started writing today about what my experience had been so far, but nothing of that mattered after i went on a couple home visits today. my first impression being here is that everything else seems superfluous, putting on makeup seems silly when the people around you barely have clothes to wear, that losing weight is silly when people here struggle everyday to stay alive. all my life in america seems so riddled with insignificant decisions. as strange as it may seem, i feel at home here. i think back to what susan said, that your cells remember their origins.
the trash, the poverty, the hiv/aids doesnt frazzle me. seeing the roads, the potholes, and the craziness of downtown just reminds me of home. we drove up msinga top to go do home visits with mary, she is the head of the home-based service. at first glance, it seems like an ineffective way to get medical services out, but we met with Pili (the home-based worker) and she gave us (or better said, Mary) the low-down on the situation. we walked to 3 different homes, and ended up having a bereavement session with a family that had lost a 3rd member to AIDS. mary told me that up here, the men go to johannesburg to work and come home to die. people dont know what is causing their illness, seems mindblowing to think that in the day and age that we live in, there are people who still do not know about HIV/AIDS. 
Tomorrow we will be doing grand rounds in the stepdown HIV/AIDS unit.
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