Success Stories
More than a Job
HIV Counselor Finds New Hope in ARV Medications
You need only spend a few moments with Justice Shabalala to know that he is a man who has found his calling. In a wood-walled room used as a counseling center for those living with HIV, he banters easily with the patients, his voice rings alternately with the energy and compassion of a man skilled at listening.
As Senior Counselor for the Inkanyezi Treatment Center, Shabalala deals with patients whose stories could break the hearts of the uninitiated. In the tiny confines of this counseling room, Shabalala thinks back on his beginnings with Inkanyezi. He shakes his head at how casually he approached the work that now defines him.
"I was unemployed and I just wanted something to keep me busy," Shabalala said. "But after two months I fell in love with the job."
Since 2004, Inkanyezi has been receiving antiretroviral drugs from Catholic Relief Services – provided through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Shabalala can distinctly remember the years before the availability of ARV medications. “It was very traumatizing. We would take care of people for two or three months, and then they would die.”
With the availability of ARVs, the changes have been dramatic.
"Many people came here in a wheelbarrow," Shabalala said, a common method of delivering those too sick to walk in such impoverished areas. "But after two or three months you wouldn’t even recognize them. We have seen miracles."
Once patients are ready for ART, Shabalala monitors them daily to ensure that they are taking the drugs as directed. It is intense, emotional, and rewarding work, made more rewarding since the impact has begun to be felt in the sprawling informal settlement of Orange Farm where Inkanyezi is located.
But despite the stress of the job, Shabalala vows never to leave this work. Once a self-described angry young man, Shabalala bears the knife scars of an earlier life. Now married with two kids, he says his time at Inkanyezi has helped him see the hope in helping others, a hope that spills over into his own life in ways he could not have imagined before 2001. "They come here to learn from me," Shabalala says, "but I learn from them."