The Road to Success
First person
While on assignment for an Extension School journalism class, Melissa Jeltsen was offered an opportunity to sharpen her journalistic skills in the field. She accompanied a team of volunteer acupuncturists to Uganda to observe the training of local health-care professionals in the use of techniques to alleviate symptoms of HIV/AIDS. Jeltsen, who is completing the requirements for admission to the master’s degree in journalism, reflects on the experience in the following essay.
After spending all morning packed in a rickety taxi-van with 7 strangers, the bumping subsided and I stepped out to stretch my legs. Lush greens and browns surrounded the parked van, the heavy branches of overgrown trees poking out into the dusty road.
It was teatime, and our group sat around an outdoor table at a café, blinking at each other in the light and sharing introductions. I poured a mix of hot milk and water into my cup, squinting at the spoon to make sure it was clean. To my left, a television strapped to a tree blared an American pro-wrestling match. I washed down my malaria medicine with a gulp of milky tea. Welcome to Uganda, I thought.
A month ago at this time of day, I was battling the after-work crowds on the Boston subway’s Red Line, trying to make it to my journalism class at Harvard Extension School. I spent my days peddling shoes at a retail store on Newbury Street and chasing leads around the city, working to uncover a compelling story.
Now here I was, 7,000 miles from home, traveling south and west to a little town called Ibanda. It all began when I interviewed Richard Mandell, the director of an international acupuncture project, for my profile writing class. Through the organization, licensed acupuncturists from the United States volunteer to teach medical professionals in Africa to use acupuncture in the treatment of HIV/AIDS symptoms.
During the interview, the director invited me on the next trip to Uganda. Excited by the prospect, I accepted, hoping to unearth a compelling story. After a load of immunizations and a quick visa application, I found myself in the middle of Africa—embedded with a team of acupuncturists.
That night we arrived in Ibanda, all of us sore from the unpadded van seats. In the village, children yelled “muzunga!” when they spotted us, a group of 8 white people. We walked the town and picked up necessities, toilet paper and some homemade potato chips. Men riding boda-boda taxi scooters offered me a lift: “Ma’am, ma’am,” they called as I walked by.
The town center had 4 or 5 cell-phone stores. On the street, vendors roasted maize on a stick over an open flame. At the edge of town, fruit stalls lined the road, each stand offering the same selection of pineapples, potatoes, and passion fruit. Bunches of green bananas were everywhere, strapped to bikes and even the front grills of cars.
During our time there the group of acupuncturists would hold the second training of 30 nurses from the district. The nurses went through an initial training 4 months earlier and were equipped with needles and manuals. By treating a large number of people under the guidance of the Westerners during this second phase, the nurses could further increase their skills.
Though not touting a cure for HIV/AIDS, those dedicated to the Pan-African Acupuncture Project believe acupuncture can make a positive difference in the lives of those suffering from the disease. Western medical studies provide some support for that belief. According to the National Institutes of Health, acupuncture significantly reduces chronic diarrhea and insomnia, 2 recurring effects of the autoimmune deficiency disease.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest HIV infection rates in the world. According to UNAIDS, two-thirds of all people with HIV live in this region, although it is home to only 13 percent of the world’s population. Uganda, by most estimates, has more than a million people with HIV/AIDS. In the early 1990s, almost 30 percent of the population was thought to have HIV. The number is now closer to 7 percent.
Since the AIDS crisis was identified in Uganda, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other medical projects have provided supplies, sent trained doctors into rural areas, and offered educational programs on HIV and prevention. “Uganda has become a pet project for international organizations,” one of the acupuncture trainers said. In Uganda alone there are more than 3,000 NGOs operating. Faith-based groups—such as the Catholic Church, Church of Uganda, and the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council—are the largest nonpublic providers of social services.
While many of the projects involve Western medicine, few incorporate other methods of healing. This acupuncture project was the first of its kind in Uganda.
During the day, the nurses set up acupuncture stations in a room at a local health clinic. Each morning we arrived there were lines of patients a hundred deep. In addition to people with HIV/AIDS, patients with other ailments came to receive free treatment.
My job as a journalist was to stand back, watch the proceedings, and talk to the people involved. As the days wore on, I got used to the acupuncture jargon, the Chinese way of thinking about the body. At 1 point, I received acupuncture in a separate room. As I lay with the needles in place, I smiled at the absurdity of the situation. Where was I and how did I get to be here?
In a previous semester, I had taken an introductory journalism class at the Extension School. I was green and jumped into it with enthusiasm. The next semester I signed up for 2 more classes to immerse myself in writing. I was getting the hang of conducting interviews, organizing stories, and writing with an objective but direct tone.
But after arriving in a foreign country, the story seemed like an elephant on my back. For the first few days, I found myself feverishly scribbling down every detail. Then I did the opposite—I watched and listened, but I didn’t record anything on paper or tape. The big picture was clouding the smaller ones.
One day I walked into the town to the 1 Internet café, which sat on a street with an eclectic assortment of storefronts: next door, a bridal boutique/grocery store; a block up, a knick-knack store with plastic jewelry. In between those were small shops selling homemade chapati, pineapples, and avocados.
On the bulky old desktop, I pulled up my e-mail (slowly) and e-mailed my feature writing instructor. “Help,” I wrote. “There is too much; I’m overwhelmed. Whose story I am writing?”
The next day, I was watching patients stream in and out of the health center. On 1 of the beds at the far end a boy lay quietly. As I approached, I realized my first assessment was wrong. At 24, Ambrose Mucunguzi was not a boy but a severely weak adult. His upper body looked healthy, but his legs were anemic sticks. I moved closer to the bed to listen to the conversation.
His brother stood by his side and explained to the nurse, Sister Stella, that Ambrose had acute neuropathy in his legs. He had not been able to walk for the past 4 months and had to be carried everywhere by his family members. Peering at the treatment sheet Sister Stella filled out, I saw that Ambrose had AIDS.
Ambrose pointed to his belly button.
“He can’t feel anything from there to his toes,” his brother explained.
Sister Stella inserted needles along Ambrose’s legs. They twitched, and his brother held his feet to keep them still.
Ambrose had a beautiful smile and a healthy face with wide brown eyes. I began talking to him, overjoyed that he spoke English, as many of the patients didn’t. He told me that he recently finished taking the yearlong medication prescribed for tuberculosis. The doctor he saw said the paralysis might be caused by the tuberculosis entering his spine.
I had been around people with the autoimmune disease for a week but hadn’t met someone my own age who was interested in the same things. If Ambrose were in Boston, we might likely have been friends. He was an artist who had gone to university in Kampala. After he got sick, he had to return to his family’s small village to be cared for by his mother.
Later, I took a trip to his house in the village to see his artwork. Watercolor paintings hung on the dim walls. Large sculptures sat around him at his work desk. He told me that after the acupuncture, he felt strong pangs up and down his legs, where before he felt nothing. He painted as he talked to me, mixing yellows and blues on a piece of cardboard.
I told him about my life in Boston and purchased 2 pieces of his work to take home with me. “I’ll always look at these,” I told him. “I won’t forget.”
I returned to the small house where we were staying as a group. Dinner was chapati, rice, and fresh fruit. The electricity went off halfway through the meal. With no light, I went to bed early and lay there, awake, and different.
In less than a week, I was in the un-air-conditioned Entebbe airport, my bag filled with phone numbers, addresses, notes, and photos of the people I had met. I’d gathered at least a hundred stories of the nurses, the patients, and the villagers. I had listened to stories of families, of loss, and of hope. I had pages of notes, but I knew most of what I learned wasn’t written down. My next challenge began: to bring the story to the page.
For her article Jeltsen decided to focus on the patients and the Ugandan nurses to give a clear representation of the project through the eyes of a few. She submitted it to the science section of the Boston Globe, where it was published on July 16, 2007.