Not your typical day in class

Ok so for a serious tug on this girl's heart let me take you to the Institução Beneficiente Conceição Macêdo, a daycare for kids with HIV and AIDS. Well first we had a Portuguese test but instead of afternoon seminar at the university we headed out to IBCM in a very poor region of Salvador. We started out having a lecture by one of the men who helps operate the institution - a series of programs directed at HIV positive people and their families (including programs directed at teens, kids, street families, single moms and more.) He talked to us about the culture, stigma and myths still associated with being soro positivo (literally=positive serum) in Brazil. He told us a lot about the program and this particular branch's function as a safe place and center for the community. Then we went upstairs and toured the preschool, afterschool, play and nursery rooms. The whole building was made to feel so bright and happy. There were murals everywhere - planes, animals and flowers on every wall - plus where there weren't murals there was kid-produced art. In the first room there was a group of three year olds having naptime. Instead of the everyone on their own mat phenomenon that exists in the US there was a pile of nine or ten little bodies sprawled across a couple of matresses in the corner. It was pretty darn cute to say the least. Then of course there were the two little boys (who I suspect exist in every daycare in the world) who were refusing to nap and instead wrestling with each other in the other corner.

In the next two rooms were four, five and six year olds who were making pictures for Dia das Crianças (Children's Day - October 12th.) They were more than happy to have us join in, or in the case of my friend Lucas, more than happy to play hide and seek under the table instead of coloring. They were so energetic and excited about everything that it was really hard to imagine that every single one of them is HIV positive. They have different levels of knowledge about exactly what it is they have, but everyone knows it is something that sets them apart from other kids. And it is pretty hard to avoid that fact when you look in the clinic room. A room tucked in the corner and completely filled with medicine. Most of the kids don't have to take anti-retrovirals now because the virus hasn't manifested itself as AIDS yet but a few already do. It is very hard to describe the feeling I got from looking at a bunch of little kids laughing and playing just like they should be, only looking at them with the knowledge that their life expectancy is significantly lower than the (already low) life expectancy of their peers through no fault of their own. Every kid in this daycare was born to an HIV infected mother (and we learned that many mothers here actually get HIV WHILE they are pregnant because many spouses see it as an opportune time to cheat. They were hilarious and fun and everything that kids everywhere are. I can't fully reconcile the two realities that exist in the same building.

Many of the volunteers (as well as the seriously underpaid staff) are HIV positive themselves. They know what it is like to make a life for yourself with the disease and all are inspiring people, ranging from gay men to transvestites to the more typical preschool worker - youngish women. They know the realities of the community they work in because they live there themselves. They understand the hunger and the many risks of living in one of the most poor (and one of the more dangerous) neighborhoods in the city but still bring love and patience to work with them.

Brazil's health system provides an HIV test to every pregnant mother for free (if they choose to - and most do) as well as anti-retrovirals for those who test positive. This system has seriously reduced the number of children born HIV positive because if every step of the process is followed correctly there is a 98% chance that the child will be born HIV free. Pretty impressive. And yet there are daycares full of children born with the virus. And many programs specifically for those HIV positive victims of child prostitution.
Wow. An emotional wallop of a day.

And now, just because I feel I must even this out a bit I shall talk of rain and candy. First of all - I am finally realizing that it is spring here. Luckily most of the rain chooses to fall at night. All of the rest of the rain tends to fall (more specifically POUR) precisely from the time I step off the bus in the morning until the time I arrive at class. And it doesn't matter whether I am late or early - it just waits for me and the floods unleash as I thank the bus driver and hop down.

And now for the candy. They just don't make it like this in the U.S. And they don't sell it everywhere either. "Serenata de Amor" or serenade of love is most likely the greatest of them all. Not to mention the most fun to order. "I would like one love serenade please." It cracks me up every time. It seems to amuse my favorite vendor too. I come like clockwork after lunch for my serenade.