The VCT in Kazo Mixed School

This is probably going to be the most difficult post I have ever written, because it is always hard to recall something one, at the time, was to busy and exhasusted to remember.

I woke up at half past seven, arrived at the site fifteen minutes before the scheduled starting time of the testing. The testing team was late, so I spent most of my idling time there talking to the headmaster of the school who seemed to know nothing about the event. Just before I we got to know each other, the testing team arrived in a small black car which the back doors were broken and had to be opened from inside through the window. I immediately turned into a groundman who carried the chairs and  desks around with them and within the school. As soon as the last dust we blew up from moving the furnitures settled on the ground, the team of our local volunteers arrived elegently with Madame Mabel.

After settling everyone in, the testing began with already around thirty people in the waiting room. The testing team was soon found out to be too small to be able to carry out the job properly, so Madame Josephine and a local volunteer from us were sent into the main hall as counsellors. The process speeded up for a while until testing facilities started to running out so the test had to stop at the time. one person from the testing team went back to their centre and brought back more books and needles after thirty minutes. And that was in the afternoon already when people continued coming in as flowing water. After buying twelve big bottle of water and distributed them evenly to the people in the waiting room with small local plastic bags, I decided to join the counsellor's team with John as my Luganda intrepreter.

There was a young man around 26 came in with a football trumpet in his left hand. He sat down with an attitude which made John and I laugh. He started telling his story upon my request. I then got to know he was having six girfirends. Before I even asked his the question, he asked me by saying, "What can I do if I find out I'm HIV positive," before I was able to find a gap to answer him, he continued, "you know, I have not been feeling well for the whole week last week, I felt really sick, so that's why I'm here to do the test" John and I laughed in a friendly way. I was in fact dying of laughing in my heart. The way he described himself was too funny to be neglected. He was not so serious in telling his story but had shown us a sincere face. The good thing was, in the end, he was tested negative.

The day finished rather slowly. I reached the centre absolutetly exhausted. I felt like I was too tired to sleep and too abnormal to be counscious.