Peace of Christ be with you all!
As I had promised you, today I have a story about HIV/AIDS.
AIDS is termed by most people as the “third world war” others also call it the “slimming decease.” However, my self I have a different name and story to give this decease that has brought sadness, death, poverty, trauma and fear among our people.
Please take your time and read the story below. A priest shared it out with me and I have decided to share it out with you. It will not only change your feelings about AIDS but it will also strengthen your faith.
Right after the story, there is a poem from a young Kenyan Woman who wishes she was the only one.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading and making recommendations on what I should do to make this blog even better.
Teardrops for Ruth
My first anointing of the sick, I had just finished a memorial mass for a young woman who had left behind three children. Some women from the “chita” (Church solidarity group) asked me if I could anoint a young girl who was very sick. I agreed. Here was a chance to apply what I had learnt from that world of books! We found her huddled in a corner of a dingy room, a thin blanket of faded maroon covering her frail body. She was still breathing, I could see. I moved closer and knelt beside her, a small book, a stole and the oil for anointing ready in hand. Now I could see her face, pale, bony, eyes receding into their sockets. She looked anything between 12 to 14 years of age. I asked the ‘chita’ women her name. Ruth, they told me.
The parents had died the previous year from that long illness, leaving behind Ruth, her elder sister, about 15 and her young brother about 10 to fend for themselves. Because of lack of food at home, Ruth had run away to try life on the harsh streets of Nairobi. That’s how she came back after a few weeks, sick. Nobody knew what really happened to her out there, she could not talk. But here she was with no parents, no love, no care, just a few sympathetic women.
I looked at Ruth again and in that single paralyzing moment, I saw the face of poverty, the face of AIDS, I saw that shadowy face of despair hovering over hope. She half opened her eyes and looked at me. When she blinked, a shy teardrop escaped from her left eye. Ruth was crying. A wave of emotion overcame me and I broke down with her. I wondered what was making me shed tears then. Little did I know that I was already grieving for Ruth. She died 20 minutes after I anointed her. And I am sure the sympathetic neighbors buried her in that thin blanket of faded maroon.
It has been over a year and a half since Ruth died, but I still see her. I see her in the old women walking long distances, I see her in the pathetic fields of corn, and I see her at funerals. But I also see her in the little girls giggling on the way to school, I see her at the baptism of infants, I see her at weddings, I will forever see Ruth in the fusion of consolation and desolation. It seems there are no happy endings in pastoral work. Perhaps it’s just continuity, unfolding new meaning with each encounter, shaping and reshaping our faith.
A Sad Poem from Kenya
I wish I were the only one…
Why do people say I am sexy
But none says I love you
Even those who told me thus
Proved me the contrary.
But again, who are you to deserve my trust
Who are you to even listen to my question?
I do not know you
I do not trust you
Even those I knew
My father, my brothers, my neighbors…
Have betrayed me.
All they see is not me and my beauty
But my sex.
They abuse me, they rape me.
Has not even my mum forsaken me
Has she not preferred the bread-winner
To the innocent victim that I am?
But I understand
Though I wish she understood my pain
She is not less victim that I am.
I cannot denounce my abusers
Though I cannot forgive them.
I cannot tell my friends
They will laugh at me
They may spread the rumor.
I cannot tell my teacher
He would misjudge me
He might even do the same
And indeed he did it the other day
He attempted more than once!
Why me, why me, Lord?
Am I still in your image?
Am I the bad sex, Dirty, Guilty?
Am I a disgusting creature?
I cannot tell the policeman
He will think I am kidding
He will ask me whether I enjoyed it
Or he might ask me to show him
How we did it
By the way, how am I going to call the child
From my father’s abuse:
My sister, my brother or my dear child?
People are hard-hearted
Nobody wants to hear me nor to answer me.
Who else can I think of? The priest?
I will not tell the priest unless I confess…
But he will tell me to forgive
And to stop crying and gossiping
And I am not ready to do so
Anyway, is he not a man himself?
What if he tells me to pray
To God who cares not about my tears
And who is going to punish me
For I don’t know what is crime?
Who can show me a safer place?
My home is but a slaughter house.
I have no father
The one I had preferred to be my lover
Even though I survived AIDS,
I will neither experience true love
Nor true care
My heart is too hard to express tenderness
My physique is too destroyed to give life.
I have no friends
I have no family
I have no community
I have no society
I am a living corpse
Though I am scared of death
And I wish I were the only one.
(From a young woman wishing to be the only one…)
Thank you very much for taking your time and reading about AIDS. I promise that I’ll be adding more scripts not only about AIDS but about life and culture in Africa, Kenya specifically. God bless you all, God bless Kenya!!
