Sonya Shadravan '10 Describes Her Summer Intership in Uganda
Second year student Sonya Shadravan recently returned from a summer in Uganda, working as an intern with Reach Out-Mbuya Parish, a community faith based non-governmental organization serving the poor in a suburb of Kampala. The organization offers holistic health care to over 2500 poor people with HIV/AIDS. Thanks to internship grant funding from the Tow Foundation Public Service Internship Fund, Sonya, who was born in Atlanta, spent two months working alongside care providers and patients, and seeing firsthand how the disease has affected daily life in the African country. She describes the experience below.
How did this opportunity come about for you?
I'm a premed concentration with a major in human rights and Africana studies. My parents both worked in development, and we lived in Swaziland, Cambodia and later in Thailand when I was growing up. Our family knew a physician who had started a grass roots HIV/AIDS initiative in those places, primarily for women with HIV. I knew that she started a similar mission in Uganda, and so in the spring I contacted the mission and asked about opportunities to volunteer with them.
What drove your interest in this?
I've always known that someday my work would be developmental, to serve and advance humanity, be that through medicine, education, or human rights work. I have also always had an interest in the interconnectedness of physical health and social well-being, and this was further enhanced after I took a "Women and Health" course last fall. The course looked at the way so many social ailments manifest themselves in a physical way, and thus the need to treat all of these root causes rather than just handing over a pill when providing healthcare. Reach Out Mbuya Parish is unique in that it definitely recognizes this same principle, and this was something I wanted to explore. It started five years ago in Uganda with 14 patients; now there are 3000 patients, I'm guessing there's around 300 staff and only about four are not Ugandan. What started as a clinic now has social support services, helping people with adult literacy programs, micro financing, tailoring, and operation school fees.
How was your time there spent?
The organization isn't set up as a volunteer organization — they're getting things done with patients. When I first got there, they said I would try out different departments. So I spent some time in the pharmacy just doing drug packing. Then I was in counseling for a few days, helping with pre & post HIV test counseling. I spent the majority of my time in the clinic working with the different nurses and doctors. They trained me in how to do basic examinations. I was given books to read and study up on different symptoms. What is unique is that even the doctors and counselors are not at all separated from those they're helping - the doctors are neighbors with the patients, the patients are training to become counselors; everyone is empowered to help their community however they can.
We hear a lot about how HIV/AIDS is ravaging Africa, and the severity of the problem. How did your experience then shape the perception that you and many of us have just from what we hear and see in media reports?
After one week, one patient I worked with passed away. It was emotionally intense. Someone said to me, "that's what happens when people come to Uganda for the first time." It was very different, what the reality of AIDS really means. For example, I had plans with someone I worked with at the clinic, and she didn't show up. The next morning, at work, this person said, "I'm so sorry I didn't make it, Sonya, but my sister passed away last night." I learned just how pressing a problem this really is. What was most admirable, though, was the ever present will to persevere and the belief that whatever will happen will happen, and that tomorrow will come.
You knew you'd be around disease. Was that a concern at all; what was your attitude about that?
I had to go on trust, if doctors and nurses were doing it and had been doing it for years, then it was OK. We did home visits on Wednesdays, traveling to shanty villages to visit patients, and to hospital wards sometimes. One week we had to visit two patients in the TB ward. The room was just 40 metal-framed beds lined up with TB patients. I thought about that — it's TB, you're not really supposed to be in contact with people with TB. But then I thought about what would it look like if I just stood outside, and how the patients would feel, and again, I just had to trust that it would be fine.
How will this experience factor into your future?
I was hoping that my time in Uganda would help me decide whether or not to stay on the pre-med track. I definitely had a confirmation of the fact that this is something I need to do and want to do. And I also realized from being in a situation in which education is not an obligation but a privilege what amazing opportunities I've had. For now, I plan to apply to the humanities and medical program at Mt. Sinai, which integrates the social sciences with medical sciences. Maybe I'll pursue a medical and public health degree.
—Dimitra Kessenides
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