05/02/07

One in 6,300. That's a small fraction.

6,300. That's a largish number - twice the number of people killed on September 11th in Manhattan, USA, 2001.

6,300 is also the number of people in Africa that die of AIDS every single day, and the number is getting bigger, every day.

For more statistics, that's one person every three seconds, dying of a preventable disease, in Africa, every day. That's women, children, breadwinning men, teachers, doctors, forgotten orphans, street-kids, young people, grandparents...It is a slice of humanity that is erased every day in Africa.

One in 6,300 is not a number. It is not a statistic. This is where the numbers lie, not in the sense that one can manipulate statistics to have them say whatever you mean, no. The one this time was Brenda Mumbi, my sister-in-law.

Brenda passed away in Kabwe, Zambia on the evening of December 15th, 2005. She is survived by her husband, my brother-in-law Evans Mumbi, their two-year old daughter, my wife and Evans other 9 siblings, including Mary who lost her husband, Barron,  two months ago, their parents, and an increasing number of children who have lost the insights and wisdom that a living parent can provide.

I last saw Brenda at Maggie's house in August. She had been weak for some time. Her TB sputum tests were negative, but she continued to suffer from TB symptoms. I suspect that the sputum samples were not collected properly.

My last longest conversation with Brenda was in the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, the capital city of the proud country of Zambia. I arrived at the hospital with another intern from CIDRZ. I was worried, but UTH has improved a great deal from the time when Boba was a patient there. There are no more stalactites of plaster formed from leaking ceilings on the third floor of the high cost ward.

Brenda was well enough to not be in bed when we arrived, so we waited, and she arrived, and sat in bed, her legs extended in front of her in the bed, under the sheets, so that her body formed a right angle. My Nyanja and her English were incompatible...but a nice older woman in the bed next to us helped us to communicate. I gave Brenda the 20,000 Kwacha so that she would have comfortable transportation home. She was appearing well, and I was glad.

As is so often the case with bad news, news of death, we received multiple pages from several numbers in Zambia, from Maggie's siblings, from numbers we don't readily recognize. It's always bad, and it's always difficult. When we didn't call back, Mwelwa sent us an email, that Brenda had passed away in Kabwe.

I'm starting to get numb, and I hate that. I grieve and I mourn, and what I feel is only a fraction of what Maggie and Estelle feel, but it's dampened. How many have to die? How many times will we get this smattering of pages, followed by a final message confirming that a loved one - someone we love - will never talk to us again. We'll never have a chance to share a laugh or meal, or dote on a child, or see grandkids - that's out of the question. I'm tired of it. But I must press on, and I try to prop up those who must feel even more defeated than I do by these failures.

Brenda's passing is a tragedy, and it is an unnecessary tragedy. The fact that she will not see her child's third birthday, that she will not be able to make love with her husband again, that she will not feel again - this is a failure of the human race. Why on Earth have we not mustered the forces and resources to stop this nonsense? Is the war on potential terror so much more important that we spend logs more resources on Iraq than we do on health care and poverty reduction, which result in actual terror and death every day? I do not agree with the priorities of many of our political leaders - and I say this as a global commentary, not particularly as a citizen of the US government.

I don't want to make Brenda's passing into a political pawn. I'd rather just have her back please. And Barron, and Godwill, and Boba, and the 4 Mpondes, and Bernard, and Bernard, and Sheba, and Mr. Coleman, and my fellow CAB members...

While I am feeling futile at the moment, I do believe we are making strides. However, the problem of AIDS simply highlights much larger global problems, of disparate health care access, education access, distribution of resources, and opportunities. Our world is off-balance in my opinion, and it seems to be wobbling, like a spinning gyroscope in its final rotations. We could step in and right it, or we could continue to live on in our sheltered capsules, and pretend that the despair of 6,300 families every day is not happening or is out of reach. It is not out of reach. It is here, now, and still getting worse.

I think the next question is this: OK, Mr. McDonald - you've convinced me. The disparity is awful, what can I do?

In honor of Brenda, I will not answer that question in this same journal entry. Her loss is not about money or affecting political will, but about a family who has lost another mother, another wife, another integral part of the household. May her soul not be disturbed by my political rants.