Of Mailmen and Minnesotans

December 17, 2005, Saturday, 8:26pm.

Hillary and I rode our bikes through the forest to a town called Yala, about
25 km away, where we saw a minivan with a blaring bullhorn advertising
mobile VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) services. The van belonged to
a VCT in a nearby town, one that my VCT hopes to model itself after (fat
chance).

We decided to drop in and see how their services compared to ours, and
discovered that their clients are given two different HIV tests per session:
Determine (a non-specific antibody test that can give a positive reading if
a client is HIV-negative but is carrying antibodies for viruses similar to
HIV, like, um, I don�t know, TB or typhoid or something) and Unigold (an
HIV-specific antibody test). Two tests are a standard Ministry of Health
requirement for VCTs, and they must keep a third type of test as a
�tie-breaker� in case the first two tests give discordant results. Of course
my VCT only uses Determine, which means it�s failing to comply with minimum
government standards, which is ultimately not that surprising considering
our chicken-with-its-head-cut-off leadership. Not that I�m bitter.

Today was the first time I�d traveled the road from my village to Yala, so
of course people came streaming out of their huts to look at the white zoo
animal riding a fancy mountain bike. I was still feeling irritable, so the
gawking bothered me to no end. I passed a crowd of primary school kids who
were laughing uncontrollably at me, which annoyed me for no good reason, so
I pointed at them and said, �HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Look at you! HAHAHAHAHA!�

They thought I was playing a game with them, and squealed with delight,
covering their mouths and giggling shyly. It was sincerely cute and
innocent, so I felt better, and smiled and waved at them. Who thought losing
a message in translation could improve mental health?

Further up the road were a few old men lying in the grass staring at the
world passing before their eyes. One of them was wearing a U.S. Postal
Service uniform shirt (I�m telling you, the Salvation Army delivers to
Africa), so I pointed at him and shouted, �Hey! You look like a mailman!�
They all thought it was hilarious and slightly miraculous that I was
speaking to them, so they waved and greeted me: �Habari! Hallo!�

When I got back to my village I stopped by the trading center (basically the
town center where there�s a bunch of shops, a hospital and a petrol station)
to buy toothpaste. A woman I�ve never seen before walked by and greeted me
in a perfect American accent, �Hi, how are you?�

My American no-staring reflex was too strong so I didn�t do the double-take
I wanted to do, but I ducked into the nearest shop and whispered to the shop
owner, �That lady talks like a mzungu but she�s African!�

The shop owner just chuckled and said, �That�s Cherumbose�s daughter who ran
off to Minnesota and got married.�

Cherumbose is a rich businessman who owns a lot of the shops in the trading
center, who yells across the road everytime he sees me, �Hallo, California!
Come here, I have just returned from America,� and then proceeds to talk to
me for the next half hour about all the amazing things about my country,
like tarmacs. I was really excited to hear that his daughter is back in the
village for a visit, and I�m trying to corner her one of these days to ask
her all about, uh, Minnesota.