Tagebuch
Montag, der 18. Juli 2005
Eine Gruppe von uns besuchte das St. Francis Hispiz für Erwachsene und Kinder mit AIDS. (nur in Englisch)
Our trip to the St. Francis Hospice
I woke up feeling excited about going to Saint Francis, a hospice for HIV-Aids infected people. I had been there before and really enjoyed playing with the children. However, this time my experience was very different compared to my expectation.As we, David, Thabang, Christel, Franzi and me arrived there about 7:30, I noticed that there were more sick children in comparison to the last time I went to Saint Francis. We helped feed the children, which turned out to be a quite messy, but fun none the less. We spent a few hours playing with the kids, which really tired them out. We found it to be quite unfair to see such small children (ages 0-7) infected with HIV/Aids. It also disturbed us how sick and underdeveloped they looked. After that David, Thabang and me left for the adults section of Saint Francis. I was amazed to see that it looked exactly like a hospital. The nurses were really friendly and showed us around the hospice, while introducing us to various patients. We then served tea, after which David, Thabang and I sat with the staff for their tea break. Little did we know that this break was going to prepare us for a hectic time ahead.
And so it started off with us meeting the bedridden patients, many of them who will not make it till the end of this week. It was extremely heart-breaking to see men and women in their 20s and 30s looking 50 years old. Their bodies were so fragile and thin one could have easily mistaken them for anorexics. Many of these people are incapable of doing anything by themselves. Normal every day tasks that we take for granted such as brushing teeth, going to the toilet and eating, would be impossible for these patients, if not for the help of the nurses.
Thabang and David watched as wounds were being cleaned and dressing changed, but I preferred to wait in the passageway, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
After dressing the wounds we were lead to the mortuary, where yet again my emotions took over and decided not to enter. However, Thabang and David went inside and helped lay a dead man in his coffin. We didn’t talk much after that, but still helped the nurses feed the bed ridden patients. It was very difficult, because they were all in so much pain and few of them wanted to eat. The woman I was feeding only managed three spoons of porridge. She was so weak she could hardly speak.
Walking out of Saint Francis was terrible, I couldn’t stop thinking about who would die next. However, we can all say that this was an experience we will never forget. We have learned so much more from this experience than we could have ever learned from watching TV or reading books about HIV/Aids. We were all very relieved to see a psychologist awaiting us once we got back from Saint Francis. It really helped to speak about any traumatic encounters we had made.
Uschi
I woke up feeling excited about going to Saint Francis, a hospice for HIV-Aids infected people. I had been there before and really enjoyed playing with the children. However, this time my experience was very different compared to my expectation.As we, David, Thabang, Christel, Franzi and me arrived there about 7:30, I noticed that there were more sick children in comparison to the last time I went to Saint Francis. We helped feed the children, which turned out to be a quite messy, but fun none the less. We spent a few hours playing with the kids, which really tired them out. We found it to be quite unfair to see such small children (ages 0-7) infected with HIV/Aids. It also disturbed us how sick and underdeveloped they looked. After that David, Thabang and me left for the adults section of Saint Francis. I was amazed to see that it looked exactly like a hospital. The nurses were really friendly and showed us around the hospice, while introducing us to various patients. We then served tea, after which David, Thabang and I sat with the staff for their tea break. Little did we know that this break was going to prepare us for a hectic time ahead.
And so it started off with us meeting the bedridden patients, many of them who will not make it till the end of this week. It was extremely heart-breaking to see men and women in their 20s and 30s looking 50 years old. Their bodies were so fragile and thin one could have easily mistaken them for anorexics. Many of these people are incapable of doing anything by themselves. Normal every day tasks that we take for granted such as brushing teeth, going to the toilet and eating, would be impossible for these patients, if not for the help of the nurses.
Thabang and David watched as wounds were being cleaned and dressing changed, but I preferred to wait in the passageway, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
After dressing the wounds we were lead to the mortuary, where yet again my emotions took over and decided not to enter. However, Thabang and David went inside and helped lay a dead man in his coffin. We didn’t talk much after that, but still helped the nurses feed the bed ridden patients. It was very difficult, because they were all in so much pain and few of them wanted to eat. The woman I was feeding only managed three spoons of porridge. She was so weak she could hardly speak.
Walking out of Saint Francis was terrible, I couldn’t stop thinking about who would die next. However, we can all say that this was an experience we will never forget. We have learned so much more from this experience than we could have ever learned from watching TV or reading books about HIV/Aids. We were all very relieved to see a psychologist awaiting us once we got back from Saint Francis. It really helped to speak about any traumatic encounters we had made.
Uschi
