Hope Centre
Hope Centre
By E. P. Loughery
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It's eight o'clock in the morning as the train slowly stretches its way into the dusty station. I'm rudely awoken by my well meaning fellow passenger, for fear I might continue to enjoy my sleep. I'm not in great shape after spending eighteen hours sharing my plastic covered wooden seat with baskets and boxes.
Dazed, I make my way to visit Sr Mary Dillon. She has invited me to northern Myanmar to see her 'Hope Centre'. I have very little information on what exactly this County Clare woman does up here in the isolated hills of Myanmar. All I know she is working with AIDS sufferers. According to a recent report by Doctors without Borders (MSF) the situation here in Myanmar is “One of Asia's most serious HIV/AIDS epidemics”. I am barely in the door of her house, when she is offering this “poor creature” a bath and breakfast.
In the parish offices I meet her team, all local women, some retired nurses like Lucy, some much younger, like the Sisters from a nearby religious order. Though she is a trained nurse, Sr Mary's mission is not to provide the actual medical treatment for her residents and patients but to facilitate their return to health. To this end she has set up her Hope Centre.
The Centre is best described as a residential care home, which offers AIDS sufferers a place to receive care and support as they struggle with the side-effects of the Antiretroviral (ART) drugs, but the reality is much different. Due to stigmas associated with AIDS, most families are unwilling or unable to look after relatives with the virus. The Hope Centre provides a home to those whose relatives cannot cope, and also to those who live in the mountain villages, too far away to receive regular medical support. It is a community of people with the same problems, who can help and support one another, who won't be overcome by stigmas. But mainly it is a place where the battle against the virus can begin, with proper food and shelter, medication routines and correct information. A home, until the residents are feeling confident and healthy enough to go out on their own to try and live with this virus.
We enter the Hope Centre compound, I gingerly follow behind Sr Mary, I had images of people gaunt with death, slowly withering away beneath thick blankets, but as Sr Mary made her way round with the affection of a doting mother, and explained each patient's history, I slowly realised that this is a place where people come to get better. In all there are 29 persons, all under 45 years, living here. Some who do the cooking, some who do the trips to the market, all suffering with AIDS.
I find myself unsure of how to approach the residents, awkwardly I squeeze into the corner of the room afraid to cause any ripples. When suddenly, in bursts this little girl, her dark eyes are big and slowly taper at the ends, the kind that adorn every Buddhist statue in this country. Ph, a moisturiser derived from ground wood, is arranged in circles and lines which add a comical appearance to her already grinning face. She is in high spirits at the arrival of Sr Mary and her strange guest. Unfortunately this little girl contracted the virus from her mother, who is also a resident here at the moment. She drags me round by her tiny hand, within minutes I am introduced to nearly all the residents in a language I don't understand, some straining up on their elbows from beneath woolen blankets at the insistence of my little guide. This is their community, in a society unable and sometimes unwilling to rehabilitate AIDS sufferers, this is a home, a place of equals, a place of understanding, a place of hope.
The saddest thing is most of the sufferers here do not exactly know from where they have contracted the virus, the most common cases are from unfaithful partners, some from sharing needles with fellow drug addicts and distressingly, some from mother-to-child transmission. The HIV is rampant in the jade mining areas around here, where an existence of gambling, prostitution and drug abuse has produced an ignorance of the consequences. More than one in three injecting drug users in Myanmar (37.5%) are HIV-infected (UNAIDS). Drug abuse is pandemic in this remote northern area, partly because of the abundance of opium from South East Asia's infamous 'Golden Triangle', which it borders but more sadly because the local youth see little else in their future. Those who can escape, do, the rest are left to face high unemployment, a lack of motivation and boredom. Drugs become a form of escapism.
As part of her care programme Sr Mary also looks after patients at their homes, some of whom are past residents from the Hope Centre who have returned home, while others have been referred to her by one of the medical NGOs. I'm driven along a sandy concrete main road, as we carefully pick our way through the stream of over-loaded mopeds.
With great care we turn in and continue up a dirt track until we reach the home of the couple Sr Mary has come to treat. The house stands tall on wooden supports with a long sloping bamboo roof. Sr Mary calls out as if announcing we have come for afternoon tea to old friends. We are greeted warmly by the woman of the house. She is thin, her weak frame moves slowly and carefully as she squats down to tell the Nurse about the latest treatment she is receiving from one of the NGO medical clinics back in town. Her face is gaunt, with high cheek bones and a protruding jaw line, I am told that the medicine she is taking to keep her immune system strong, has left her emaciated. This is one of the side effects of the antiretroviral medication, these sunken features along with a loss of appetite. To help, Sr Mary gives her patients injections of glucose, to give energy and improve the desire to eat.
As Lucy mixes up the shot of bright yellow liquid, we are joined by the patient's husband. He too carries the signs of Immune Deficiency, though still has the shadow of a strong, young man. His eyes, while sunken, are welcoming and he rests in the shade as the three ladies discuss business. here is talk of the husband going back to the jade mining areas, in an effort to bring in some money. Sr Mary is flabbergasted. In fluent Burmese, she makes it clear that such an endeavour will only sap away the health he has so slowly recovered since he returned. Any progress made towards strengthening the immune system is soon lost as nutrition and healthy living becomes second to supporting the family. Before we leave, as Lucy finishes up with her queries, Sr Mary pulls out a bag of rice and some vegetables from the boot of her car and quietly places them inside the door of the house.
Sr Mary explains this situation is created by people who are not thinking about their future, they are living for now and now is where will the rice for tonight's dinner come from? It is not who will feed my family when I die, but who will feed them now. Breaking this cycle is where Sr Mary tells me her mission lies. This involves giving food and clothes to families, paying for school fees (60 children last year alone), starting micro credit saving groups, building workshops for making crafts and a farm which provides a 'keep the calf and pass on the cow' program to families. Those in touch with Hope Centre rightly consider themselves blessed.
[Far East Magazine]