A Safe Haven in a Pandemic Year

The majority of these portraits are of workers and nurses of 40 years ago. Others are more recent acquaintances or of people I met in the hospital or in their homes.

The Greek Christian Orthodox community of Istanbul, or more specifically, the Greeks, or Rumlars, trace their origins and their history back in that prestigious past when the Roman Empire extended its reach to Byzantium, Constantinople and beyond. The community in not too distant past has suffered persecutions and setbacks that have prompted population exchanges, migrations and deportations, making its current number close to 2500 people down from 20000 in 1920’s, or even higher numbers in earlier times. Not to lose its own identity this Greek Christian Orthodox community has clear references in His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the orthodox religion. Churches are places of comfort and of cultural identity that is enriched by the golden iconostasis, the complex liturgy, the chanting, the golden regalia — all are a cultural patrimony and together with the language and the greek alphabet set the community apart with its own specific identity. Language and alphabet are in fact intrinsically the knots to preserve the community identity while at the same time they may exclude others. Demography is against the community as its populations is dwindling. The Patriarch, Bartholomew I, keeps open the Hallki Theological Seminary in the island of Heybeliada, with two priests while negotiating its reopening, as the seminary is considered important for the religious liberty and the continuation of the Orthodox church in Istanbul. The seminary class rooms and library are sadly empty. Once prestigious schools and lyceums continue to teach Greek and in Greek to some 100 pupils down from more than a 1000/1500 of the past. Rumlars however, do keep going and now open cafès, and publishing houses, while a Rum family with a two century past history makes a living teaching and translating Greek classical literature into Turkish language. Buildings may bear the scars of the past but everything is transformed and life takes its priority for the individuals more than for the community.

After much thinking, I went back to Chokwe, Mozambique where I have been working 1977-1981, to revisit the places and to walk the memory lane. I used my camera lens to literally frame and reframe memories that were sometimes obtrusive and recurrent. One morning at the beginning of my two weeks visit to Chokwe, I stepped for the first time inside the Carmelo Hospital, a hospital that is fully dedicated to treat HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis patients. The courtyard was teeming with hundreds of people, waiting for their monthly check up, a scene that I would see again and again in the following days. In the wards, patients were suffering of untreatable Tuberculosis, others were improving steadily. Despite the pain, the sufferings, there was what I thought a personal, and humane touch. Here, I thought, I have found the legacy of the work of 40 years earlier. In 1979, we were treating people wounded in the fight for independence. Now the Carmelo Hospital staff are treating those fighting deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS and TB. The seeds for this shift were laid well in early 1979 leading to the opening of the Carmelo Hospital later in 1995. In fact everything had started at the beginning of 1979. The Health Centre and Maternity of Chalacuane is a good sixty kilometres from the Chokwe Rural Hospital, and 40 years ago during the rainy season the road was impracticable. I used to receive at the Old Rural Hospital difficult cases of delayed delivery out of Chalacuane and I felt that the health unit needed someone who would actively transform it and make it more efficient in caring for pregnant women and other patients. I felt that I needed someone like Sister Maddalena Serra, an Italian nun of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, and a close collaborator, who later became instrumental in the creation of the Carmelo Hospital, to lead the work in Chalacuane. There she went after winning her congregation approval. The Rural Hospital and the nuns’ house were like a safe heaven for them. Going to Chalacuane was like being sent into the unknown. The sisters did a tremendous work and improved and enlarged the Health Centre to cope with the influx of patients. In the early 90’s the sisters realised that a new fight had started. Tuberculosis (TB) cases admitted in the Chalacuane Health Centre were dying despite the best treatment. Something else was overshadowing the disease. The sister then began testing those patients for HIV. They found that TB patients had an HIV seroprevalence of 24 percent and that HIV and AIDS was already spreading to the population. This led the sisters to ask authorities to do more to fight HIV and to transform an old convent into a hospital to care for HIV and AIDS patients to cope with the demand. Realising that children were those suffering the most from this fight against HIV epidemic, the Sisters established a Distance Adoption Programme. Under the programme, the sister get funding, the children come every month accompanied by their guardians to have their health and their compliance to treatment checked, while receiving a small cash and food supplement handouts that keep them coming.