    
Over the past three days, I have heard many personal stories from visitors to the Changing Diabetes Bus.
A middle-aged woman in town for the IDF conference, whose friend’s daughter has diabetes. A young woman from Cape Town whose father has type 2 diabetes, and who came to the Village to find out if she is also at risk for diabetes because of her father and how she can prevent herself from getting diabetes. A local teenage boy who wondered what diabetes is, and how one gets the disease. A South African teacher who has diabetes and who also has two young students with diabetes, who told me about her yearly lesson plan to educate her students all about diabetes. A mother who has diabetes and wanted to get recipes for “diabetes-friendly” meals. A pediatrician who shared with me, in dismay, her story of how she recently diagnosed an 11-year-old patient with type 2 diabetes, the youngest patient she has ever diagnosed with the disease.
Everyone who came to the Bus was affected by diabetes in some way, either by having diabetes themselves, or having loved ones with diabetes. This is representative of the real world situation, where most people either know someone with diabetes, or have diabetes themselves. Diabetes affects everyone: individuals, families, and societies.
Also, today’s Kids Drawing Exhibition highlighted personal stories and how diabetes affects people’s lives in both positive and negative ways. Opened by Jacques ‘Jacq’ Terreblanche, South African Idol’s finalist, the event was a great success. Many children participated in the contest, which featured drawings from children with diabetes that have visited the bus in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa. A local girl’s choir also performed, and I was totally impressed by their voices and musicality.
The event gave children with diabetes a chance to express themselves through art, and to show how they feel about diabetes
|
