Phiwa

Carina Bedford, from England, writes about Phiwa, a girl she met at the Dream Center and whose life she saved.

Phiwa is a 22 year-old girl from Umlazi, who stayed at the Dream Centre hospice for 5 months in 2004. What first struck you about her was how amazingly articulate and perceptive she was in spite of her rapidly deteriorating condition and the multitude of opportunistic infections that were attacking her AIDS-ravaged body.

When volunteers would talk to her she would normally put on a brave face and joke around. However one day when I went to visit her she seemed particularly subdued and then finally broke down, admitting how much she hated staying there, how unhappy she was being surrounded by people so much older than her, and how the stifling atmosphere and lack of stimulation was driving her to despair. In the alien and frightening environment, surrounded by illness and death, she was rapidly losing her will to live and she started to refuse the food provided as she felt permanently unclean there and thus unable to eat.

To compound her problems she was worried that her mother was suffering from domestic abuse which was preventing her from coming to visit, and she was suffering from chronic homesickness.

I asked whether there was a possibility for her to return home, and she said that she'd been told that she would only be able to return home if she could obtain a wheelchair, as her legs were getting progressively weaker to the point where she was unable to move at all.

The conversation angered and upset me more than any other situation I had experienced in South Africa - the fact that a girl of my age, with an intellect and insightfulness that belied her wasting body and sunken face, was dying in front of my eyes as she was unable to obtain one wheelchair.

I immediately started emailing people, explaining the situation and asking for donations. Within days, Elske de Kanter, (who had also befriended Phiwa before returning to Holland) had managed to raise and send over the majority of the funds, so I could order the wheelchair which would allow Phiwa to return home.

The day I came to inform her, her mother had also managed to visit, and her reaction was unforgettable. The typical Zulu joy and enthusiasm were there, only magnified about 1000 times. It was sheer unbounded joy and incredulity that someone had done that for her daughter. She was jumping up and down, crying, and repeatedly exclaiming God's goodness. Phiwa was lost for words, just silently crying, and so grateful to Elske for donating the money.

A week later we were given permission to take her home, and her mother thanked me profusely again, and said that she had been sure that the next time that she would take Phiwa home would be in a coffin.

When I returned to South Africa in June 2005 I went to visit her again, picturing in my head the same emaciated frame and wheel-chair bound figure that I had left the year before. On the way to visit her we got completely lost in Umlazi. After pulling over for about the 6th time to find out directions, I realized that the well-built girl standing on the side of the road was actually Phiwa waiting for me to arrive. Her face looked entirely different and her body was absolutely unrecognizable. I was completely astonished and overwhelmed and as we greeted each other she told me how just before her 21st birthday she had started to walk again with the support of her mother and friends, and how, after eating her mum's cooking like there was no tomorrow she had gained over 20kg! She had also finally received anti-retro viral treatment from the government, resulting in her CD4 count increasing from 170 to almost 450, meaning that she officially no longer had AIDS, only HIV.

I was able to take her shopping, meet her friends and experience the life that she never thought she'd return to. From previously being resigned to death, after being able to return home she was now living life to the full, and last January she restarted school in standard 12, and was taking part in a HIV/AIDS awareness course. Her and her mother have continually showed their gratitude through regular letters and generous gestures when I visited them, and it really is an example of how a tiny gesture literally can make the difference between death and life.

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