All That Is Bitter and Sweet (22 page)

Most of my week in Thailand was taken up with events surrounding the huge international AIDS conference, organized by the Geneva-based International AIDS Society and the Thai Ministry of Health, being held in a vast conference center on the outskirts of Bangkok. There were seventeen thousand participants from 160 countries. These unwieldy meetings are held every two years to keep the flow of information fresh and promote the exchange of new ideas to fight this mutating monster. The theme of this conference was “Access for All,” referring to the disparity in AIDS treatment and prevention between rich and poor countries in the global North and South. But the big news was the increasing impact of the epidemic on women and children caused by gender inequality and harmful gendered cultural practices: There were an estimated thirty-eight million people on the planet living with HIV/AIDS, and for the first time, the number of women with HIV surpassed the number of men. During the previous year alone, there were an estimated five million new cases of HIV infection, including more than six hundred thousand children younger than fifteen. By now I had become a full-blown evangelist for PSI’s emphasis on prevention, using private sector techniques to deliver health products and services to the poor and vulnerable, and my confidence increased with every press conference, panel discussion, and cocktail party I attended that week. I tried to be methodical and calm and completely prepared. I saw the great Jim Kim, the Harvard doctor I’d befriended on the “Heart of America” tour. A brilliant and beautiful spirit, cofounder of the community-based NGO Partners in Health, Dr. Kim was now running the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS program and heading up an initiative called 3-by-5, which lobbied to get three million HIV patients in the developing world on AIDS drugs by the year 2005. The fact that he was having trouble meeting the goal said a lot about our inability to deal with the pandemic.

I quickly learned that these huge international conferences are three-ring circuses: In the first ring, there’s the formal meeting of delegates who listen to lectures and speeches (this year by dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela and then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan) and then break into sessions to share the latest AIDS research and data. In the second ring, nongovernmental organizations set up little booths to explain and promote their programs and strategies. This is always the livelier gathering, part carnival, part trade show. One afternoon, Kate and I decided to take a tour of the exhibits and stop in at the PSI booth. But on the way we had to pass through the third ring of the circus, a section of the conference center set aside for displays by the corporate sponsors. When I had a look at the GlaxoSmithKline installation, I stopped dead in my tracks: The global pharmaceutical giant was celebrating and promoting itself in a two-story “booth” within the cavernous hall, which included a chic café/bar, a posh lounge area (ample enough for sleeping, which some people were), and no fewer than
four
two-story waterfalls. GSK were giving away free stuff and were mobbed by a long queue. They had massive full-color displays and sharp-looking executives who’d buzzed in to see what all the fuss was about.

I whirled and huffed at Kate, “How much do you think this cost?!”

“I’d say about five million,” she said. (Kate loves to wind me up.)

I stormed into the minimall of a booth and collared the man who seemed to be in charge. I guess I could be methodical and calm for only so long. “Why are you spending such an obnoxious amount of money on this exhibit?” I demanded. “Don’t you see how wrong this is?”

The guy glanced around the room for help while Kate and Papa Jack sidled closer to me.

“Think of how many sick mothers you could help for the cost of those waterfalls!” I said. Now Kate was tugging my arm. “Or better yet, you could have given that money to PSI to
prevent
a bunch of at-risk kids from becoming infected in the first place.”

I had more points to make, but some GSK security guards came over and basically threw us out. Kate had to struggle to keep a straight face.

“Ashley, what was the point of that?”

“I don’t know, but I feel better now!”

When I phoned my mother and told her of my antics, she told me she was very proud of me and my actions would no doubt resonate.

Later on I went to the plenary hall to open a session on “cross-generational sex” (a now common term coined by a PSI researcher), a practice that is deadly and alarmingly common in sub-Saharan Africa. Basically, younger, vulnerable women—often children—are taken in by older men, used for sex, and frequently infected with HIV. Girls have to be educated about the dangers and empowered to say no to the sugar daddies. The speakers were so impressive, and my mind kept drifting to thoughts of Africa. It was the continent most affected by HIV/AIDS: Twenty-five million people were already living with the virus, and 95 percent of the world’s twelve million AIDS orphans lived there. I had heard so much about it from Bono, its ravages and its dreams, its elegance and its despair. I had not yet finished this journey in Asia, but I already knew where I had to go next.

he sights, smells, and customs of Thailand and Cambodia lingered with me for weeks after my return. With each person I greeted, I naturally put my hands to my heart in
namaste
. If I saw a Buddha, I placed my hands in prayer at my third eye. I could feel the presence of my farm friend in the fabric of the grubby linen pants that I wore in Bangkok, which I folded and stored away without washing as a precious physical reminder of the trip. I could be transported back to the pagodas at the sound of a wind chime on the porch. Kate had warned me that I might have some trouble with reentry, and she was right. It was lovely to be home again at our farm in Tennessee, but I felt uneasy. I was shocked by the opulence in America, overwhelmed by the colossal shiny trucks on the highway, the towering stacks of produce at the supermarket, the fifty choices of breakfast cereal, the trash bins overflowing with casually wasted objects that would have been treasured by my friends the
wat
grannies or the orphans of Phnom Penh who have so little.

Day after day I sat at my desk, attempting to write letters to potential donors, trying to reduce the story of my journey to a few attention-grabbing anecdotes that would compel them to send checks to organizations like PSI and grassroots programs that save lives.

How could I tell them that Ouk Srey Leak was real, that she needed us? That the exploited women in Pattaya were not strangers, but our sisters? The only way I could express my thoughts was in a diary, just like the one I wrote in hotel rooms in Southeast Asia:

August 2004

And now, once again, I am home, and at a loss
.

I am surrounded by beauty, and I have my routines—whether it’s drinking tea in bed or baking fresh peach pies or laboring over a dinner table to bring it to its ultimate high summer perfection. Some days I
go through my roses, plant by plant, and devise the demise of hundreds of Japanese beetles, then gather baskets full of botanical glory and fritter away hours making them look just right in little vases all over the house. I read scripts lying in the sun and in the steam room. We go to Sister’s for supper. I occasionally help looking after our family’s young’uns, I win and lose at badminton. I go to my husband’s races and sleep twelve hours a night on the bus, even with those noisy race cars on the track. And sometimes, like tonight, in spite of all my life’s beauty, abundance, comfort, and grace, I lie awake sleepless and disturbed
.

I wonder what sort of day Ouk Srey Leak has had. I picture her on her nylon mat in the corner, blanketless and pillowless and I worry about a young man I met in his tiny, clean hut, so ill he could not lift his head, his one-armed father peddling herbs to raise capital to buy medicine for his child. I wonder if the other son, the mentally ill one, will ever have any kind of proper mental health care, if he is abused as he wanders around the slums every day. I wonder about all the desperately ill people I met in hospices in both Cambodia and Thailand, and whether they are dead or alive, and if they have passed, did they go gently? I hope so. I hope so
.

Oh, this little old house, this humble farmhouse that has held Meacham dreams and sorrows and prayers for so many generations, decade upon decade of supplications for healthy crops and safe children, can you hold my dreams? Can you hold my tears cried again and again for the unsafe children and the sad women I met, and for the millions upon millions I did not?

Much has already come from my trip. We’ve raised almost half our goal monies
, Glamour
magazine is incorporating fabulously helpful YouthAIDS stuff in my October cover story. Sister is involved, corralling talent for a World AIDS Day concert, and Kate and I are a knockout on the phone together pinning down donors to write those checks
.

But for some reason … that’s silly, I know what the reason is … but tonight, as I do many nights, I am suffering. I miss my husband, who is away preparing for a race. I am still carrying a deep cough in my lungs, a holdover from the Myanmar hill tribe kids at the homeless youth shelter. Our cats are deeply in love with me, but rather than enjoying it, it merely highlights how casually they can treat us when we’re away a lot. (Much to
my chagrin, Dario does not seem to be relenting on the “No cats on the bus for race weekends” rule.) I am hardly writhing in bed as I did in Bangkok, but the malaise is real
.

And so the only thing to do, as ever, is to pray. I’ll listen to the depth of the countryside on this fresh August night, unroll a yoga mat, and take it to the Lord in prayer
.