They Are Not Faceless Statistics...

So I'm just curious, what are you planning for your Thanksgiving meal in just 2 weeks?  A large turkey?  Sweet potatoes?  Mashed potatoes?  Maybe some green beans and corn pudding?  Definitely gravy and stuffing?  What's for dessert?  Pumpkin pie?

On our second day, S, the lady who works for Heart For Africa in Swaziland, took me with her to buy food for a family that HFA has been looking after...  The mom had made a really hard choice and decided to be tested for HIV and now S wanted to buy her some food that would be a treat...  She called it a feast...  A large bag of rice...  Powdered milk, like our cremora for our coffee...  Canned fish...  Knorr instant Minestrone soup...  Soya, some kind of gravy and sugar beans...  A feast?  Really?  For a week, and 10 children?  Welcome to their world...

After we bought the groceries, we went back to the AIDS clinic and waited...  While we waited, I forced myself to look into the eyes, the faces, of the children...the mothers...the grandmothers...  I wanted to really see them...  They are not statistics...  They are people...  People with hopes and dreams...  Fears and feelings...  They put on their Sunday best to come to the clinic...  I wonder why?  Is it their only means of clinging to their dignity...  of dealing with a disease that many treat like leoprosy? 

As we waited, S told me about them...  She didn't know them personally, but while the details of the stories may be slightly different, they're all pretty much the same...  A young girl who had been raped, you could tell by the way she walked...  A young boy with HIV, either he was born with it, or he was raped...  Babies born with HIV will often not live past 7 because the ARV's destroy their organs...  Children who contract HIV rarely live past 29, for the same reason... 

The incidence of HIV is 48% in this small nation...  Physicians in the country estimate that it's more like 65%...  That 48% only represents those who have actually been tested...  Where does it stop?  I thought education was key...but is it really?  It's definitely part of the equation, but a heart change is necessary too...  Promiscuity...mulitple wives...rape...it has to stop...all the education in the world doesn't seem to impact the basic human nature...it requires true transformation that runs much deeper than a few facts and a campaign to use condoms!

I don't have photos of the faces that day...  It was a medical clinic, they deserve the same privacy we have in America, but the eyes were heart wrenching...  Children who should have been laughing and playing, were waiting for the medicine that will hopefully increase their lifespan a little and yet, ultimately kill them...   Mothers, waiting for hours and hours when they should be at home taking care of their families...   Babies... toddlers... whose playground, once a week, is an AIDS clinic waiting room...  The hard cold facts of their reality...

And yet a glimmer of hope in the day... a glimpse of God's power... an assurance that He's still in the miracle business... the young woman who we took to be tested, it was negative...  against all odds...  it defies human explanation...  Thank you God for hope...thank you for putting it on S's heart to buy her a 'feast!'  She had much to celebrate...and so did we!!