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| At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Racek was able to practice for and play in two games for the soccer team. Her teammates spoke Xhosa, which is a click language. The team tried for a week to get her to learn their click names before telling her their much easier to pronounce nicknames. |
In early 2007, Adrianne Racek, now a second-year med student at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was given an amazing opportunity. As a junior at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., Racek was working toward her biology major with a focus on premed when she entered a competitive interview process for the chance to study abroad in eastern South Africa. She was among the 28, mostly pre–health care professionals and education majors, chosen.
Starting in January 2007, Racek attended Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The majority of her studies were focused on South African culture; the classes ranged from history to literature and even to South African jazz. On Mondays and Tuesdays, the students were given the opportunity to work at the House of Resurrection Haven for people with AIDS. Racek offered her care in the nursery, where she helped feed, change, prepare meals for, and play with the children, most of whom were orphaned or abandoned. The children at the Haven were mostly HIV positive or too young to test since test results aren’t reliable until age two. They were receiving anti-retroviral therapy and cared for by nurses and nuns. The Haven provided care for all ages, but because of political, socioeconomic, psychological, and gender pressures, most adults were not managing their own HIV. “The adults that we saw would usually come in just on their last legs,” said Racek.
