I love the ordinary moments most of all...

"You've gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run." This was the music playing in the car on the way to pick up Dr. JMV before heading off to Nyacungu to spend a day at the rural clinic. That's right. Kenny Rogers. This was followed by a rousing tune by Dolly Parton and some other guy, clearly a fabulous remake of the Sylvia and Mickey song: Love is Strange. I couldn't make this up if I tried. Nina and I are sitting in the back of the WE-ACTx car on a dirt road while Freddy, our driver, listens to a mix tape of old school country. "Do you like country?", he asks me. Oh man, do I ever! Freddy and I continue singing Kenny's gem of a song when it comes on a second time. Well I was singing, Freddy was screaming out what he thought the song lyrics to be. I couldn't have asked for a better start to my day.

We get to Nyacungu and see a handful of patients. Nothing too serious today, until this old woman walks in. Sorrowful face, sullen expression, hunched over, settles into the chair beside Dr. JMV's desk. I watch as she tells Dr. JMV something and he responds. This continues for a few minutes until the woman's eyes light up. She sits up straight and begins talking, quite animatedly, arms flailing, loud voice. What is going on?!?! Dr. JMV explains when she's done having her moment. She was tested for HIV this past October and the results came back positive. The woman was returning today for a standard 6 month follow up treatment, and today I was there when she found out the test results were wrong. She is in fact HIV negative. With one sentence back in October her life changed, seemingly forever, but today, with one sentence she her life did a complete 180. I can't imagine the heaviness of her diagnosis in October, but I was there to see the weight lifted, which is not a cliche description in this case. Dr. JMV continued to translate her words for us.

She was a genocide survivor, but her husband was not. She never remarried and swears she has never been a prostitute. She has spent the last 8 months trying to figure out how she, a celibate, church-going old woman, could have gotten this disease. She thanked and praised God, Dr. JMV, along with Nina and I. I swear, she danced her way out of the room. Until that moment I have yet to see such a spectacular moment in a person's life. Something so private. And I was there.

So how does it happen? Careless mistake? Could be. Rwandans don't have surnames that are passed from generation to generation like we do in the US. Instead, they are given Kinyarwanda surnames by their parents. Commonly, their first names are Christian names and so it is highly likely that there will be some people with the exact same name, certainly similar names. Most of the patients I've encountered here don't know the exact date of their birth, and are lucky if they can tell me the year they were born. The blood is drawn, labeled (sometimes sloppily), and then taken to the national laboratory for testing. Here samples are frequently mixed up due to the similarities in name. When the results are taken back to the area from which they came, they may not be for the right person.

Poor testing procedures? Maybe. There are some sights that do their own form of rapid testing where they use whatever testing kits are available to them at the time. The rapid test is pretty self-explanatory. It's a fast test for HIV, in the US it takes about 30 minutes. Dr. JMV explained that there have frequently been cases of people using expired testing kits that lead to greater false positive results. Keep in mind that while HIV/AIDS has been around and identified since about 1986, testing in the catchment area of Nyacungu started this past October.

That's right. October, 2006. And still the argument is made that Sub-Saharan Africa is receiving plenty of international help in dealing with the epidemic. How very George W. of us. Just ignore it and it'll go away. What you don't know won't hurt you. That's exactly right. People go away here every day and the international community continues to ignore it. It won't hurt us if we don't know. Hey, it's not like we're going to get AIDS. It's this exact ignorance that's killing Rwandans. Africans. Haitians. South Americans. Indians. The Poor.

My day didn't end there, though my preaching does for now. I came home after seeing a few more patients and found Seraphine, the woman that cooks for us during the week, preparing dinner in the kitchen. I was done for the day with my WE-ACTx duties, so I decided to step a little farther out of my comfort zone, right in my very own kitchen, and try to cook with Seraphine. I say 'out of my comfort zone' because I do not cook, nor speak French, both of which Seraphine does flawlessly.

I come in and ask her if she needs help. She tilts her head and squints at me like I'm completely nuts. I try again, remembering that she knows some English. Can I have a job? Job, she repeats. Yup, job. I pick up the knife she's using to chop vegetables and mime cutting. Oh! Job! she says. At this point another intern comes in and translates Seraphine's questions for me. Do you know how to cook rice? I reply, how hard can it be? It's just rice. Jocelyn translates. I get another strange look from Seraphine and she hands me a knife and a pineapple.

I've never sliced a pineapple before, but I'm now assuming it's easier than cooking rice so I hold the knife up to it to get a confirmation from Seraphine that I'm doing it right. Seeing me, the knife positioned in the middle of this daunting fruit, she takes the knife and the pineapple and makes the first cut horizontally across the top. Apparently, I should have stuck with the rice. I make exaggerated Oh I see faces, which I doubt very much actually convinced her that I have in fact, held a knife before. I cut the pineapple and soon, I'm in need of another job.

I get a look from Seraphine that tells me she was hoping I'd stay occupied with the pineapple for the next few hours while she finished her cooking. It was in that instant that I saw myself as the pain in the ass kid who needs a 'job' helping mommy in the kitchen by staying away from the real work. But I'm tenacious and so I pick up a knife and help her skin tomatoes. These tomatoes are smaller than the ones back home and the insides are very sweet, but the skins are very bitter and not commonly eaten. This is hard. The naked tomatoes are squishy and slippery. I spent more time picking them up from where they fell in the sink than actually skinning them. I look up and notice that Seraphine has been staring at me for a while, as she's shaking with silent laughter. You too slow tomato. She hands me a grater and a hunk of cheese. I'm banished to the dining room and I laugh my way out the door.

Now, I've made enough taco dip in my time to be able to work a cheese grater. Finally, success! I'm able to navigate my way through half a block of cheddar and as I hand the plate back to her, she laughs and says to me, you make me happy today.

I'm happy too, Seraphine.