Ten Conversations for Health
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TEN<br />
<strong>Conversations</strong><br />
<strong>for</strong> <strong>Health</strong><br />
Poems by Albert Nyathi and Daniel Low-Beer<br />
Photos by John Rae
TEN<br />
<strong>Conversations</strong><br />
<strong>for</strong> <strong>Health</strong><br />
Poems by Albert Nyathi and Daniel Low-Beer<br />
Photos by John Rae<br />
Read more and listen to the music at www.10conversations.net
Written by Albert Nyathi (Son with Ignatius Mabasa, Daughter, Woman)<br />
and other poems by Daniel Low-Beer. Photos by John Rae.<br />
All Rights Reserved ©<br />
These poems present ten conversations <strong>for</strong> health. Talk to your son,<br />
your daughter, nieces, nephews, politicians, Ministers of Finance,<br />
men and women about health, and about the ten things they can do<br />
to be health providers too.<br />
Read more and listen to the music by the Crazy Poets at<br />
www.10conversations.net. Add your conversations and support<br />
Zimhealth. <strong>Ten</strong> <strong>Conversations</strong> to end AIDS and two music albums<br />
are available there.<br />
Supported in memory of Ann and Tom Low-Beer. The content does<br />
not reflect the opinions of any institutions or affiliations<br />
Design: Inis Communication – www.iniscommunication.com<br />
ISBN 978-2-9701126-5-5
Contents<br />
Introduction: <strong>Health</strong> Beat 1<br />
You are your own doctor 5<br />
My Name is Woman 9<br />
Son 13<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is wealth 17<br />
<strong>Health</strong> heroes 21<br />
Man 25<br />
To My Daughter 29<br />
Politicians 33<br />
Minister of Finance 37<br />
Listening to health 41<br />
Appendix 43
<strong>Health</strong> Beat<br />
There is something beating,<br />
Deep inside you,<br />
Which is your health.<br />
Like the sea,<br />
It breathes with you,<br />
Wave after wave,<br />
Day in, day out.<br />
Its tide is your current,<br />
Taking you far,<br />
In shore or out in life.<br />
Like the moon,<br />
It waxes and wanes,<br />
With your months, your years,<br />
Like the moonlight,<br />
You reflect its glow,<br />
Through your skin,<br />
Your eyes, your look.<br />
1
It flickers inside you,<br />
Like a candle,<br />
<strong>Ten</strong>der it,<br />
Breathe with it,<br />
Exercise, care,<br />
And feed it well.<br />
It is the flame,<br />
Of your body,<br />
Mind and self,<br />
Burning inside you,<br />
Is your health.<br />
2
YOU ARE YOUR<br />
OWN DOCTOR<br />
3
4
You are your own<br />
doctor<br />
What is health?<br />
Twenty percent medicines,<br />
And eighty percent what you do.<br />
You are your own doctor too.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is what you eat,<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is what you drink,<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is what you do not drink,<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is what you do not smoke,<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is how you care <strong>for</strong> your body,<br />
And <strong>for</strong> the body of others too.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is what you do.<br />
There are simple things you can do,<br />
To be your own doctor too.<br />
If you do not have <strong>Health</strong> <strong>Conversations</strong>,<br />
They will ask uncle YouTube,<br />
They will ask auntie Twitter,<br />
If you don’t talk to your children,<br />
They will ask grandpa Facebook,<br />
They will ask Google gogo.<br />
So have the health conversations<br />
Of ten things they can do.<br />
First walk your talk, wherever you go,<br />
Whatever your journey,<br />
Exercise each day, shake your stuff,<br />
Like a snake.<br />
5
Do not be a <strong>for</strong>est fire, with your own lungs.<br />
Sit around a fireplace, not in it.<br />
Smoke your sausages, not yourself.<br />
Water is life, Water is health, Water is wealth.<br />
Would you water your garden,<br />
With fizzy drinks, with alcoholic drinks,<br />
Don’t wash yourself away with drink.<br />
Safe water, safe fun,<br />
And safety belts.<br />
Belt up to have fun.<br />
Shake your stuff safely, like a snake.<br />
You are what you eat,<br />
Fast food is slow death.<br />
Does a lion eat fried food?<br />
You can eat, or be eaten by your food.<br />
Shake yourself like Shakespeare,<br />
Shaking Shakespeare,<br />
Like the snake Shakespeare,<br />
Shake his spear, shake his spear.<br />
Into an African Shakespeare,<br />
Shakespeare, Shakespeare.<br />
And last, take time to care,<br />
<strong>for</strong> yourself and <strong>for</strong> others.<br />
Do the ten simple things you can do,<br />
To be your own doctor too.<br />
6
MY NAME<br />
IS WOMAN<br />
7
8
My Name is Woman<br />
My name is Woman.<br />
I am the pillar<br />
I am the foundation<br />
I am the ‘carer’<br />
Where hospitals and doctors have failed.<br />
I am the farmer,<br />
I walk barefoot across the fields,<br />
I work with my bare hands<br />
I feed the nation.<br />
I do the ploughing,<br />
The weeding, the spraying,<br />
The harvesting.<br />
My name is Woman!<br />
I brought up all these men and women,<br />
Breastfed them,<br />
Changed their nappies,<br />
Told them stories,<br />
Sang lullabies <strong>for</strong> them<br />
Sent them to sleep.<br />
9
I am the woman who brought you up,<br />
With all the burdens,<br />
My work immeasurable,<br />
Uncounted, undercounted,<br />
Unpaid, underpaid.<br />
I am the pillar,<br />
I am the foundation,<br />
I fill the national granary,<br />
I feed the nation,<br />
‘’Wathinta abafazi, wathinta imbokodo.’’<br />
If I falter<br />
Oh well, she is a woman after all.<br />
If my son cries<br />
Hey mfana, do not be like a woman.<br />
If I am seen driving my lorry to my farm<br />
Oh my goodness, she’s a lion, she’s a man!<br />
Even William Shakespeare mocked me in Hamlet:<br />
Frailty, thy name is woman.<br />
10
11
SON<br />
12
Son<br />
My son Shakespeare,<br />
Do not just shake your spear everywhere.<br />
My son Shakespeare, I am proud of you.<br />
Today you have become a warrior,<br />
A warrior eager to explore and tame the jungle,<br />
With your sharp spear that never misses.<br />
Be wiser than yesterday,<br />
Because today you have a chance to listen,<br />
Not so many are so lucky to get advice.<br />
Don’t fall in love with the leopard’s skin<br />
And want it to adorn your broad shoulders,<br />
For you will pay dearly, very dearly <strong>for</strong> it.<br />
Wear your own skin proudly.<br />
The chameleon’s make-up is meant to confuse you,<br />
So you can no longer see real colours or judge situations.<br />
Just like the sweet-looking gentle spingboek will tease you,<br />
Encouraging you with never-ending promises.<br />
Dear son,<br />
Don’t hunt on Facebook or Twitter or<br />
WhatsApp or Instagram.<br />
Animals on all applications, old or new, are not real,<br />
Have no home, smell or spoor.<br />
Some animals will play games with you like the python,<br />
While you enjoy their tight embraces and cold kisses,<br />
In between sweet nothings uttered by <strong>for</strong>ked tongues!<br />
13<br />
13
My son, great hunters steer their spears.<br />
Carefully with their eyes and ears,<br />
With all their senses,<br />
With their intellect and heart,<br />
And their sense of right and wrong,<br />
How they use their spear<br />
Points the way <strong>for</strong> others.<br />
And they keep it and use it,<br />
With their sheaf,<br />
Keeping the blade sharp and safe,<br />
Until they find the one.<br />
Use your spear carefully, Shakespeare,<br />
A hunter knows when to act, and when not to act.<br />
He knows how to choose.<br />
The jungle says eat or be eaten,<br />
But be careful how you eat the porcupine.<br />
Remember, the hunter can become the hunted,<br />
The fisherman can become the fish!<br />
The leopard can be hunted,<br />
The predator may easily become prey.<br />
Shakespeare, use your spear in many ways not one.<br />
Your spear is not just what you think it is.<br />
Write with your spear,<br />
So you can learn and earn a living,<br />
Use your spear to find your path,<br />
To walk with into the future,<br />
Strong, supportive and upright.<br />
Steer your spear with your heart,<br />
And intellect and sense of right and wrong.<br />
Use your spear to help others and point the way.<br />
My son Shakespeare, do not just shake it,<br />
A hunter uses his spear in many ways.<br />
14<br />
14
HEALTH<br />
IS WEALTH<br />
15
16
<strong>Health</strong> is wealth<br />
It is Oliver Mutukudzi who says,<br />
As music flows from his hands like a river,<br />
Rhythms rumbling like the Victoria Falls,<br />
That health is wealth.<br />
And that life and wealth drain away,<br />
Like a stream in the Kalahari,<br />
When there is no health.<br />
If you are healthy, you are wealthy.<br />
Your life flows like a river,<br />
Like the Zambezi, to the Indian Ocean.<br />
So what is to be done?<br />
Todii? Senze njani?<br />
Seek health everyday,<br />
And in every way.<br />
Like you seek wealth.<br />
17
Work at it each day,<br />
Inch by inch, minute by minute.<br />
Earning, saving up health.<br />
With what you eat,<br />
With how you drive,<br />
And walk and talk.<br />
With how you exercise,<br />
And sexercise.<br />
Having fun safely.<br />
And care <strong>for</strong> others,<br />
And care <strong>for</strong> yourself.<br />
Then you will become a health millionaire.<br />
You will be healthy in your wealth.<br />
You will be wealthy in your health.<br />
18
HEALTH HEROES<br />
19
20
<strong>Health</strong> heroes<br />
Who is a hero?<br />
Who are the health heroes?<br />
Where are they hiding?<br />
They are not hiding in the jungle,<br />
They are not hiding in the offices,<br />
In the bars or restaurants,<br />
They are out there in your communities,<br />
They are all around you,<br />
Community health workers are our unsung health heroes.<br />
Their job does not start at 9 and end at 5.<br />
They are there when you are ill.<br />
When you need them most.<br />
Day in, day out like the sun,<br />
All through the night like the moon.<br />
Universal health care starts,<br />
With these everyday heroes.<br />
Linking real people with health.<br />
They leave no one behind,<br />
No star in the sky.<br />
21<br />
21
Community health workers are like gazelles,<br />
Darting in and out of our communities,<br />
Bringing health near,<br />
Twitching their ears, listening <strong>for</strong> our health,<br />
So we do not fall prey to disease.<br />
Who are the threads winding in and out,<br />
The net of Universal health care?<br />
Who are they who walk in the cold,<br />
In the depth of the night,<br />
Groping to find you in the dark?<br />
Sometimes it is raining,<br />
Or the sun is roasting.<br />
Who is it who searches out health,<br />
Wherever it is?<br />
Moving on to save a life.<br />
It could be yours.<br />
Who are the heroes?<br />
Community health workers are the heroes.<br />
22<br />
22
23
MAN<br />
24
Man<br />
Man, Man,<br />
Who are you?<br />
Do you know who you are?<br />
Let’s have a conversation.<br />
Talk with me.<br />
We need to listen when we can,<br />
Open the question what is a man?<br />
A real man provides.<br />
Not only money,<br />
Not only rounds of drinks,<br />
Not only fun times,<br />
And fast food,<br />
Emotions on Whatsapp,<br />
Care on Snapchat,<br />
Which disappear with a snap.<br />
And unwanted pregnancies,<br />
Which do not disappear.<br />
A real man is a health provider.<br />
Man, health is also about men.<br />
Being a man is about health.<br />
A real man provides good health,<br />
A real man respects his woman,<br />
Understands that health is wealth.<br />
Are you a provider of health?<br />
Or of illness?<br />
Do you look after your own health?<br />
In how you eat and drink,<br />
Exercise and Sexercise.<br />
25
Having fun healthily.<br />
Do you respect woman?<br />
Equally, healthily as woman?<br />
As your partner in life?<br />
Only a queen makes a king.<br />
Are you her health provider?<br />
Her health is yours, and yours hers.<br />
Do you care <strong>for</strong> those around you?<br />
Or do you only care <strong>for</strong> a drink,<br />
For a night of fun and lights?<br />
Flickering like the stars,<br />
Which disappear in the morning?<br />
Man are you a lion, providing.<br />
Or a hyena in your pack,<br />
Feeding on remains.<br />
Man, you are not a provider,<br />
If you do not provide health.<br />
Your wealth is no wealth without health.<br />
Man, we have <strong>for</strong>gotten,<br />
How to ask the open question together,<br />
Of what it is to be a man,<br />
Many men remain boys,<br />
Few become lions.<br />
A real man provides health,<br />
A real man respects his woman,<br />
Understands that health is wealth.<br />
Man, we are talking with you,<br />
We are questioning you,<br />
We are encouraging you,<br />
Who will you be, what will you do.<br />
This is our conversation,<br />
You are health providers too.<br />
26
TO MY<br />
DAUGHTER<br />
27
28
To My Daughter<br />
When I demand that you<br />
Be home be<strong>for</strong>e dark everyday,<br />
I, my daughter, do not hate you dear.<br />
I am merely trying to protect you.<br />
From the jittery and jumpy, jumpy monkeys,<br />
Leaping from tree to tree,<br />
And from branch to branch,<br />
With no particular base.<br />
From giraffes that look down on you:<br />
They will make you feel you matter,<br />
Then toss you in the mud, Once you yield.<br />
From the trumpeting elephants,<br />
That love party times in the depth of the night.<br />
29
Beware, the python,<br />
How it changes its colours,<br />
O those mesmerizing colours !<br />
Remember, they are meant to lure you<br />
Into a tight embrace. Be<strong>for</strong>e you know it<br />
Your heart is stopped by suffocation.<br />
I am trying to protect you,<br />
From the seemingly innocent porcupine,<br />
That will prick your heart apart,<br />
Be<strong>for</strong>e you even touch its soul.<br />
Remember there are many different animals,<br />
And you only have one heart !<br />
Daughter take heed,<br />
Darkness has no eyes.<br />
30
31
POLITICIANS<br />
32
Politicians<br />
Do not spend,<br />
So much time in your global village,<br />
In your meetings, talking about health.<br />
Come to our villages,<br />
The real ones,<br />
Without passport control,<br />
And air miles, and VIP entrances,<br />
Come down from your bottled water.<br />
To our unpolluted waters,<br />
Flowing in our streams.<br />
Come down from your air conditioned offices,<br />
To our cow dung floor huts.<br />
Come down, Come down.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> and real politics start,<br />
In our village meetings,<br />
In our workplaces,<br />
And in our schools.<br />
Wander from the global village,<br />
Which shines above you,<br />
Like the sun.<br />
Seek the constellation of real villages,<br />
Pulsing around you,<br />
Like stars at night,<br />
That make up your nation,<br />
And give it its light.<br />
What is politics?<br />
Fourty percent parliaments,<br />
Global villages and meetings.<br />
And 60% conversations with your people,<br />
That is how you win their votes,<br />
Their health and their hearts.<br />
33
And what is health?<br />
Forty percent medicines,<br />
And sixty percent conversations,<br />
Local policy and practice,<br />
About eating and smoking,<br />
Walking and talking,<br />
Safe water and safe sex,<br />
And safety belts.<br />
Caring <strong>for</strong> yourself,<br />
And caring <strong>for</strong> others.<br />
That is how you win their health,<br />
And with that their votes.<br />
You are a politician,<br />
You know how to speak,<br />
To your people,<br />
To fight an election,<br />
For their health,<br />
With what you say,<br />
With what you do.<br />
You are a politician,<br />
And a health worker too.<br />
So come down,<br />
From your global village,<br />
Be a real politician,<br />
Be a real health worker,<br />
Get all your politicians,<br />
Local chiefs, religions,<br />
Those with local trust,<br />
They are the doctors,<br />
The health workers,<br />
The nation’s wealth,<br />
And talk to your people,<br />
About health.<br />
34
35
TO MY MINISTER<br />
OF FINANCE<br />
36
To My Minister<br />
of Finance<br />
The Minister is also,<br />
An aunt or uncle,<br />
She grows ill and healthy,<br />
Is cured and cared <strong>for</strong>.<br />
So why is the Minister of Finance,<br />
Often A Minister of No Finance,<br />
For our health needs?<br />
We need a conversation,<br />
To make her a Yes Minister.<br />
Talk to her about health.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is not just a cost,<br />
Not just money lost,<br />
In a bottomless sea.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is an investment,<br />
In the productive, flowering,<br />
Garden of her people.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is her wealth.<br />
We need to show her,<br />
That she can become,<br />
A health millionaire,<br />
In the hard currency,<br />
Of lives saved,<br />
37
Which lasts <strong>for</strong> her life.<br />
It does not devalue,<br />
Like paper money.<br />
And whisper in her ear,<br />
Like the wind,<br />
The lives she loses,<br />
By not acting now.<br />
We need to show her,<br />
She may wear a gold,<br />
Not a white coat,<br />
But health is her wealth,<br />
And wealth without health,<br />
Is no wealth at all.<br />
We need to talk to her true,<br />
That Ministers of Finance,<br />
Are our health workers too.<br />
38
LISTENING<br />
TO HEALTH<br />
39
40
Listening to health<br />
There is a silence,<br />
A listening to conversations,<br />
Of illness and health.<br />
First, to people who are ill,<br />
A talking with the eyes,<br />
Open as moons,<br />
And sharp and focused,<br />
As the stars.<br />
Twinkling as you listen,<br />
To their conversation,<br />
To disease and life,<br />
To fear of death,<br />
To the everyday,<br />
And the web of stigma,<br />
Which speaks and does not listen.<br />
The line between health and illness,<br />
Is as thin as the horizon,<br />
Which the sun passes over,<br />
In a few moments,<br />
Of blood red sunrise,<br />
From health to illness,<br />
Like from night to day.<br />
The ill are you, and you them.<br />
41
Second, listen to your own health,<br />
Talk health, and listen,<br />
To its heart beat,<br />
Behind your everyday,<br />
To its pulse,<br />
Giving you energy,<br />
Or taking it away,<br />
The tide of your body,<br />
Strengthening and weakening,<br />
As you age,<br />
On the beach of your life.<br />
And don’t be afraid,<br />
To be tested too,<br />
To consult and to listen.<br />
Let your health speak to you.<br />
Listening is a conversation,<br />
As much as talking,<br />
The expression of your face,<br />
The openness of your eyes,<br />
And your soul,<br />
The time you let drip,<br />
Like musical notes,<br />
Between your words,<br />
The listening with your ears,<br />
Your heart, your self,<br />
To the conversations,<br />
Of illness and of health.<br />
42
Appendix<br />
Fast food, slow death<br />
Who you are,<br />
Is how you eat.<br />
Why fry yourself with chicken,<br />
Crackly and crusty,<br />
Your skin will look like that after years,<br />
Of fast food, slow death.<br />
Why fizz yourself dizzy,<br />
With sugar drinks,<br />
Additives and addictives,<br />
Your blood will bubble,<br />
Like that after years<br />
Of fizzy fast food,<br />
And slow death.<br />
Start from what is real.<br />
Cut and cook real ingredients,<br />
And you will be real.<br />
Your skin glowing,<br />
Your hair flowing,<br />
Your body and soul not weighed down,<br />
With burgers, fried chicken, and fizzy drinks,<br />
Which have become you.<br />
You can eat, or be eaten by food.<br />
The choice is yours.<br />
43
Doctors - patience with your patients<br />
One of the last conversations,<br />
My father,<br />
Who was a doctor,<br />
Visiting Soweto had,<br />
Went like this:<br />
“How many of your patients<br />
are affected by HIV?<br />
About one third in gastroenterology.<br />
Do you talk to the patient,<br />
About their condition?<br />
No, we do not mention it,<br />
Or mark it on their records,<br />
This is partly due to insurance,<br />
but also mistrust.<br />
So how do patients know<br />
What condition they have?<br />
Often they do not,<br />
Often they do.<br />
But we don’t talk about it.<br />
For the doctor,<br />
There is so much stigma,<br />
So much paperwork.”<br />
My father,<br />
Was just a gastroenterologist,<br />
But he was a doctor first.<br />
44
And he had this look,<br />
In his deep, diagnostic, brown eyes,<br />
Which he could open,<br />
As wide as the world.<br />
Yet still focus on you,<br />
With surgical precision,<br />
Like an X ray,<br />
His questions,<br />
Cutting to the centre,<br />
Of an issue, beneath the surface.<br />
Yet glowing like embers,<br />
Sparkling in a fire,<br />
Waiting to flame a response,<br />
An engagement with his patients.<br />
As all good doctors,<br />
Know their medicines,<br />
They also know,<br />
Their conversations,<br />
To look, and diagnose,<br />
With talk and listening.<br />
And he gave one of those looks then,<br />
One of his last.<br />
“But isn’t there,<br />
A basic responsibility,<br />
For a doctor,<br />
To talk to his patient,<br />
About the underlying condition.<br />
45
How else can a doctor,<br />
Or patient face disease”.<br />
There was silence,<br />
A silent conversation,<br />
Between two doctors,<br />
Who have diagnosed,<br />
Something essential together.<br />
How to fight a disease,<br />
With drugs, and tests,<br />
Scans and prescriptions,<br />
But also with conversations.<br />
Difficult and real,<br />
Face to face,<br />
With no discrimination,<br />
With words and listening,<br />
With presence and patience.<br />
<strong>Conversations</strong> are your diagnosis,<br />
<strong>Conversations</strong> are your medicine,<br />
Take the time so after you,<br />
They can absorb what is meant,<br />
They can be their own doctors too,<br />
Be patient with your patients.<br />
46
To My Boss - work<br />
life balance<br />
Sixty, sixty, sixty<br />
Sixty is less than seventy,<br />
It has that going <strong>for</strong> it.<br />
But however good you feel,<br />
You look today, your sixtieth birthday.<br />
It is no longer twenty.<br />
So rebalance your life,<br />
Your work,<br />
And you can find,<br />
A million more moments,<br />
Like these, hidden there,<br />
For you, <strong>for</strong> us.<br />
You are only as old,<br />
As those around you,<br />
As the team you lead,<br />
The life you share,<br />
With us each day.<br />
Age is strategic in<strong>for</strong>mation,<br />
More strategic than in<strong>for</strong>mation.<br />
So we can make up, any number you wish.<br />
84 percent of fast track countries,<br />
Think you are barely fifty,<br />
If we slow track time.<br />
At least you are not,<br />
Ninety, ninety, ninety,<br />
Our HIV targets.<br />
86 percent think you are not yet,<br />
Sixty, sixty, sixty.<br />
47
It took you sixty years,<br />
To the day,<br />
To discover work life balance,<br />
And if you balance it right,<br />
Your energy to lead,<br />
Your desire to do good,<br />
To launch and country impact.<br />
If <strong>for</strong> once,<br />
You follow your own guidelines,<br />
And balance your life.<br />
You have an infinity of life,<br />
Of moments like birthdays,<br />
To celebrate,<br />
Like stars in the sky.<br />
If you consolidate, implement,<br />
This one guideline,<br />
Of life and health <strong>for</strong> all,<br />
For you, <strong>for</strong> us.<br />
You will live <strong>for</strong>ever,<br />
You will be our hero,<br />
And anyway by 2030,<br />
We are all going to zero.<br />
48
<strong>Health</strong> diplomat - to WHO<br />
To be a health diplomat,<br />
You have to look like that,<br />
And speak like that.<br />
Be hard with results,<br />
And with impact,<br />
Softer with people,<br />
With humour and tact.<br />
To be a health diplomat,<br />
You have the chat, to work with charm,<br />
Pleasure and trust, to do no harm.<br />
Yet spread health,<br />
Like an epidemic,<br />
As you arm countries,<br />
And disarm disease,<br />
Arm and disarm with charm.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is here and now,<br />
In healthy relationships, in hard work,<br />
A sense of humour, a helping hand.<br />
In your empathy with countries,<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is WHO and who you are.<br />
You-niversal health is you,<br />
Caring <strong>for</strong> your health and others,<br />
With hard and soft diplomacy,<br />
And tough love too,<br />
In finding solutions,<br />
Instead of problems,<br />
In having a universal impact,<br />
You have all that,<br />
It is WHO you are,<br />
Our health diplomats.<br />
49<br />
49
A Conversation to end TB<br />
To Be<br />
TB or not TB,<br />
That is the conversation.<br />
We need to free, to end TB.<br />
To spread ahead,<br />
Like a wave,<br />
With what is said.<br />
To talk TB,<br />
Infectious words,<br />
With friends, with family,<br />
To find the undiagnosed,<br />
To be TB free.<br />
TB or not TB,<br />
Is it in the cough?<br />
Rough like the sea, breaking on rocks.<br />
Is it the heaviness of your lungs?<br />
Damp as clouds, hanging low.<br />
Is it the pulsing of your head at night?<br />
Sharp as starlight, heavy as a full moon.<br />
Do not wait, until it is too late,<br />
To see TB,<br />
Until the only question,<br />
Is to be or not to be.<br />
<strong>Health</strong> is 40% clinics,<br />
And 60% communities.<br />
Look after your health, be<strong>for</strong>e you fall ill,<br />
Set diagnosis free, to treat early,<br />
To end TB.<br />
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50
Malaria bites<br />
Malaria bites,<br />
At night,<br />
At dusk and dawn,<br />
It drips, inside us,<br />
With a drop of blood.<br />
And then pulses,<br />
Around us, in a fever,<br />
Which heats and cools,<br />
With its own day and night,<br />
Waxing and waning,<br />
Us white like the moon,<br />
In stars of sweat.<br />
Malaria bites,<br />
Across our villages,<br />
In our homes,<br />
Our children,<br />
Our pregnant women,<br />
It smells them out.<br />
We can smell it out too,<br />
Test, treat fevers,<br />
Sleep in bed-nets,<br />
Spray and drain away,<br />
Puddles and pools,<br />
Where malaria cools,<br />
Seeds and breeds.<br />
And talk in schools,<br />
We need conversations,<br />
In families, classrooms,<br />
Villages virtual and real,<br />
In palaces and shacks,<br />
Where malaria bites,<br />
We can bite back.<br />
51
The <strong>Ten</strong> conversations are fun, pleasurable and engage<br />
youth, schools and politicians. There is also a serious side.<br />
Don’t wait until you are ill to care <strong>for</strong> your health. Prevent<br />
disease, get tested, get treated. <strong>Ten</strong> actions you can take<br />
can save ten million lives globally per year and improve your<br />
own health.<br />
<strong>Ten</strong> actions you can take can save ten million lives<br />
<strong>Ten</strong> Actions<br />
Lives saved<br />
Exercise each day 500,000<br />
Stop Smoking<br />
3 million<br />
Avoid Drinking<br />
1 million<br />
Avoid Fast Food, eat smart<br />
2 million<br />
Safe Sex<br />
1 million<br />
Safety Belts<br />
1 million<br />
Reduce indoor pollution<br />
1 million<br />
Reduce outdoor pollution<br />
2 million<br />
Safe Water<br />
1 million<br />
Avoid violence against women 200,000<br />
Data: Approx lives lost be<strong>for</strong>e age 70 each year.<br />
Global Burden of Disease.<br />
52<br />
52
54
“These poems are beautiful, powerful, and accessible. Community<br />
conversations offer an empowering plat<strong>for</strong>m to engage with allies in<br />
government and civil society on the issues that matter most to them.<br />
In doing so, opinions are changed and action is taken. I am proud of Daniel<br />
Low-Beer and Albert Nyathi’s creative new work.”<br />
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,<br />
Director General, World <strong>Health</strong> Organization<br />
“We are delighted and proud to launch this book. We need to talk about<br />
health as politicians in meetings, but more importantly to our people, in<br />
real villages.”<br />
Dr. David Parirenyatwa, Minister of <strong>Health</strong>, Zimbabwe<br />
“We still need to learn to talk to each other more freely about <strong>Health</strong> and<br />
HIV. The poems in this book are a fun, engaging but serious contribution<br />
to stimulating conversations. Read them yourself and then read them to<br />
ten other people.”<br />
Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS<br />
“What is health 20% medicines, and 80% what you can do. We need <strong>Ten</strong><br />
<strong>Conversations</strong> so that individuals, families and communities become more<br />
engaged with their health. This is a fresh and empowering approach to<br />
extend universal health access into communities and peoples’ lives. Read<br />
the poems, listen to the music and do 1, 2, 3 or ten health conversations<br />
and actions.”<br />
Dr. Shiva Murugasampillay, Chair of Zim<strong>Health</strong><br />
“This is poignant and powerful poetry. We need conversations like these<br />
<strong>for</strong> prevention to have the decisive impact we know it can have.”<br />
Rachel Baggaley<br />
Coordinator Prevention and Key Populations, WHO<br />
“Eastern and Southern Africa is driving the agenda to reinvigorate<br />
prevention in a powerful and practical way. These are lovely poems, to get<br />
us to have ten key public and personal conversations.”<br />
Professor Sheila Tlou<br />
Former Minister of <strong>Health</strong> Botswana, UNAIDS Regional Director