I’m not even sure how to write about the past week of my life. Six students and I travelled to a rural area outside of Soweto, South Africa to help out at an AIDS clinic for the week. I entered this week with a great deal of nervousness, for the simple reason that sometimes ignorance is bliss and knowing hurts.
We had a chance to help out by cleaning out a shed, which is to be turned into additional clinic space in the next year. Our time there also included home visits to patients of the clinic. I have done a lot of things which scare me in life; from bungee jumping, to difficult conversations, to traveling on my own, but this was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. As I sad inside a two room shack as the nurse explained to us that the three year old boy sitting on the dirt laden carpet in front of us, had been orphaned when his mother died of AIDS earlier that year, I could feel my stomach cramp up. He too was HIV positive, like an estimated twenty eight million others in Sub-Saharan Africa.
One of the horrors of HIV/AIDS is that it is affecting everyone. We met a grandmother whose age was hard to guess as she looked weary from the day to day stresses of raising her six grandchildren aged 10-20 after her daughter passed away last year. She worries for them, she wants the best for them, and she gives them all she is able to. Her three room shack has been her permanent home since 1989, yet she still waits for the funding for the government to build a proper home.
She wanted us to spend time with her grandchildren to encourage them. We surprised them after school one day (if you can just imagine 7 pastey-white Canadian sitting in the yard of a black South African shackland, that is a surprise!). Feeling as though we had little to offer we brought along supplies to make bead necklaces and bracelets with them. It was a unique chance to interact with them as short as it was.
I continue to wrestle with how I ought to best sort out this impacting experience. I keep thinking of the lyrics from a U2 song that go as follows
“where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die”, and I agree, but why can’t it be true. One thing I’ve learned this week, is that beyond the statistics are stories. Beyond the stories are lives of men, women, children who deserve an abundant life of hope. This week left me with a broken heart that grieves for lost lives, but also a spirit of hope that change can happen
No comments:
Post a Comment