When Alison Fairbrother '08 left for Ethiopia this summer, she did not expect that in less than a month an HIV-positive woman would become one of her closest friends.
With Ryan Heath '05 and Jessica Bloome '08, Fairbrother spent a month in Addis Ababa, the capital city, filming a promotional documentary for African Services Committee, an organization that provides Ethiopians with free HIV/AIDS testing.
The three Brunonians spent their first day in a laboratory observing the HIV/AIDS testing process. Though she had read about the organization's work, Fairbrother found herself unprepared for the reality. She fainted as soon as she saw laboratory technicians carrying around vials of potentially infected blood.
"I looked at the blood and started thinking about everything that was going on in that vial," she said. Minutes later, she said, she fainted again.
For Heath, who concentrated in biology, vials of blood were not as frightening as the bustle of the street market outside. The trip to Ethiopia was his first outside of the United States, and the extreme poverty of Addis Ababa distressed him.
"Always in the background there would be a beggar," he said. "It got very emotionally draining."
For a month, the three lived in a hotel near the HIV/AIDS clinic with five students from Columbia University. The group of eight was organized by Students of the World, a nongovernmental organization that sends university students to document development issues abroad.
The group's final project, a five-minute promotional documentary, is intended to help garner funding that will allow ASC to set up more clinics in Ethiopia and begin offering treatment in addition to testing. It was shown at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York City in September and features interviews with nurses and administrators from the ASC's three clinics in Addis Ababa as well as its rural clinic.
The organization is the first to offer free HIV/AIDS testing in Ethiopia and is the only outlet for patients to be tested anonymously. An on-site laboratory makes test results ready in just 20 minutes, while even in the United States patients typically have to wait a week for results. ASC also offers hiring priority to women and HIV-positive applicants, who are discriminated against by other employers.
The group of students worked on all aspects of the production, from filming to interviewing and video editing. Though the Columbia students had film and production experience, the three Brown students gained technical skills as the project progressed. From a research perspective, Fairbrother and Bloome, both development studies concentrators, provided the political and social background for the group, while Heath contributed his scientific background.
The reality of living and working with HIV-positive people was eye-opening for both Fairbrother and Heath.
"You can read all these papers, look at all these variables, but it is different to be there and see how people are reacting to being positive," Heath said.
Fairbrother and Heath were exposed to all aspects of life in Ethiopian society through both observing work in the lab and life in the market nearby.
ASC clinics are intentionally located next to markets and other places where people converge. This "market-based" approach encourages testing for both city-dwellers and people coming in from rural areas to sell livestock or beg.
In a country where 50 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the CIA World Factbook and there is no social system to provide disability support or retirement pensions, Heath said ignoring the surrounding poverty was impossible. "Every day I would see so many people just standing around," he said.
Fairbrother recounted seeing young children selling candy instead of going to school, people crippled from disease or old age and young healthy men from neighboring villages begging.
After the project was completed, Fairbrother decided to stay an extra month to work in the clinic. She said she became close friends with a nurse named Lisa who, like many of the employees, is HIV-positive.
When Lisa found out her status, there were no clinics like the one she now works in. She had gone with her fiancé to a government hospital - which did not provide the counseling or anonymity offered by ASC - to get tested as a precaution before they got married.
In the documentary, Lisa speaks about receiving her results. "And he is negative and I am positive," she says, her voice shaking. Her fiancé never called her again.
Fairbrother said watching Lisa lead a productive life with the virus and face it over and over again as she counseled every new patient who tested positive for HIV/AIDS gave her an entirely new perspective on the disease. "I learned more from Lisa than in any class at Brown," she said.
Even though Fairbrother elected to stay longer in Ethiopia, she said there were still moments when she was affected by the realities of the disease.
"A little boy came in to be tested one day and I wanted to comfort him so I said 'Izoo, Amharic' for 'don't worry,'" she said. When she saw the lab technician carrying the blood away without testing, however, Fairbrother was puzzled. When she asked why, Fairbrother learned that the boy had already tested positive and this was a routine test of a different kind. She said she felt like she had betrayed the boy's trust by assuming that it would be unlikely for a child his age to have the disease.
Heath said he still can't fully describe the summer experience.
The time in Ethiopia left a significant impression on Fairbrother and Heath and changed their plans for the future.
Fairbrother plans to take next semester off to work in the clinic, and she and Heath are trying to recruit a team of Brown students for another Students of the World project. All members of the team will be Brown students, and selected team members will be able to decide both the location and subject of their film.
