Humans of YALI is a series of spotlights on 2016 UW-Madison Mandela Washington Fellows. Reporting for Humans of YALI is done by Mandela Washington Fellow Sicily Mburu.
“Am I unique? Well, I believe I have lots to offer even a song. Back in Lesotho, I would get to the hospital clinic early to find a queue of patients waiting to receive their Anti-Retroviral Medication and they never looked happy. I thought, why not sing? I began with two patients. We would sing a hymn and pray and this then became infectious… I call it ‘infectious happiness.’
“Sometimes we would sing ‘ke khale rele emetse.’ Translated from sesotho, it means it has been long we have been waiting for medical services (health care service, drugs, medicine) to heal us, and other times even as we queued on line we would hum. I ask myself why I picked midwifery and where I developed my passion for fighting for rights of those with HIV/AIDS. To answer the first question, I guess I wanted to fill a gap in the health care system. Looking back, it was the best decision I could make.
“I would like to meet the virologist here at Madison to ask if we could get an anti-retroviral implants to avoid patients defaulting on their medication, the resistance and the compliance. Someone out there should explore this. You may not believe me but HIV/AIDS will soon be a thing of the past.”
Looking at Masello, I cannot help but smile…. here is one determined young female leader.
-Sicily Mburu