There’s much that can be said in a sidelong smile. That’s what I had from Fanta Siby Diallo, the head of the DRS (Direction Regionale de la Sante) today at the end of our meeting, where we finally were given the OK to proceed with building our clinic. As she said, she’s really not the building expert, and she advised us to consult some, but she didn’t see why we couldn’t just get started! Words sweeter than honey, if you ask me! Of course, we agreed that the DRS would also get involved in doing a “survey” of Sikoro sometime in the future, and that Tounkara, our director, would come in and work on the survey with the team at DRS, and I told them we’d have to put it in the budget, but don’t hold your breath – what’s important is that we have a green light to proceed. Success! The groundwork laid by Sophie, and the hard work of Tounkara – when you think that we were at the bottom of a deep dark hole just in April (only 17 patients, no formal paperwork, a director that was to be fired, and Mme Diallo at the end of her rope). Thank you Sophie, thank Tounkara, thank you board for your patience as we worked this through. We have the “paper” we have the “green light” we’re going to meet with Guide and the Mayor of Commune 1 before I go, and if all goes as planned, we’ll be starting to build the Hope Center clinic on September 1. Hence the smile, and the comment by our most wonderful Diallo who has been our guardian angel over the past months – “we women need to stick together”. A sidelong smile, and a hug. We’re blessed. As Sophie would say “Champagne!”. or was it “Chapeau!”. I say BOTH!
Meanwhile we’ll be working on a Plan D’Action that will need to be approved by the DRS and the CSLS about the HIV care we’re providing, and we’ll work with the PNLTB on our plan to do cough monitoring. Data is getting entered slowly – Maggie has surmounted massive computer problems and downloaded a new version of Labtracker across that electronic smear that is the internet stretching between a very wet Bamako and Ground Zero right in the Haight. What possibly could be more perfect than that? I can see the bits and bytes streaming right out of the great big glass windows of Dan and Mark’s office overlooking the epicenter of AIDS in San Francisco (from years past, having shifted to this side of the globe, since then), circling once, before they take off towards the East, flying over a Providence that is shutting down for the day, and the wind whipped ocean, and the storm crossed Sahel, and around our mango tree, and into our garden, and into the blue plastic linksys box that Matt bought for us . . . Labtracker is here, Maggie has the data, and as I sit here (next to the dog, who is quietly ecstatic to be lying next to me on the couch) I can see her across the room typing furiously. . . Thank you Labtracker, and Mark and Dan – if all goes well, and the red rivers of mud do not keep us trapped in our garden, we’ll sally forth tomorrow to feed data into the computer and tell you all about the results.
We also visited Dr. Traore of Commune 1 who was as always gentle and polite and supportive. We visited Djeneba Maiga, the doctor to whom we refer our patients for free HIV meds at Commune 1. She was suspicious (why would we want data) but when I explained about the need to make sure that the team is doing the right thing, she warmed right up and promised us our results. Kara will follow up with a request to copy them, and if all goes well, and the electrons are aligned, and we don’t float away (rain is coming down again as I write this), we’ll have the data in the computer before Maggie goes. That, and a picture of the clinic being built (if it doesn’t crumble away entirely like a giant sandcastle under this rain, tonight) and we can count this trip as a huge success.
Oh but there is more – we’re working on the conference – meeting with Solthis and Esther tomorrow to talk about the conference, perhaps inviting Jeff Sachs and Sonia Sachs and someone from Gates and also IAVI to come and also Ralph Jurgens to talk about prison work.
But enough about that. What I really want to tell you about is the river of water that is coming down from somewhere over our heads. We are perhaps not in Mali but rather sitting somewhere under the Niagara Falls, the Sahel is no longer approaching and instead the entire desert will be green with grass and filled with flowers if this rain doesn’t stop sometime soon. The pieces of cardboard that people where as head protectors are useless against this, and since no one has rain gear, or umbrellas (unless you are the GAIA guards who have the complete get up), you are just out of luck. This rain keeps people inside and why indeed not, when every other road in Mali is really only just a dirt track (you can see ours on a sunnier day, attached). And so, today, when the faucet above our heads wound down to a trickle, we made our way to the clinic with an adventurous taximan who didn’t seem to mind the foot deep craters in the road and the rivers running through them. Everywhere, everywhere, red water coursed, ankle deep, over the red mud. Kids, cars, goats, donkeys and taxis moved through it because, if you were going anywhere, that’s what had to be done.
I, for one (and I am only that) am confident that the streets will be dry tomorrow. There is no reason why not. If we can find a way to build a clinic, out here in the land of red mud, surrounded by donkeys and wild dogs and the skeletons of cars who, rather than facing one more street full of stones, gave up the ghost, we can do anything. The rain will come down, the Sahel will be green, Madame Diallo will give us her sidelong smile, and there will be an end to AIDS.