Andria E-Mordaunt Woman of substance
Let me call him Dr Z. A couple of years ago, I was a delegate
at a conference of drug workers, diplomats and academics in a beautiful UK
location.
I have chronic lung disease and was having a rough time trying to breathe
in one of the breaks - cigarette smoke billowing everywhere. Plus, I always
feel out of my depths at conferences assuming everybody else must be more
knowledgeable than me.
I’m ambling about and eventually come across a dark-skinned man, a little
taller than myself, who looks distressed.
I’ve been so surrounded by distress all my life I can spot it a mile
off, so I asked him if he was OK. He was bemused but smiled with relief and
we became acquainted in this smokey, light-deficient mansion-house room. We
chatted over our cuppas.
Dr Z was from Afghanistan: he had never been to the UK, never mind in a room
where men and women mixed openly and alcohol flowed freely. I empathised given
the number of times I’d been at conference and felt complete culture
shock. “Uhm, should I put a shawl on my head?” I foolishly asked.
“No, no; I’m just explaining...”
I was delighted to have a fellow conference attendee to speak with and soon
got carried away asking him about Afghanistan and his particular focus on
drugs and HIV. Afghanistan has few reported cases of HIV but all the conditions
for HIV to spread rapidly including drug use and lack of information. And
the real number of cases is unknown because screening is limited to blood
donors.
We arranged to meet after the conference as he wanted to visit Kensington
Palace and I wanted an excuse to play tourist. During the walk, I pummelled
the poor man with warnings about getting onto preventing HIV among drug users
ASAP. This professional was stating firmly: “Andria - we don’t
even know how many drug injectors we have in Afghanistan. Moreover, our country
has been victim of civil war for over two decades and you are asking me to
set up needle-exchanges when we cannot even help those who are...”
I felt obliged to shut my mouth but my sane brain wouldn’t be silenced:
“Doctor, the thing is if you intervene now, you will save your country
a lot of public health bills, grief for patients, their families and other
loved ones, not to mention health care workers.” 
I also suggested Afghanistan could become the Middle East vanguard on HIV
and shine a leadership light for other countries to follow. He fell quiet.
Later that evening, in an Earls Court bar, I told him about Aids peer education
among gay men and harm reduction/peer support and education efforts in the
injecting community. I was unsure whether he was listening: he seemed more
curious about the people around us and what they were doing - necking actually.
I’m never sure if it’s my half bonkers brain or reality that makes
me wonder whether people are telling me the truth but after a while he began
to sheepishly tell of gay men he already knew in Kabul who were doing HIV
prevention work.
“Oh, so you know what I’m suggesting then?”
Some months later, I was delegate at the Global drug policy conference of
the Senlis Council, a think tank that aims to develop foreign and counter-narcotics
policies. During the conference I visited the Nejat Project, set up in Peshawar,
Pakistan in 1994, and soon after brought to Kabul.
This project has been distributing clean needles to injectors for over a decade.
It was inspiring and humbling to visit a project where some users were literally
legless (from war injury & trauma as opposed to individual drug-war trauma)
and where I could actually share some of my own life experience as an Aids
widow and someone who had managed to ‘knock the monkey off my back’.
It is always one of life’s greatest moments to see hope restored to
people’s eyes.
