as an HIV/AIDS organization, we will keep a majority of the funds raised by our team.

Currently we have 17 members for Team KCA, and we'd like you to join us. Please visit http://www.aidswalk.net/newyork/index.html to sign up! Follow the link and register with team "Keep a Child Alive - 9872" to participate. Even if you are unable to walk during the day, you can still raise funds for Keep a Child Alive. If you have any questions, please call Danielle Spitzer at 718-965-1111.

THINK PR and Bobi Tees team up for KCA!

THINK PR and Bobi Tees recently came together to raise funds for Keep a Child Alive. THINK hosted a cocktail party at Caravan, the chic New York City store, and Bobi Tees sold shirts to decorate with paints. The shirts were decorated to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and Keep a Child Alive. Together THINK PR and Bobi Tees raised over $800 for KCA!

I am Where I am Because of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 4 - After Brian's Death

After Brian's death I fell into a deep depression and all I could do was wonder what he was thinking in his last seconds, if he was afraid and if I wished I could have been there to comfort him. I felt like a had a giant hole or an ice cold iron ball weighing two tons in my stomach. For months after his death I felt betrayed, that something so precious and priceless had been stolen from me and I could never get it back. I hated the world and everyone in it, including myself, for not stopping this obvious injustice from occuring in the very first place.

When I was 15 years old I came home one day and swallowed a whole bottle of my late brother's painkillers and hoped like hell that my death would come as quickly and as painlessly as possible. I must have fainted on the kitchen floor because when I regained consciousness I was laying on my back with my entire family surrounding me while we waited for the ambulance. It was not until three years later that I finally knew myself well enough to know that my intention on that day was not to simply end my life, but it was to put an end to the excruciating pain I called my life.

Today, three years on, knowing all the things I know now that I did not have the privilege of knowing then I can not believe how far I have come, not only myself but my whole family too. Sometimes I look at each one of them and I just cannot fight back the tears of pride. I know now the truth in the saying: everything happens for a reason, because as horrid as it was going through it, I know now that had I not lost my mother at the tender age of only 13 years, I would not even be half the woman that I am today. I have learned so many lessons through these hardships and none less important than the next. All the lessons that I learned from my mother, both from intentional lectures and silent observations on my part, give me the courage to carry on in the hopes that I will one day be at least half the woman she was.

Send a Keep a Child Alive Valentine's Card

Spread love this Valentine's Day and with a Keep a Child Alive card!

Follow the link below to send an eCard, or to download printable cards. Copy the link and post it anywhere you can - Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and websites.

http://valentines.keepachildalive.org

I am Where I am Because of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 3 - Brian

At the time of my father's death, my mother was seven months pregnant with Bruce and Brian. Ever since the day they were born, Brian had always been very weak. At first my mother dismissed it as a the myth that in each pair of twins there will always be one who is weaker than the other half. But the sickness persisted and Brian tested positive for HIV, but the ironic thing is that Bruce tested negative on the same test. Things became especially unbearable for all of us when my brother Brian started falling ill from opportunistic illnesses caused by HIV.

More often than not both my mother and brother would be hospitalised at the same time at the same hospital, HIV wracking their immune systems. But there is a day that stands out in my mind. It was a time when Brian's body was so swollen that it was twice its normal size and he was experiencing very painful blisters all over his body. For two days he screamed in sheer agony. He could not even sleep because pressure on those blisters caused them to burst which caused him to let out a cry for help which brought us all to our knees.

Brian had not been hospitalised for years since my mother's death, and we were all convinced that we had caught a very lucky break as he seldom complained of discomfort or pain in those days. Unfortunately we were in for a very rude awekening. Brian suddenly fell very ill very quickly only three months after my sister Sandile's death in 2005. After a dreadful week in which his naturally small frame had deteriorated into mere skin and bones, he could fight no longer. He was lying in the same bed that my mother had laid in less than three years prior, and he asked me to make some porridge for him. I was especially proud of him at that moment as it had been a struggle getting him to eat anything all week, not that there was much to eat in any case. All that we had to eat for two weeks was porridge. I dished the cooked porridge up into the biggest bowl I could find and to my surprise he devoured every last spoonful of it.

Little did I know that that would be his very last meal. I got up to take the bowl to the kitchen area and halfway to the kitchen something inside me told me to go back to him, and to my absolute horror there he lay, luke warm and limp with his head hanging from his neck. I remember seeing almost a smile on his beautiful face. I had experienced a lot of loss in my life before that, with the deaths of first my father, then my mother, then my older sister and now an innocent little child whose only crime was being born into this dreadful disease. That moment single handedly destroyed me. Brian's passing away felt like the last nail in my own coffin.

Date Raffle Benefits KCA

Rachel Kapur learned about Keep a Child Alive through the Tyra Banks Show. Alicia Keys' dedication to helping children in Africa and India that are affected by HIV/AIDS provided inspiration for Rachel.

Rachel runs a social networking and fundraising group called Network of Single Professionals (NESP). She focuses on a different charity organization each month. NESP has over 400 members in the New York area and wanted to help raise awareness and funds for KCA by putting together a Charity Date Raffle.

The Charity Date Raffle will be held on February 13th at Pranna Restaurant in NYC. 100% of proceeds from this event will benefit KCA. Rachel has organized special performances from two well known comedians and a magician.

If you would like to join Rachel please RSVP to:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=56937927791#/event.php?eid=56937927791&ref=ts

Planting Hope: The Blue Roof Clinic Community Garden

The Blue Roof Clinic in Durban, South Africa is the first clinic wholly owned and operated by Keep a Child Alive, bringing our dream of comprehensive HIV care to life in a community where its services are desperately and urgently needed. The clinic moved into its brand new state-of-the-art facility in December, and as word spreads in the community about the treatment and care offered here, our patient numbers continue to rise!

The beautiful new building!

The VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) and psychosocial support programs at the Blue Roof are managed by our brilliant counselors, Thuli, Kathy and Cynthia. For our clients who test HIV negative, they counsel them on safe sex practices, and encourage them to return every three months to be re-tested. For our clients who test positive, drug adherence classes are offered three times a week, in English and Zulu. One of the challenges we have encountered is that many of our patients have difficulty coming to the clinic on a regular basis because they cannot afford bus fare. The clinic is currently developing empowerment programs that can be offered to our patients in the early mornings, so patients can be dropped off at the clinic early by their friends en route to work, learn a skill and then stay for their adherence classes.

Another challenge the clinic is facing is the need to educate the families of our patients, especially those in more rural areas. The stigma associated with HIV continues to be an obstacle to our AIDS relief efforts. Many of our patients have told our counselors how they lost the support of their families once they found out they were HIV positive. Can you imagine? One woman recently came in for her doctor’s appointment, starving, because her sisters would not let her cook food from the same pots and pans they used, and she had not eaten in days. The Blue Roof Clinic team is exploring ways that we can extend our psychosocial support services to our patient families, to help break the stigma that results in such physical and emotional abuse.

The psychosocial support program at the Blue Roof also offers a support group for patients every Thursday, and last week they began planting in the community garden! You could see everyone having such a wonderful time, planting all the different seeds. They planted all sorts of vegetables, which, once grown, will be used to prepare nutritious meals for clinic patients on a daily basis.

Preparing the seeds

Preparing the soil

Cynthia, one of our VCT counselors

What a beautiful team effort!

Moussa, our groundskeeper

It is so inspiring to see how simple a task can empower people. The Blue Roof Clinic is working hard to develop more activities like the community garden for our patients to participate in, so moments like these can grace the clinic all the more often, and so our patients will have items like the garden that they can look at and say with pride, “I was a part of that.”

I am Where I am Because of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 2 - My Life was Forever Changed

Our mother made certain that we went to school and that we did well. I was always the best student in my class and I always got the highest grades and that made her very proud. She was always present at all my prize giving ceremonies, even though she had to walk very long distances in order to be there for me. She unconsciously instilled an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and education.

I remember a few months before she passed away, she had fallen severely ill and needed urgent medical attention. I gave myself a day off from school in order to take her to our nearest clinic which is about a kilometer from my home. It was one of the coldest days I have ever experienced, but I still wore my school uniform as it was the only outfit I had. I had outgrown it and I remember feeling like my legs were freezing and wiping mucous from my mother's nose as we waited in the cold to be attended to. We must have been there for three hours before we were helped by one of the nurses. My mother made me promise not to tell the others about what had happened because she did not want to worry them. From that experience I learned that unconditional love meant truly putting another person's needs way ahead of your own, at any cost.

The months subsequent to that day were consciously stored away in a secret safe in the back of my mind and I intentionally forgot the combination so as never to see its contents again. My mother's health deteriorated and one Wednesday evening I remember seating next to her as she tried to sleep, in so much pain that with each sound she made I felt my insides rip open like an old piece of cloth. It was three hours later that one of the children made a noise that was loud enough to brake the trance-like state I was in with my dying mother. I will eternally be grateful for that last night with her because it is what gave me the closure I so desperately needed and the opportunity say my goodbye and cry with her until I could cry no more.

A social worker who was doing house calls recommended that she be sent to a hospice the next day. That Saturday at 8:15 in the morning, Sheila Dlamini drew her last breath. The hospital called to notify us and my legs felt as if they were glued to the floor, a sharp pain consumed me. From that moment on, my life was forever changed.