In Africa, on the front lines in AIDS battle

Paula Seitz-Netherda gently corrected her husband, Mark, the HIV doctor.

They'd been recounting highlights of the year they lived and worked in Namibia, one of the hottest, driest, poorest, most AIDS-ravaged places on Earth, and Mark had remarked, "We'd do it again."

Paula, a nurse and mother whose three kids ate zebra while in Africa, befriended street kids and profited from a Third World view of how much nonessential stuff the average American owns, declared, "We will do it again."

Mark Netherda is a Sonoma County Public Health doctor and former medical director of the county's Center for HIV Prevention and Care. Paula is a cardiac-care nurse at Sutter Medical Center.

The two of them helped introduce HIV care to Namibia and forged an enduring, life-giving kinship between the southwestern African nation and Sonoma County. Paula is a mainstay of a project of the Forestville-based Food for Thought food bank that helps feed AIDS orphans in Namibia and works to break the generational cycle of the disease.

Mark first traveled to Namibia in 2003 when the country's Ministry of Health invited him to instruct local doctors, who for the first time would administer anti-AIDS drugs. Three years later, in 2006, he took his family with him.

He arranged a leave of absence from the health department and accepted an invitation from the Namibian health ministry to become the teacher-mentor at AIDS clinics and hospitals in and near the capital of Windhoek.

Mark, Paula and the three kids settled into a simple Western-type home and Mark went to work. Some days, he and the clinicians he instructed saw 200 or more patients.

He said Namibia has one of world's highest HIV infection rates -- 20 percent of all Namibians ages 15 to 49 carry the virus. The good news, he said, is that there are only 2.1 million people there, so getting antiretrovirals to everyone who needs them is doable.

He visited the country again last month, and found that the small corps of medical workers waging the government's battle against AIDS is diligent but overwhelmed.

"The effort is working," he said. "It's working slowly, but it's still broken. I don't know how to fix it, but we can't give up."

While he trained clinical workers, treated patients and honed procedures during his year-long stay, his wife and three children -- Erin, 13, Alex, 11, and Spencer, 9 -- were busy, too.

The Santa Rosa kids went to school and learned about a new culture. And their mother volunteered at a soup kitchen that fed more than 300 children a day. Some were orphaned by AIDS, some were homeless, some had parents unable to consistently feed them.

"Most people in Namibia eat once a day, if they're lucky," Paula said.

She said the soup kitchen is operated by a Namibian woman with regular financial and technical assistance from donors in Sonoma County.

A major partner of the Namibian soup kitchen is Food for Thought, the Sonoma County AIDS food bank (fftfoodbank.org). Volunteers with Food for Thought learned of the "Hope Initiatives" soup kitchen years ago from Mark and decided to collect money separately for it.

Ron Karp, executive director of Food for Thought, traveled to Namibia and the soup kitchen for the first time in February. He said the people with Hope Initiatives are doing more than simply keeping hundreds of Namibian AIDS orphans alive.

"They have a comprehensive view of the problem," Karp said. "They know it's not just about food but it's about community development."

Hope Initiatives works with community partners in Namibia to get the children off the streets and on their way to jobs and self-sufficiency, he said.

"It's really not an insurmountable problem," Karp said. "There is indeed hope."

Karp observed that the Namibia-Sonoma connection would not have happened, and would not be thriving, were it for the Netherdas.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone who has more personal dedication than the two of them," he said.

In the midst of the Netherdas' year-long stay, the kitchen received from Food for Thought a gas-operated freezer and refrigerator. Paula said the ability to store fresh food allowed the kitchen to begin offering children fresh meat and fruit twice a week.

Such foods are a nutritious treat in a country in which the most common meal is a coarse porridge.

Throughout their stay they did taste local foods -- Spencer downed a zebra steak and asked for more -- and they toured the vast, arid, fascinating nation by car.

Mark said the kids grew accustomed to stopping and offering rides to foot travelers, though some had gone many miles and many days since their last bath. On Namibian roads, the Santa Rosans learned, that's simply what you do.

Mark's favorite memento from Namibia may be the skull of the horned Greater Kudu that he found dead, snared by a fence. He and Paula thought for a moment about what their children came away with.

"Our kids now know the difference between need and want," Paula said.

"We, all of us, can't wait to go back."

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.