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One summer spent caring for the needy

Dimple Patel travels to Africa for volunteer work helping sick and less fortunate people.

By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE
Published September 15, 2005

LECANTO - Dimple Patel's father grew up in Lusaka, Zambia, in the southern half of the African continent, north of Zimbabwe and west of Mozambique. He has friends and family there.

Dimple, 16, a Lecanto High School senior who had no summer plans, heard about some students who were to do volunteer work. She decided to visit her father's homeland and do the same.

For a month and a half she visited facilities around Lusaka, tending to HIV/AIDS patients, using her father's friends Celia and Harshad Devalia as her base.

She spent two full days as an assistant to two nurses who were part of a home-based care program. She went home to home with them, visiting women and dispensing advice and medication.

On several occasions she worked at a Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity home, where there were about 150 adults and children in the AIDS Hospice program, about 200 seriously ill children with other diseases, about 135 orphans and an outpatient clinic. She helped feed infants, played with children, taught them games and helped them in their studies. She fed and gave treatments to adults and helped with the laundry and cleaning.

Dimple spent at least three days at a facility called Homes of Joy, where she played and taught children. The place had an orphanage and offered meditation to AIDS patients.

At another facility, KARA Counseling, a Hope House Skills Training Programme, AIDS sufferers came as students to learn skills. They are not always welcome in workplaces, Dimple explained. Learning crafts and skills is a way to help them keep working. Hope House also gives the students an opportunity to talk openly about the disease.

For Dimple, the lessons were stunning. She said she learned "actually too much." The experience gave going to school new meaning. She hopes to be accepted into a pre-med program at a university. She said school now gives her a way to go out and help people.

She saw how much need there is in the world. It isn't as obvious in the United States, she said.

"AIDS is more apparent in Africa," she said. "I saw the humane effect of a disease. Every family over there (in sub-Saharan Africa) is touched by the disease."

And she saw more than just illness. "I saw every day on the street orphans begging for money," she said.

For all she saw and did, it wasn't all misery and disease and she was very glad she went. "There was always something to do," Dimple said. And it "wasn't a sad atmosphere. It was fun."

[Last modified September 15, 2005, 01:05:21]