HIV and AIDS

This week’s topic was HIV and AIDS and our speakers were Larry and Joyce Sandberg, they have been missionaries to Africa for more than 50 years (and they still go to Africa yearly); he is a physician and biochemist and she is a nurse with specialist training in psychology. These lectures took a bit of a different approach to that which we have been used to, it was very medical/scientific which I really enjoyed but to be honest when we got into some of the cell structure and specifics of how the drugs work it was a little over my head.

AIDS is something I fortunately haven’t had to deal with yet in Mali, I know a few people who have it there but it isn’t as big a problem as it is elsewhere on the continent. Although after this week and my new, greater understanding of AIDS and the symptoms I think there were a lot more people around me suffering from it than I thought. 

I know the information I got out this week will be very useful for me when I go back to Mali. We also talked about the social and psychological issues surrounding AIDS and that again will be information I can draw on in Mali, especially as the speakers have been working in Africa for so many years and they really understand the cultural issues and gave many examples from their experience which I really appreciated.

Our speakers were only here for 4 days of class so on Friday we had my good friend Lenneke teaching us. Lenneke’s back ground is in social work and she worked in that role in a home for boys with severe attachment and behavioural problems. For the past couple of years she has been working with the Womens and Children Advocacy Centre within YWAM where she has been focussing on ministries to children at risk. In her teaching Lenneke went over a lot of the things we have covered in this course and tied it all together in a really tangible way. We discussed different care possibilities for children who are no longer under their parents care and what options are best for the child.

Overall it has been a very informative week and I am looking forward to putting into practice what I have learnt.