AIDS and Africa

You don’t hear so much about AIDS in the U.S. anymore. Not that it’s gone, it’s just not news the way that it was. You’d think we’d found the cure for it, like polio or smallpox, but we haven’t. It is still there. Sixty thousand new HIV infections a year. For a while, from the amount of coverage the disease received, you would have thought that it was threatening the future of our country. In reality, HIV infection affects about one person in three hundred in the U.S. We have fourteen times as many alcoholics in the population. More people die each year in the U.S. from cancer (500,000) or heart disease (750,000) than have died of AIDS since it was first diagnosed here (430,000). For us, HIV/AIDS became a political issue, associated with the homosexual community. I say that not to downplay the seriousness of the issue in the U.S., but to compare what we experience to what is happening here in Africa. Unfortunately, compassion does not run deep for the issue, even (or sometimes, especially) among Christians.

For the people of Uganda, and much of Africa, the issue is different. HIV/AIDS cannot be ignored here. It is everywhere. Billboards and posters remind people of the need for sexual abstinence and for faithfulness in marriage. Funerals take people away from work daily as family members succumb to the disease. Children, often infected when they enter the world, are left to raise themselves and their siblings as their parents die young. Husbands die leaving their wife (wives) to fend for themselves in a world that is not especially friendly to women. Infected by their husbands, they are damaged goods. No man will have them. Google "AIDS in Africa" for lots of information, or for a moving, but dated Time Magazine piece, CLICK HERE.

Uganda is one of the success stories. At one point, 18% of the population was HIV+. Now it is down to 6% (eighteen times the rate of the U.S.). In Botswana, half the population is HIV+, 150 times the rate in the U.S.) . In countries of southern Africa, the numbers run around 24-33% (68-99 X U.S.).

The AIDS clinic at the Mbarara University Hospital where Larry Pepper works serves 6500 patients a month. Words of Hope is a ministry that the University Baptist Church, Mbarara, has developed to address the physical and spiritual needs of the clients of that clinic. Teams of visitors go out daily to find patients in their village homes. They inquire about their health, about their needs, and share with them the hope of the gospel.

On Monday I had my first opportunity to participate in the Words of Hope ministry. I accompanied Naboth, a Ugandan pastor, and Aloysius, a seminary student, on an afternoon visit. We traveled in Naboth’s small pickup truck. Aloysius rode in the back. Naboth drove us five or six miles out into a country village to pick up a man who would help us. He is a soldier in the Ugandan army and we were going to go onto the local military base to visit. "Dirt poor" does not describe the village. Dirt might have enriched the place.

We made our way back to the main highway and then to the army base. A few words from our "guide" and soldiers opened the big iron-barred gate for us to enter. We drove to the base hospital where several clients from the clinic had been, and possible still were, patients in the medical ward. A tall, muscular Ugandan captain wearing fatigues, black boots, a beret, and large, goggle-like glasses met us outside the hospital. Captain Richard is the administrator of the hospital. The man invited us into his office and listened as we explained our mission. He decided to help.

The Captain Richard took us to the hospital’s medical ward, a long room with rows of beds on either side. It was not full and it was relatively clean. He scanned the list of names we brought with us and told us that these men were no longer patients in the hospital, although they had recently been. He suggested that we might visit the TB ward. He thought one of them was there. A counselor from the hospital, a bright, well-educated officer, joined us.

The TB ward is located a quarter of a mile or so away from the other wards, so we walked across the base. In the distance you could hear the crack of rifle fire, as soldiers practiced their marksmanship. Squads of recruits jogged by chanting their cadence in Swahili. Children were everywhere. I’m certain many of them had never seen a white man (muzungu) up close. A pair of four or five year olds saw us coming. One of them became wide-eyed, not with curiosity, but with fear. (I later found out that in the villages children are often told that white people will eat them.) He behaved like he believed that. He ran as fast as he could, screaming. The soldiers with me laughed. I knelt down and invited the boys to me. One of them came and shook my hand. I told him to call his friend. The second boy came reluctantly. We exchanged the greeting that is common with school children learning English: "How are you?" "I am fine." Then I asked him, "What is your name?" I might as well have said, "Do you want me to fry you or boil you?" His eyes became wide again, he screamed and ran away.

At the TB ward we found one of the young men we were looking for. James is 18 and unmarried. Captain Richard located another of the clients, who had been discharged from the hospital and brought him to us. His name was also James. He is 29 and has a wife and three children. James the First spoke only Swahili. James the Second spoke Runyunkore. Aloysius engaged them in conversation, first about their medications and their physical conditions. We were standing beside a window in the cinderblock hospital ward. A steady flow of children’s faces appeared in the window as word spread that a white man was there.

Both James’ expressed a desire to talk about spiritual matters and Aloysius gave them copies of the Gospel of John and spoke to them of Christ and the hope that is available through him. Meanwhile, Captain Richard had located another client we were inquiring about, Captain Nathan, age 68. Captain Nathan has 27 children, 15 grandchildren, and who knows how many great-grandchildren. He is a 43 year veteran of the Ugandan army. The Captain enlisted back in 1962, shortly after Uganda received its independence from Great Britain. He has been a believer in Christ since 1991. He is infected with the HIV virus, as is his wife. At one point, as much as 75% of the army was HIV Positive.

Captain Nathan is an educated man who speaks several languages well. He became the translator for Aloysius, providing the gospel to James the First in his native Swahili. Both James’ expressed a desire to receive Christ. We prayed with them and encouraged them, and gave them some material to read. Others gathered around as the gospel was being shared and asked for copies of the Gospel of John as well. The young counselor, who had accompanied us, told us he was one of the ministers at a church located just a hundred meters from the barracks. He was enthusiastic about our being there for the soldiers.

Captain Nathan invited us to his home on the base to meet his wife and pray with her. We walked another half mile across the base. The quarters provided for the soldiers’ families were dozens of long cinderblock structures with tin roofs divided into very small rooms. Freshly laundered camouflaged fatigues hung everywhere. Half naked (you decide which half) children swarmed between the buildings. Shallow ditches flowed with sewage across our path. As we walked I asked him about his military service and his life. At one point I asked, "How many soldiers are on this base?" "That is a government secret," he told me. "I cannot tell you." Sorry.

The Captain’s home was one of these small dwellings, with a couple of rooms. We entered a room that was 8’x10’. Couches sat against the walls on the right and the left, a TV was located on the far wall and a chair on the near one. The walls were covered with pages from a newspaper and various small posters. This had been the Captain’s home for the past nine years. He grew a small vegetable garden out back.

We met Captain Nathan’s wife, and after a half-hour visit talking about everything from life in Uganda during Idi Amin’s reign of terror to life in Christ, we read scripture, prayed, and walked back to our pickup. Captain Nathan walked with us. He told us how much it meant to him for us to have come to see him and his wife. He said he was in his house when a messenger came telling him someone was asking for him at the hospital. When he came and found it was us pastors, he said he was very comforted. He asked us to return.

Patrick, Diana, and Andrew Forrester arrived at the Pepper’s home safe and sound around one o’clock. Patrick went to work right away. While I was on the army base, Col. Patrick Forrester was at one of the local high schools speaking to about 1200 students. He was well-received and his presence has opened a ministry at the school for Larry and his team that they have not had before.

Earlier in the day Melinda went with Barry and Joseph (a UBC member) to a Bible storying group Barry has begun at a local security guard company. At about 9:00 AM, when the guards get off-duty, they gather to hear Barry tell Bible stories. More than fifty men came on Monday. Barry told the story of creation and they listened and participated with the same enthusiasm shown by the people of the village last Wednesday.

Melinda and Jenna began a banner-making project with UBC members on Monday. They are creating two ten-foot horizontal paper-cut banners for the church this week. About 25 students showed up. Since they had more hands available to work than they had knives, the work was shared over the three hour period. They will meet each day from 12-3 to complete the projects.
Last night we held our second Bible study for the university students, dealing with principles of biblical interpretation. Pamm, Sally, Melinda, Barry, and Larry served as small-group discussion leaders. We gave Pat and Diana the first night off from small-group leadership, since they were freshly on the scene and still dazed by the travel. They enter active duty tonight (Tuesday). We returned to the Pepper’s home for a late dinner (Mexican food) and the Forrester’s were welcomed into the warm and joyful fellowship we have been sharing all week.

This morning some of us will go to a local village for Words of Hope visits and to invite people to the beginnings of a Bible storying group on Thursday. At noon the banner group will work. Tonight we will lead students in a study of how the Bible is used to help us with ethical decisions in our lives. God will provide other opportunities along the way.

AIDS is not going to go away. Not in Africa or in the U.S. As Larry tells his church and the pastors he trains, the enemy is not the people who are infected. The enemy is the virus, and the enemy is strong here, destroying lives of men, women, and children. The scope of the problem is overwhelming. Advances in treatment is prolonging life and raising its quality. Education is helping to reduce the problem in some places. But the tide has not come close to turning. The medical work Larry and his colleagues do is vital. But so are words of hope.