Seeing SAABs

An age ago (ok it was the early 1990s) - during a summer I spent working at the Yale University Forests in Connecticut - I noticed something.

Being on the Forest Crew - we were responsible for managing the University Forests. The venerable University has about 8000 acres in Connecticut - and at least two smallish patches of a few hundred acres each in Vermont and New Hampshire. A dream summer of course - spent among the trees - counting and grading and helping make decisions about the next course of management - while living out in a bungalow in the middle of silence.

While driving up to visit the Vermont and New Hampshire plots for the week that we were assigned there, I couldn't help noticing how many SAABs there were in Vermont.

A small explanation. The SAABs I am talking about are not our 'sahibs'. Going by the idea that sahib=angrez then almost everyone in Vermont was a 'saab'. No - I mean the Swedish car which at that point was considered a pretty nifty piece of engineering that a person with a pretty good pay-packet would buy (i.e. core yuppy car in those days ... wouldn't know which car take that cake today).

And here I was - being driven into a state which to my low-brow understanding epitomised New England yuppydom - so was it any surprise that I kept seeing SAABs as we tooled up the highway through the beautiful low mountains of that state?

Well actually it was.

Because there really were not that many SAABs on sight. I would start each time I saw one - and rack it up as another example - but then it struck me to actually count the number of cars I was seeing in between these 'frequent' SAABs. A cold bucket of statistical reality took place. The 'overwhelming number of SAABs' were not even 1 in a 100. Compared to the huge number of other cars - the yuppy-mobiles were pretty rare. Probably as rare as what I saw around me in New Haven. The difference was what I was primed to see. Having set the internal matrix in the mind that I was going to a yuppy-country (a pretty strange thought anyway) - I could see plenty of evidence for it in the SAABs zipping by - because I was prepared to see that.

So what does that mean for me today.

Well, Sheba and I have been involved with caring for people with HIV/AIDS for the better part of this decade now.

Working in Thane - we see a lot of people with HIV/AIDS. The Jeevan Sahara Kendra home-based care team is looking after about 150 active cases at this point.

That means a lot of folks are out there. I see them everyday. The person who sells fish near our appartment. She came in with her husband a few weeks ago. Both are positive. A bus driver for the school my children attend. He came in positive. Thankfully his wife is not. The house-maid who I see when I take our kids down to their school bus. We looked after her husband till he died - and she has it - but does not want to come to see us - preferring to drown her sorrows in work - 10 hours of it every day. The lady who comes to our own house to sweep and mop the floors - her brother having died of AIDS last year. Does her alcoholic husband have HIV? She wants him tested. The lady from a near-by appartment. Her husband is taking treatment from very expensive HIV specialists. We offered to help, but they are too concerned about others finding out - and so prefer the anonymity of hi-fi corporate hospitals.

The question is this - am I seeing SAABs? Is it because I am primed to work with HIV that I am seeing so many people who have the disease. Am I seeing more than there actually is?

I don't think so.

What Sheba and I and the Jeevan Sahara team are privileged to see is a hidden underside of our society. Hidden because of the fear and shame and stigma attached to HIV. But visible to us - because we offer some hope. Because people do need help. Because we have been given the privilege of being brought into confidence by brave people who are living out their lives in the shadow of death.

Sadly, it is this very shadow of shame that continues to keep so many from further treatment - from making the best of a great battle going on in their bodies between the virus and their immune system. Further, the fear and shame directly affect the out-come. The more hiding - the darker the confusion - the poorer the prognosis. And what totally skews the whole business is the number 1 therapy that many use to escape from their problems - alcohol.

The people that I do see while walking around are those who have been able to make at least something of a fight with HIV. The people who I don't see are just as likely dead. We have had over 140 deaths among the people with HIV we serve over the last 7+ years. That's a lot. Most pass away virtually unnoticed. The surging throng of people around us don't notice the odd person disappearing. The odd family packed off back to the village.

And so when I 'see a SAAB' in the form of a person with HIV on the street - who I know has HIV - and they know that I know that they have HIV - I thank God that they are alive and working - alive and walking. More often than not quick quiet smile is passed between us - perhaps a word or two of greeting - and we carry on in our worlds.