SHINING A LIGHT Retired Byron Schoolteacher Battles Against AIDS in Africa
	JUNE 2005

by Miriam Bell
Photos by Kim Freitas and Russell Byrne

I recently went on two short-term mission programs working with AIDS sufferers in Uganda, Africa. The trips came about as a direct result of the two most dreadful calamities that overtook me during my life. The first awful thing happened when I still was a young child. When I was three years old my mother abandoned me and I was raised and educated by a group of unsympathetic nuns in a truly heartless orphanage.

It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I finally got into a relationship with a heavenly Father who brought me comfort that I could never find from the parents who abandoned me or the cruel guardians who brought me up. The course of my life was turned 180° in a single moment of clarity.

The other dark thing came into my life when I was in my 50s. I married a wonderful man who was afflicted with terminal cancer. The doctors had given him six months to live, but God gave us eleven years together. The two of us spent that time in a relationship that might accurately be described as one of poignant joy. We were so happy for the years that we had with each other! At the same time we were sick at heart because of the dark end that we could see approaching ever more closely during the months, weeks, and then the final days of his decline into death.

I remained by my husband’s side through his final days. I couldn’t prevent his pain, but I could keep any sense of loneliness or abandonment away completely. I was with him at his death as I had been during the years of our marriage. And then Bill was gone and I was alone.

A Call that Could not Be Denied
A year or so after Bill’s death, my life changed dramatically when I saw a video in which a pastor spoke of the suffering of a group of people living in camps in Uganda, Africa. Many of those poor people are starving and others are dying of disease and malnutrition. Young mothers sometimes drop their newborn babies into latrines because they have no hope of keeping them alive. Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, and cholera are always raging back and forth through those camps and gathering in a terrible harvest day-by-day. Above everything else the people are dying like flies from illnesses associated with the AIDS epidemic.

The video showed an interview with a pastor from that area who talked about the numbers of suffering people and the need for alleviation of the physical and spiritual darkness in which they live their lives. During the course of the interview the pastor made the comment that actually changed my life. “The misery of our people is so great that the only hope they have is to hurry up and die in order to escape their suffering.”

I’ve read that sentence many times, but tears still run down my cheeks whenever I think about that. The fact hit me so hard because he was talking about orphans — and I had been an orphan! He was talking about widows — and I had recently become a widow! The people had no hope — and I had also lived the first part of my life in a hopeless state of mind and heart. Those suffering women and children called to me. I needed to go there.

I learned that the pastor in the video was from Nfufu in Uganda. I got in touch with him and told him that I was coming. I didn’t have any supporting organization. I didn’t even know where Uganda was, for sure. My friend couldn’t believe my decision. She showed me an atlas of Africa. We found Uganda. “Where are you going?” “Nfufu?” We looked on the map and could find no Nfufu. “Do you know anybody who lives there?” my friend asked. “No, I don’t know anyone.”

The truth is that I was going to go to Uganda because I knew that I was supposed to go to Uganda. I told my friend, “I don’t know anybody in Nfufu but I know I’m going to be among people who are my brothers and my sisters.”

Jumping into the Deep End of the Pool
So I went to Uganda on a six-month mission trip. I went in spite of the fact that my friends warned me about things like disease and bats. And in fact life in Nfufu turned out to be as difficult as I had imagined. There was no running water; I had to draw water from a well. No flush toilets; just a pit latrine down a path. No electricity; I used a little charcoal burner to heat water to cook my potatoes. We always had to get enough food just for the day because there was no refrigerator. And I actually did come down with both malaria and dysentery.

My life was coarse, primitive, and hard. In other words, for six months I was living just like almost everybody did for the first ninety-five percent of our history on this planet. Furthermore, I was living like one-third of the world’s population continues to live. We imagine that we live in a technological world, but the grim reality is that we share the world with two billion people who, from birth to death, never speak on a telephone.

My initial exposure to the needs of the people in Uganda completely overwhelmed me. I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and not make a dent in the sufferings of this mass of humanity. Watching a baby die of malaria right before my eyes filled me with a different kind of torment. “What right do I have to have an anti-malaria drug,” I thought, “while this baby is dying?”

God spoke a clear word to me in the midst of my sense of hopelessness, “Many before you have paved the way; many will come after you. Just do what I called you to do.” I realized again that I can help. I can’t fix the world, but anybody can do something.

The AIDS epidemic is creating awful conditions among the poor in Uganda. Widows and orphans are being created by the hundreds of thousands because the disease is carrying away so many husbands and fathers. This is especially true among the poorest people in the country. Of course, these men who die leave behind family members who are usually infected by the epidemic and will be dead, themselves, within a few years.

I witnessed widows taking care of their own children, plus the nieces and nephews orphaned by the deaths of their siblings. It was nothing in that place to see a widow with 15 children and absolutely no resources. They resorted to begging or planting a few vegetables that would never produce sufficient food. The women lacked money to clothe the children, let alone provide for their education. Children were running around stark naked.

I was able to relate to the orphans. I knew the feelings they had; I recognized something in their faces that recalled my own past. My empathy allowed me to get close to them. I hugged them and they knew that I loved them. I developed a theme of “Loving the ones that are left behind.”

I discovered that the people in that culture lack wisdom in how to love the dying. I witnessed people dying without comfort. The dying were obviously suffering, but their families were suffering, as well. I realized that those family members weren’t able to experience the positive emotions that my husband and I had found through the process of his dying.

Bringing Hope to the Hopeless; Love to the Forsaken
I began to develop programs that would respond to the deep needs of the people. I started to organize and train home care groups, which began going into the homes of people dying of AIDS. They would teach their families how to care for the dying and how to stay safe themselves. We taught them how to help families to manage bedsores, for example, and to provide culturally appropriate remedies for diarrhea, based on rice water.

We raised up a band of young people and taught them to take the program of encouragement and care into the homes of the suffering and dying. They soon began to shepherd the families under their care; they befriended the victims. They sang with the family, talked to them, besides showing the family members how to provide hospice care for the dying person. They encouraged people and often become honorary members of a family they were caring for.

In other words, I taught those young people to do for the dying what I had done for my husband. Even better, I taught them to teach the family members to do what I had done for my husband.

We also started an HIV program in one of the churches. I have a degree in Science and a Masters degree in Biochemistry so had some understanding of the scientific part of what was going on around me with the disease, and of how the medical responses and preventions actually work.

There are two components in responding to AIDS including helping the afflicted and prevention. For the prevention part we were especially targeting the youth. We were taking lessons about prevention and awareness into the public and parochial schools. A big part of my activity was teaching volunteers in the church to train others. The church in Uganda is the one corporate voice that people respect and listen to.

I began to wonder how my 17 team members could make a dent in a country with millions of people. Then I began to develop a new and healthy emphasis; it wasn’t about me trying to fix problems by training these young people to do what I wanted them to do. I was simply helping them realize their potential and then they could take their place as parts of a dynamic process in which they were becoming part of the solutions to the problems their people were facing. They were assisting people to independent living; they were giving them the skills to care for themselves.

Most importantly, they were beginning to train others to do what they were doing. We are now engaged in a program of conducting training at 16 churches, spending from 30-40 hours at each church in order to make the training effective. We began using our original core of 17 trainers to train workers for the other churches. All these churches will be starting home care groups in their communities. The program is beginning to grow by multiplication. When I left we had about 50 men and women who are certified to teach the HIV program.

High placed representatives of the government would like to help move our model into other locations around the country. They recognize how effective it is to begin with a hub church, and then train a core of people in how to love the dying and showing the youth how to be safe. With this kind of multiplication, we could reach the entire country of Uganda in a few years.

Working for Financial Healing at the Lowest Levels of Society
Another activity I started in Uganda on my second trip was introducing micro-finance projects to the people. I raised some funds and arranged through four Ugandan churches to make the funds available as minuscule business loans to small entrepreneurs repayable at an insignificant interest. I would lead participants in 40 hours of training which introduced them to basic business principles, such as being competitive, managing profit-and-loss statements, interacting with people in a business-like manner, and marketing a product.

After finishing with the training, participants had to submit a simple business and financial plan, which we had been working with them on as we helped them decide what they were going to do. We then helped them launch their new business. After completing the program, participants received a certificate and a loan for 100,000 shillings, which translates to about 50 dollars. They used this money to start their small enterprise.

A total of 50 people from those four churches, including three men, have successfully started their own businesses. Most of the budding entrepreneurs were widows with children. People who successfully began their businesses started to partner up in mentoring new people coming into the program. The women meet in weekly support groups to discuss their business efforts with each other.

Women in the program ended up starting a variety of small businesses. Some of them have done so well they’ve been able to start other businesses. Two of the women, for example, went together to buy a quarry and some simple tools to break up rocks in order to make gravel, which they then sold. It was inspiring to see them out in the equatorial sunshine with their hammers, breaking up rocks. They used extra profits to buy fabric in order to start a tie-and-die business. Now they are training other women in the village to help in the business.

Another woman bought a breeding pair of pigs that gave birth to seven piglets. She sold the pigs for 30,000 shillings each and cleared 110,000 shillings. She started a mushroom business with the extra profits. Now she’s getting into chickens. From their early profits the people return the 50-dollar investment, which is then plowed back to help someone else get involved in the micro-finance program. As we get additional funding for the program, the number of businesses can increase, of course.

I’ve been to Uganda on two different mission trips now. I am planning to go back in July. I’m working on an idea for solar-powered cooking that could transform the living standard, and help preserve the forests that are vanishing into the cookers of the poor people. Some of the women spend hours every day gathering wood from the area’s diminishing vegetation.

I’m really encouraged, however, by the knowledge that even if I don’t go back to Uganda, the programs I helped start in that country will continue without me. Lives will be saved through the expanding HIV program. Widows will not remain destitute, they can learn a new way of living. They will develop friendships and support networks, and not be isolated from society. They will not be dependant upon charity, but will earn the money they need to feed, clothe, and educate their children.

What a wonderful thing it would be if our programs would sweep through all of Central Africa! I believe that as long as one person is dying of AIDS, or one child is abandoned to die, or one widow is left abandoned without resources, I could never imagine that we had done enough. On the other hand, all my work and sacrifice will be worthwhile if I helped save even one child from HIV. That one child could change the world. Each life is precious.

It remains incredible to me how the two biggest tragedies in my life — being abandoned by my parents and losing my husband — became the basis by which so much good is being done in this cruel world. If my parents hadn’t abandoned me or those nuns hadn’t been so merciless I could not have reached out to those orphans. If Bill hadn’t died I would not have gone to Uganda. My misery had purpose.

I went to Uganda thinking that I would help the suffering people there, but something happened to me as well. I brought light to those people and ignited a blaze that is still warming my own soul. A powerful beauty in serving other people is that the service changes the server. My experience in Uganda changed me for good and forever.