MR. BAD GUY (ENGLISH VERSION)

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO ME

Within two minutes after stepping into the children's home, Enzo and Tarek felt like home.

The day routine was simple but intense. Children spoke broken english and Enzo tried with greater or lesser success speaking portuguese, so the communication was very funny. As most part of the communication with children was with their eyes, the chemistry was guaranteed. He never failed when it came to create magic.

The theatre group he made with children was a very personal mission doomed to be successful. They danced, sang, put on fancy dresses, they put on makeup each other. It was such a gratifying experience interacting with such receptive and happy people despite their hard lives.

Enzo and Tarek took from the beginning a role of older brother with them and were too wrapped up in everything they carried out at the children's home.

The children's situation in Mozambique was pretty tricky. Some of the children had arrived with a chronic malnutrition that meant being smaller to their age. The malaria, the serious respiratory tract's infections, the diarrhoea and different diseases that could prevent with a simple vaccination took away children's lives by the handful. Barely 40% of the population had access to drinking water. The drought had forced a lot of people to drink poisoned water, increasing the cholera and diarrhoea cases. The HIV prevalence rate was increasing all the time and it was estimated there were over 90.000 children with the disease. Less than 3% received treatment with antiretrovirals.

Most part of african people couldn't allow themselves drugs against HIV, so the main method to fight against it was the prevention. Children older than 10 years were given sexual education lectures and Tarek and Enzo used to be there as listeners and enjoyed a lot just listening to them.

Tarek, getting over the first week, dared also to step into the terminally ill children sector. His gaze was drifting towards the babies. He spent hours feeding and rocking them while he lulled them to sleep. He took attachment towards that area and specifically Essien, a six month baby whose father had just died and his mother nearly did. He arrived there some days ago.

The usual blood test for adult people that stated HIV antibodies's presence was of no use for babies because the breast-fed babies's blood born to seropositive mothers frequently had antibodies that got through the placenta. And that was not a conclusive evidence he was infected. They had to make some other specific test that detected the HIV's gene stuff in his blood.

Once confirmed the infection, he received the same antiretroviral drugs as an adult. But after some days they checked out he couldn't tolerate one of the usual cocktails. In fact it was a race against the time because he had been 6 months with no treatment at all and the virus had enough time to do as it pleases in-utero.

When Tarek cradled him into his arms for the first time to calm him down, he couldn't avoid visit him every day. As soon as he curled him against him, he didn't need any more explanations. His extreme thinness and that mouth full of wounds pointed him his terminal AIDS stage.

Early in the morning he attended dead on time to feed him and ask if there was some improvement with his cd4 count. The news wasn't encouraging, his viral load kept up very high.

Most of the time Essien cried and cried with no consolation. The task to get him drink all the baby's bottle with formula used to take him one hour because when he stopped bawling, he driffted off sleeping, exhausting after two or three sucks to the bottle. It required a lot of patience and willpower, something that Tarek was plenty of. So he was very warm welcomed when he arrived. There were very few staff and they couldn't cope with everything.

Essien's condition was unstable, quite serious but Tarek didn't think the baby wouldn't make it. He thought firmly with the new antiretroviral treatment, a good feeding and the daily caressing session he used to give him, he would get over it, come what may.