We were walking along a dusty village road, across a muddy creek with its slimy green pools of water that were waiting for the rains to come and wash them clean; pools that were being used for local laundry.
We were on our way from the home of one of the villagers. He had been in business, quite wealthy before AIDS manifested itself in the black cancer that creeps up the legs and over the whole body. His wife, with the children, had left him and he was grateful to his sister who had taken him in. There was resignation in every line of his body, but a force of life too. “You have lost your status, your livelihood, your wife and family. How do you cope with such losses?” I asked. And his face lit up. “I have faith in Jesus,” he said.
Four women were telling us their stories; stories of their husbands' deaths, the intervention of the home care team, their own testing for HIV and their hopes that somehow they would survive long enough to establish some kind of small business so that they would not leave their children penniless and helpless orphans.
The room was small, hot and crowded and as I listened I wondered how to ask the speakers how they survived such pain and anguish. My words would be translated by Anderson, the home care and orphan care project leader. Well I asked. “What has kept you going, where has been your support?” And as I spoke one of the four women grabbed the hands of the blue shirted home care volunteer and raised their arms high in the air in a triumphant gesture. On the back of the volunteer's shirt were the words, “We love because He first loved us.”
I nodded humbly with tears in my eyes.
