2.27.2007
War at home
I recently attended a panel on the mental health consequences of war. One presenter talked about Tibetan refugees living in India. Another talked about preparing and caring for the mental health needs of American soldiers going to Iraq. But the most affecting, and the most horrifying came from what one professor here calls "a small developing country called Downtown Atlanta".
The setting for the study was the public hospital, an emergency room that is the de facto primary care provider for too many people in Atlanta. The study was meant to look at the distribution of traumatic experience and trauma symptoms in a general low income population, so they randomly sampled patients from the waiting room, and asked questions about sources of trauma and response. What they found was horrifying. 50% of the women had been abused sexually or as a child. 30% of all the people surveyed had lost a friend or relative to violence within the past year. The majority felt unsafe in their neighborhoods. The figure that stayed with me, though, was 10%. That is the proportion of people who had witnessed the murder of a friend or relative just within the previous year.
Of course, with these experiences this general population had high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other stress symptoms. It was a punch in the stomach for me. A reminder that a few miles from where I fret about homework and go to sleep safely, other people lie awake, thinking about the horrors they have already witnessed, and those to come.
The setting for the study was the public hospital, an emergency room that is the de facto primary care provider for too many people in Atlanta. The study was meant to look at the distribution of traumatic experience and trauma symptoms in a general low income population, so they randomly sampled patients from the waiting room, and asked questions about sources of trauma and response. What they found was horrifying. 50% of the women had been abused sexually or as a child. 30% of all the people surveyed had lost a friend or relative to violence within the past year. The majority felt unsafe in their neighborhoods. The figure that stayed with me, though, was 10%. That is the proportion of people who had witnessed the murder of a friend or relative just within the previous year.
Of course, with these experiences this general population had high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other stress symptoms. It was a punch in the stomach for me. A reminder that a few miles from where I fret about homework and go to sleep safely, other people lie awake, thinking about the horrors they have already witnessed, and those to come.
Student life
I spent some time today talking about stress with a group of fellow students for a class project. On a scale of 1-5 almost everyone put their stress levels at 3.5 or above. People cited sources of stress I had never noticed or thought about. One felt that other students were competing with her; another felt that her sexual identity was marginalized. Others worried about thesis data, health insurance, body image, curriculum. Almost everyone was stressed by friendships and school deadlines. Here we are in graduate school, at what is supposed to be a relatively leisurely moment in our lives and we're so wound up that in a one hour focus group people started talking about their mothers and about how they overeat when they're stressed.
And here I am. It's 1 in the morning. I have been at school since 10 this morning: class-project-appointment-work at one job-work at another job-homework-thesis-homework-personal project. I've been staying at school to do work because our internet at home has been erratic, and because I can get more done and stay up later working when there's no bed calling me. It's good to be productive, but quite dehumanizing. I'm ready for life after school.
And here I am. It's 1 in the morning. I have been at school since 10 this morning: class-project-appointment-work at one job-work at another job-homework-thesis-homework-personal project. I've been staying at school to do work because our internet at home has been erratic, and because I can get more done and stay up later working when there's no bed calling me. It's good to be productive, but quite dehumanizing. I'm ready for life after school.
2.25.2007
Up to the table
One of my favorite fundraisers is Night of 1000 Dinners. At Emory, we try to get students organized to do it and help them send out invitations and publicize, but it's an international event and anyone can get involved.
Basically, people sign up to host a dinner between March 1 and April 4, and invite their friends. The night of the dinner, guests, instead of bringing wine or another gift, bring a donation for Adopt-a-Minefield. It raises gazillions of dollars for mine clearance and mine education, but it's basically a party with your friends. Their website is www.1000dinners.com.
Basically, people sign up to host a dinner between March 1 and April 4, and invite their friends. The night of the dinner, guests, instead of bringing wine or another gift, bring a donation for Adopt-a-Minefield. It raises gazillions of dollars for mine clearance and mine education, but it's basically a party with your friends. Their website is www.1000dinners.com.
To do list
What do you do when you know you are going to move overseas for at least two years in ten weeks? Here are some of the items on my list:
-Order contacts
-Buy sensible shoes
-Dentist
-Pack, unpack, then repack
-Reschedule finals
-Sell furniture
-Finish thesis
-Give plants away
-New backpack
-Drive home
-Last good haircut
-Visit old high school
-Write a will
-Finish thesis
-Sell car
-Business cards?
-New clothes
-Blog consistently
-Read up on everything you haven't learned enough about yet which is everything
-Talk to any professor that would be a good source of advice which is everyone
-Inform current employers
-Pass Environmental Health, your last requirement
-Carry out the extracurriculars you've never had time for but already committed to
-Quality time with everyone on this continent
-Finish thesis
-Download more music
-Buy good books
-Order good magazines
-Finish thesis
-Fundraise?
-Tell everyone you know
-Breathe and
Prepare yourself
2.23.2007
Deciding
Despite being so enthusiastic about the offer (I went out and celebrated the same night I got it), I wanted to be absolutely sure when I said yes. So I spent the next day talking to the people who would find something wrong with it: my academic advisors, career services people, my family, a few of my most trusted friends. They each walked me through it in their own way, asked all their questions, and reflected back what they knew about me. Each time, when I explained, I tried to make it sound like a decision I was agonizing over, but they all saw through me. All of them, even my parents (once I convinced them that I would be coming home to visit every year), agreed it was perfect for me and I would be crazy not to accept it.
Tonight I said "I accept" and bounced around the house for joy.
Tonight I said "I accept" and bounced around the house for joy.
2.22.2007
Dream Job
I'm giddy. Yesterday, I got offered my dream job. It's in Tanzania, with a community-focused NGO, doing HIV prevention and care and treatment in 10 communities. It's like what I was doing before except with an HIV focus, more resources, more experience, and more autonomy. The organization has offices in the US, but they want the person in Tanzania to develop the programs and move the organization forward. So they're turning the reins over to me and putting faith into me that I won't ruin everything they have already worked so hard for. They say they're excited about me, but they can't be as excited as I am about them. It seems improbable that your whole life could change in the span of a few days. But it's perfect and I'm happy happy happy.
2.04.2007
Super enough for the poor
Anyone who has been overseas has had the disconcerting experience of seeing an Old Navy t shirt in a rural village, or running into a kid wearing a shirt from their hometown Y, or seeing a grown man wearing a shirt that says "World's Best Grandma". Most of these clothes are donated by private individuals, cleaned and baled in the sending country, shipped to importers in Africa, sold to entrepreneurs, and eventually sold to a developing country consumer.
Today there is a cute Super Bowl story about what happens to the Championship shirts and hats that are made for the Super Bowl team that ends up losing. World Vision gets it, to send overseas:
“Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water,” said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. “They wouldn’t know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t even know about football.”
This statement is true, and the people who receive it probably are grateful, but it typifies a side of charity that I hate. Logic like this justifies the types of donations we often received at the children's charity I worked for in Tanzania: women's high-heeled shoes, stained clothing, random puzzle pieces, broken trucks, dolls with missing limbs. Of course, we also received beautiful children's clothes and brand new toys and boxes of sharpened crayons, and of course, our kids were happy with those broken toys and scraps of puzzles. But whenever I opened a box that was full of garbage, I felt like our children were being disrespected.
In the case of healthcare, this same type of logic gets applied, and the consequences there are even more severe. Water projects are done on the cheap and break less than a year after donors have left. Refugees are given a ration so deficient in nutrients that they develop micronutrient-related diseases like scurvy and Ricketts (hey, otherwise they'd be starving, right?). And right now, throughout Africa, HIV-positive mothers are being given a drug to prevent transmission of the disease to their children that is only half effective and allows 15% of those newborns to be infected (more on this topic in a later post). We can do better than that, and we should.
Today there is a cute Super Bowl story about what happens to the Championship shirts and hats that are made for the Super Bowl team that ends up losing. World Vision gets it, to send overseas:
“Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water,” said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. “They wouldn’t know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t even know about football.”
This statement is true, and the people who receive it probably are grateful, but it typifies a side of charity that I hate. Logic like this justifies the types of donations we often received at the children's charity I worked for in Tanzania: women's high-heeled shoes, stained clothing, random puzzle pieces, broken trucks, dolls with missing limbs. Of course, we also received beautiful children's clothes and brand new toys and boxes of sharpened crayons, and of course, our kids were happy with those broken toys and scraps of puzzles. But whenever I opened a box that was full of garbage, I felt like our children were being disrespected.
In the case of healthcare, this same type of logic gets applied, and the consequences there are even more severe. Water projects are done on the cheap and break less than a year after donors have left. Refugees are given a ration so deficient in nutrients that they develop micronutrient-related diseases like scurvy and Ricketts (hey, otherwise they'd be starving, right?). And right now, throughout Africa, HIV-positive mothers are being given a drug to prevent transmission of the disease to their children that is only half effective and allows 15% of those newborns to be infected (more on this topic in a later post). We can do better than that, and we should.
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