Eye Opener: Sumanahalli HIV Rehabilitation Centre

(Journaled on March 16, 2012)

            Although I usually visit Sumanahalli on Tuesday or Thursday mornings, I decided to take advantage of an impromptu invitation from some classmates to join them in going to Sumanahalli after our Friday Population and Poverty class.  Unfortunately, my usual volunteering partners, Ashley and Sphoorti, were unable to come.  This change of company and time of visit proved to alter the volunteering experience.

Although there were a total of seven volunteers leaving from Christ College, we all separated into small groups for the auto ride.  The plan was that we would all catch separate autos, with Ana and I paired together, and meet at the Sumanahalli HIV Centre.  Ana and I were not expecting that we would be separated from the other volunteers for the majority of our visit.  The first event to contribute to our separation from the others is that our auto driver did not know where the Sumanahalli HIV Centre was located.  Essentially, he took us to the town of “Sumanahalli”, but then asked us which way to go. We were not sure of the directions and decided to ask a pedestrian for directions.  The male pedestrian insisted that the HIV Centre was walking distance and that he would walk us there.  After walking for a few minutes and being led to two facilities not related to HIV, Ana and I became weary of the once seemingly friendly and helpful pedestrian.  Even after we assured him that we did not want his assistance any more, he continued to trail behind us.  Ana and I finally found an auto driver that knew where the Sumanahalli HIV Rehabilitation Centre was located and, despite the efforts of the stalking pedestrian, the auto driver did not allow the pedestrian get into the auto with us.  Finally, after a two-kilometer auto ride, we were finally at the gates of the Rehabiliation Centre.

Ana and I arrived when the patients had fifteen more minutes of naptime.  We used these fifteen minutes to discuss what games we would play.  There is an “activity room” in the basement of the main office that has materials for arts and crafts.  These materials held a lot of potential for fun group activities, but it was more of an intimate setting socializing with the women within their home. 

Using what we had, note pads and pens, we taught the women how to play tic-tac-toe, drew for each other, folded paper into neat designs, and played music on Ana’s iPhone.  These games evolved into dancing, but it was quickly shut down when one of the staff came out of her office walking sternly and with purpose in our direction.  I quickly signaled to Ana for her to sit down, because it was clear from the patients’ reaction that dancing was not allowed.  This was surprising, because during my first volunteering session, Sphoorti and I were not reprimanded for playing the game of dancing pass-the-bottle.

The elderly woman sitting next to me was dreadfully thin.  Her oversized kurti was draping over her skeleton frame revealing her thighs that matched the size of my wrists.  This was one of the many reminders of the condition that these women are facing every day of their lives, HIV/AIDS.  Although I had previously felt that I had an understanding of the ailments that HIV/AIDS causes, I now feel that I have a more in depth understanding of what living with HIV means.  No academy-award-winning film or best-selling book can really capture what these women are facing.  The feeling of hugging her frail frame will be forever engrained in my memory.

One of the useful features on Ana’s iPhone was a frog-game.  The women were very intrigued by the game using the touch-screen.  In fact, as one of the women were intensely playing, her son reached over and she immediately scolded him and pushed his hand off of the screen.  The young boy quickly pulled back his hand and examined his finger as if there was something wrong with it.  He did not understand the concept of touch screen.  This struck me as ironic seeing that my little cousin, who is in around the same age as this young boy, knows how to use the iPhone better than most grown adults.

About one hour into our activities, three of the other volunteers, Sarah, Mya, and Julia, came walking from the street.  Sarah immediately pulled out a deck of cards and we started a round of games.  It was a lot of fun to communicate the object of different card games without using words, but physical gestures.

Before we knew it, it was time to start wrapping our activities up so the patients could go for chai-time.  We were saying our farewells and telling them to enjoy their chia when one of the women corrected us and communicated that chai-time is not for drinking chia, but for taking their HIV medications.  Apparently, the Sumanahalli staff call it “chia-time” for the sake of sounding less negative.  This made me wonder what other activities listed on the public “Daily Schedule” were also misrepresenting the reality.