Guests

We love to train people in HIV Care.

The problem we have at Jeevan Sahara Kendra is accommodation. Hotel rates here in Thane are stratospheric. We do not have a Catholic Retreat Centre near-by (bless the dear Fathers and Sisters who run these amazing institutions across our land). We once even tried hiring the Forest bungalow in the National Park - but the short hike late at night proved too remote for our trainees.

So stop-gaps measures for housing our trainees are the name of the game, and we have occasionally put up training participants with our JSK staff.

One of the areas we at Jeevan Sahara are working towards is mainstreaming people with HIV into society. People with HIV can work - and should! It would be very odd if we who encourage our Friends living with HIV to actively work in their vocations - would then discourage them from joining JSK as staff.

We are proud to have people serving in JSK who are living with the HIV virus. Their presence in the team is an inspiration and challenge for us all.

At one of the trainings we held, some of the women were housed with our nurses. On the first night, as they got to know our staff they also found out that one of them is living with HIV.

The next morning we had two lady trainees on our hands who were not happy at all. "We need to be housed in a different place." they said. "The house is not clean, the toilets are not clean."

What they were saying was "we don't want to live with a person with HIV."

The irony is that they were sent by a group of churches that ministers to people with HIV. They were leaders in this church. They had 'ministered' to people with HIV before - but not lived with them.

Our response was short and sweet: Like it or lump it.

Over the course of the training, things changed. The ladies saw how the JSK staff treated each other. As the days went on, the trainees met person after person with HIV who shared their story openly. Lives which had been shattered, but which God in His mercy is in the process of fitting together. Some of the stories were told by JSK staff themselves.

At the end of the training, we had a reflection exercise. The ladies shared how they had been changed. "We used to work with people with HIV - but now we know how to live with them."

Our staff told us that when they left both the ladies hugged the lady staff member they were staying with. Both asked her forgiveness for the things that they had told her.