Hospital Bags

I just started helping out with the “hospital bags” for the AIDS/TB hospital here in Luanda. The service project was started by a group of ex-pat wives because the conditions at the hospital are not very good. The only things that the hospital provides for its 250 or so patients are medicine (which doesn’t include pain medication) and a bed to sleep on (no sheets, just the mattress). These people are not provided with any food during their stay. It is assumed that relatives will bring them food, although this is often not the case. The patients sometimes have no family, the family could live too far to travel, or they feel that money is better spent on food for the children rather than someone who is dying. So a group of volunteers make up hospital bags every week to be distributed to the patients every Wednesday so that they have something to eat at least once a week. The bags contain; powdered milk (to be made into milk by adding water), a can of sardines, a hard-boiled egg, a yogurt and a piece of fruit. Tonight, Zach (with his love for Math) wanted to help me sort and count all the items to make up the bags. He was racing me- trying to see who was faster- me opening the bag or him measuring out the milk powder. He somehow also won. We had fun doing it together and I tried to explain why we were doing it, but it’s a pretty hard concept to grasp. I have not actually gone into the hospital because I don’t want to risk bringing TB back to my family, but I have heard that some of the patients are so hungry that they can’t get the containers of food open because their hands are shaking so bad. I decided to jump on the “hospital bag bandwagon” about a month ago because my friend, Hallie, is really involved with the project, it is something that I can easily do with kids at home, and I just can’t imagine being that hungry. As I stuff the bags I do often think to myself, “I wonder just how hungry I would have to be to enjoy that can of sardines!"