Rambling Onwards

Tuberculosis (TB) is not something you hear of every day. When was the first time you heard of it? For me, it was when I first watched Baz Luhrmann's film Moulin Rouge! a few years ago, although it was called consumption in the film. At the time, I didn't understand why Satine was coughing up blood and why that was such a worry until I read the plot summary afterwards and did some reading on TB. However Moulin Rouge! was set in 1900 - so much has changed, and today in the Western world we rarely ever have to worry about contracting TB it has just about disappeared.

But many people in other parts of the world are not so lucky.

Soba holds her son Sawai Naruwa, who has lost the use of his legs as a result of tuberculosis in Daru in 2011. Photo: Jason South

In countries, like our closest neighbour Papua New Guinea (PNG), TB is on the rise again. TB is still a major cause of death in kids along with pneumonia especially in Africa. And it's one of the most common deaths for people with HIV, but it's not part of the statistics because they count as deaths because of HIV and so those people become invisible.
But what exactly is it?

What do you do to celebrate the end of uni final exams? Visit a trendy cafe in Surry Hills for lunch with friends of course (also it's the time to go shopping but that's not relevant here).

Devon Cafe is just a few minutes walk from Central station and is tucked up on Devonshire Street off Chalmers Street.

I've been meaning to go there for a while now, but last time I tried it didn't turn out so well. A week and a half ago I visited with some other friends, but we didn't know that the kitchen closed at 3pm and we got there at 3:30pm. The interior of the cafe was pretty hip and welcoming though, so I just ordered an Organic Chai ($4), waited for my friends and left at 4pm to eat somewhere else.

Tip of the Day: If you want food from their main menu, their kitchen closes at 3pm and they only serve coffee and pastries after the kitchen closes until closing.

But Devon Cafe didn't disappoint this time! We arrived at midday and the Cafe was already filling up so there was a short wait for us since we were a group of five. It wasn't long before we were taken to the back area where it has graffiti and fake leaf netting on their walls, which is pretty cool. They also had the menu and cutlery already laid out on the table when we sat down which was lovely as well.

Here's our food menu:

Ever had the feeling where you work with something for so long that you get attached and you can't let it go, even though you have a feeling that it's not going to work out? We can call it the escalation of commitment or sunk cost fallacy.

I don't think it's fair that people stereotype.

It's a strange feeling to be told that you've made an impact and that you're well known in a place of the past. On one hand, you feel honoured and flattered that people remember you and that the work you put into something gave you a good reputation, but on the other hand, there's a sense of confusion and disbelief because you can't quite fathom how it's possible or how you unintentionally made an impact on someone else. In the end, you still feel quite ordinary and you were just doing something for yourself rather than for the attention it might have generated.
It brings us back to the age old question of "What does [someone] think of me? How do they see me?" which can never be answered truthfully as you can never experience life through someone else's perspective - only the illusion of it through their words and actions. But we're humans, and curiosity always kills the cat.

The other day I went to visit my high school by dropping my sister off and briefly crashed their musical rehearsal, and that night my sister tells me that a lot of people started calling her "Sarah" because I was her sister and I had "a reputation or something". I really didn't expect this to happen and it puzzles me that the Year 9s remember me, because I only knew a few through peer support. If anyone's experienced something similar and felt the same way (or not!) let me know in the comments below.

But it goes to show that as an older grade and hence role models in a school environment, the juniors really do look up to you - just like how we used to look up to the seniors and know their names and they generally wouldn't remember us (although I've been proved wrong by someone I reconnected with at uni).

Role models are important. They help you shape your goals and your values, and honestly they're the reasons I did what I did in high school - and now in uni. It's so easy to get lost when you don't have anyone to look up to, no one to aspire to be like.

We are role models whether we like it or not, and we can never truly understand how much influence we have over someone's actions and values. Be good people, friends, because people may look up to you whether you know it or not.

With love, Sarah x