Detective work

I had a glorious dinner at the Howard's house (a missionary family I've known since I was a kid) of chicken fried warthog and kudu, mashed potatoes and gravy, cantaloupe, completed with peanut butter cake and...wait for it.... five roses TEA (I believe this makes 2 cups within 6hrs of landing in Lusaka)!!! After that I conked out in the baptist guest house and the next morning my med school friend, Sarah Abroms (who's been here 2 months now doing research with the same grp) picked me up in a taxi on the way to the CIDRZ office. My preceptor, German (he's hispanic, pronounced Hermawn) discussed with me what I'll be doing then sent me with Marcellina (she helps collect data from TB screenings at the prisons) to Lusaka Central Prison. Everything happened so quickly I barely had time to find the tea source at work! You'll all be relieved to know it is right by my cubicle section and I had time for a cup whilst waiting for our transport to arrive!!:) Ofcourse we had to do things the proper way so we brought a letter of introduction so I could get in, then Marcellina proceeded to introduce me to every single person in the prison remotely involved in our project!! And I now feel very welcome, because they all said so when I was introduced!

The prison was built in the 1960's during the colonial times for 400 inmates, it now houses over 1400!! It's so crowded I've been told inmates sleep in shifts or sitting up, like sardines in a can! It's awful! You enter this HUGE green gate in massive white walls (looks like a medieval castle or fort) through a tiny door that even Marcellina has to duck to get through (she's 5'5")! Then you're standing on a cement paved entryway where they take your mobile phones and you sign in. You go through another gate that's more like a giant fence into an open courtyard with the clinic CIDRZ built on your right, all the walls are whitewashed and there are men in orange uniforms (convicts), normal clothes (remandees waiting for a court date to be convicted or discharged), and officer uniforms milling about. You can hear some men singing on the other side of the walls where I presume they're working deeper inside the prison. In Zambia you are guilty until proven otherwise so the prisons are crowded by men waiting to be sentenced and there's no limit to the time you can be left to wait. I met Jeff who helps with TB screening, he's a businessman from Tanzania who owns a shop in Lusaka. He was implicated in something and has been waiting now for 6yrs to go to trial, unfortunately he told me today the judge assigned to him was fired so who knows how much longer he'll end up waiting lost in the black hole that is the Zambian justice system!! The conditions are horrendous and there's been a lot of attention lately on the prisons because of all the human rights violations.

And it's no wonder so many remandees get lost in the system, I can safely say the prisons here run like the airports; organized chaos! I still haven't figured out their method of filing all the TB/HIV screening they've done. They have no way of tracking the inmates in the prison that I've discovered yet and the CIDRZ people give them an id number based on order of appearance starting with 1 on 01/01/11 and when they reach 01/01/12 they start all over again as 1/12. Then the TB treatment team gives them a different number based on order of appearance in their clinic and the HIV treatment team give them an ART number (don't know how in the world they come up with that one!!) if they're HIV+ and start treatment...data collection is going to be sooooo fun!! Oh well, I always enjoyed playing detective as a kid and now here's my chance!!

Being in the prison has given new light to what Christ did for me! He set the prisoners free, I always think about being free and not who a prisoner is!! No-one cares for these prisoners! Society here deems them as worthless, deserving of their punishment and not worthy of the basic human rights of proper nourishment, clean water, and health care awarded to the community at large. Why should we spend govt money to treat them for HIV and TB?! But Christ looked upon worthless prisoners like us and he gave up His very life so we could be free!! How can I not have compassion for these men regardless of who they are in light of the fact in God's eyes I am no different from they?!