Accept.

I've spent most of this week at ACCEPT, an AIDS treatment facility for low or no-income families and individuals here in Bangalore. It has been amazing. It's a relief to know there are not just functioning but warm, open-armed places like this available to the people here, after spending the last month seeing so much need.

In the mornings I was able to shadow the amazing doctor as she met with patients (no privacy protection here!). Among a huge variety of people..

A gorgeous young HIV+ mother currently living at ACCEPT, getting treatment and waiting to find out if her 9-month old daughter is positive or negative. (This can only be determined after 18 months.) They were concerned about a rash on the baby's stomach, until the mother explained it is actually scarring from a ritual in her village, where they 'brand' newborn babies with burning corn husks..

A middle-aged couple, the husband being HIV+ and the wife negative. The husband is too sick to work, and the wife has a job rolling incense sticks, getting paid 15 rupees (30 cents) for every 1,000 she makes..

A transgendered woman suffering not just from AIDS but also Hep B, liver failure, and major water retention. One of her transgendered friends committed suicide last week after discovering she was HIV+..

On a lighter note, there was a man in the later stages of AIDS who was sent to the hospital yesterday for a chest scan to see if he had TB. The hospital staff got his forms mixed up and gave him an ultrasound by accident. He was describing how he was very confused when they started squirting cold gel on his stomach, but thought maybe it was some new, different sort of scan... the doctor had quite a laugh.

After patient visits, there's time for sitting in the wards, helping in the kitchen, or walking around with some of the less mobile.

At 2pm, the kids in ACCEPT's Children Home (nearly all 17 of them total orphans and HIV+) get back from school and we do homework, play games like "Where's the Penny?" (or rupee, in this case), "What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?" (simplified to "TIME!!" for the sake of limited English skills), eat bananas, drink chai, and talk about Spiderman, Batman, and Superman.



On the Jungle Gym.

Boys in the Cupboard.

With Rani in the Women's Ward.

The Lovely Ankita.

Raul & Mani on the Swings.

This is a precious tough little guy named Ramesh. He was found wandering the streets last week and is supposedly 3 years old, though his body is about the size of a 1-year old, thanks to severe malnutrition. He was taken to the hospital today with a 104 fever and is battling a major ear infection.

Sweet Smile.