First thing on the agenda this morning that I knew of was to visit a sick lady. At breakfast Brenda, the director of Helping Hands, told me that the woman was named Christine and was someone she has known now for many of the years she has been in Uganda. She also told me that Christine has AIDS. When I asked how she got it, Brenda told me that her husband had given it to her, but that he was no longer alive.
While in Africa I have come in contact with people who are HIV positive and possibly even unknowingly in contact with some who have AIDS. But I had never experienced what I did this morning.
We drove down the red African clay roads that are so distinct of the land here in East Africa. We drove until the road became so narrow that we had to get out of the car. As we began to slow down children gathered to watch the white people and shouted, "Mzungu! Mzungu!" which means: white person. It happens everywhere we go, children shouting "mzungu", adults stopping what they are doing to stare.
Christine was staying with her sister because she was not strong enough to care for herself, and as we approched the house i began to take in my surroundings which are very common to this land: mud huts and shacks were everywhere. Naked babies played in the dirt, women sat outside cooking over fires.
The house we came up to was no bigger than the bathroom in the house of my childhood. It was attached like a duplex to another home about the same size. Straw and tarp served as the roof and mud were the walls and floors.
We were welcomed into the home and I had to bend to get through the doorway. Inside was enough room for the five of us to sit down beside the cot on which Christine lay, her body lost under the blanket. This woman's state broke my heart. She was no more than skin and bones and could barely talk. This disease had ravaged her body, she did not have the strength to sit up on her own. She watched us with very tired eyes.
Brenda asked Christine if she had been eating but she said that she had not because her stomach hurt. And because of this she has not been taking her medicine. There is a medicine for HIV positive people that helps to control the disease of AIDS but it must be taken with food.
Brenda pulled a blouse out of her bag that she had brought as a present for Christine. Together the sister and another lady put the shirt on her. As they did this I could see the toll AIDS had taken on her body, so much so that I had to look away.
We encouraged her by speaking the gospel over her and reminding her that heaven was her home. We prayed over this sweet, slowly dying lady.
The scene before my eyes broke my heart.
Before we left Brenda asked if there was anything she could do for her. Her response? Please help my children.
This afternoon Brenda sent me out with a social worker of Helping Hands, a sweet Ugandan woman named Edith. Together Edith and I spent over two hours walking the streets of Busia. Our first stop was Busia's school to meet with one of Christine's children. We sat with Junior, who was in 9th grade, at a table outside the Headmaster's office and asked him some questions about the food they had at home. He told us that they only had a little flour. Out here they use flour to make a mashed potato like substance. It is their staple food and often the only meal they eat during the day. Christine has four children who live in a home maybe fifteen or twenty minutes walking distance from her sister's house.
Edith and I took Junior with us to do some shopping.
We bought petrol, cooking oil, beans, flour, charcoal, sardines, cabbage, tomatoes, a few onions, and soap. Edith told me that the amount of food we had given them would last them about a month. It all cost maybe twenty dollars at most.
The load became too heavy for the three of us to carry so we hired a bicycle taxi to take the heavier items to their home.
They were so grateful for the provision of food.
It was something that Brenda had promised Christine years ago as the disease of AIDS began to intensify: that she would look after her children.
As we had prayed with Christine before leaving her home earlier that day, she was sitting up by resting on the chest of her older sister who looked years younger than her diseased sister. The pain in her eyes was real as she held Christine.
I really have no words for today. I will never get the picture of Christine's tired eyes out of my head. I sit here writing this while listening to a Bethel Live song entitled "Our Father." The song says that it is our heart's cry to see God's will done on earth. I can say with a deep sorrow in my heart that some people have not made it through this whole blog post, others who cannot grasp the reality of poverty and injustice that occurs in so many places of this world unjustly think themselves that I am trying to guilt trip people by the words I have written. But none of it is dramatized. It is so real.
Is our heart's cry really to see God's will be done on the earth? His heart is for the poor, the abandoned, the hurting. There are so many verses in the Bible that show God's heart for the abandoned, the orphaned, the alienated. Jesus himself said that he did not come for the good or the healthy because they have no need for a Physician. He came for the needy, the poor, the broken. If our desire was to see His will done on earth it would not be turning a blind eye to the needy people of this world.
"Speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice." Proverbs 31:9
