I have a bag at my feet that weighs over 12 kilograms. It is filled with literature I picked up at the AIDS conferences in Toronto — the faith based and the international — in August. The bag is crammed with books, brochures, pamphlets, posters, CD ROMs (some of which may have dozens of documents on them), advertising campaigns, postcards and even a few toys from HIV/AIDS-related organizations around the planet. I have more information than I need on the socio-economic, psychological, political, medical, scientific and spiritual aspects of the virus. In this bag are pharmaceutical corporations explaining their medicines and advocacy groups damning pharmaceuticals. Mostly, though, the bag is filled with very similar sounding material from many, many, many different advocacy agencies.
Just from the top of the bag I grab material from three agencies, pushing three programs, on three continents. The Mukta Project, India, has produced a booklet that is basic and sincere using colour codes and simple graphics and is meant for illiterate sex workers to circle or check appropriate icons. Street Outreach Services, Toronto, has a booklet that is graphic only in its language, listing the sort of activities sex workers might be expected to perform, the inherent dangers and some precautions.
Bundeszentrale fur gesundheitliche Aufklarung, Germany, also has an HIV/AIDS risk analysis booklet, which is very sophisticated, using simple icons, colour codes and simple text, and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour I imagine would be lost on the uneducated Indian sex workers.
These three programs illustrate the need for specificity in reaching target groups. The amount of effort gone into each is necessary — and yet…
The cumulative affect of all the material is to create a white noise in the background of our North American lives. It is too much — that was my sense while at the conferences. I was overwhelmed. Particularly as I walked through the dozens of aisles and saw heaps of material at each kiosk. I saw dozens of videos, from faith-based and secular agencies, with their African or Indian local, speaking of their pathetic lives. Of politics, violence and gender inequalities, of death, of poverty, of hunger; and, very quickly it all became conflated into one big story, which was too big to comprehend.
Even the presenters were participating in this conflation: They spoke of Africa as if it were a single neighbourhood. It isn't of course; it's a large continent with 54 countries. Each of which has its own story — no, each of which has its own myriad stories. There are thousands of villages, millions of people. There is a huge difference between the issues faced in Uganda and those in Malawi. The HIV strain contained in Uganda is not as mean-spirited and the Ugandan government's programs have been active for a very long time. The prevalence rate is not as high in East Africa as it is in sub-Saharan Africa. And, there are many other differences, more specific, more local.
Tom Scalway, of World AIDS Campaign, put it perfectly. He told a workshop round-table there is no one story. It sounds like one story — especially when the casual observer sees an endless string of Africans talking about their horrific lives.
There are over six billion stories on this planet and most of them are sad and depressing. As Erin Woods noted last month in the guest editorial we are the lucky ones — we have won the biggest lottery of all — who live on this continent. Or most of us. I'm guessing that includes most of you reading this. And, the price we have to pay for our good luck is to remain vigilant to the stories around us.
Still, I think often of the dear lady in our church who didn't want a copy of the national church calendar bearing photos of African children. She said, “I don't want that child looking down at me while I have my morning porridge.” The combination of guilt and disingenuousness she expresses is very honest. She may not have intended to be this honest but she managed it inadvertently.
There are six billion stories on this planet and most of them upset our stomachs. They're horrendous in ways we cannot imagine and if we're honest with ourselves we know we treat them like white noise in the background of our lives. But, we know what we have to do — this is where the church, a communal body, has advantages over all other institutions. We have to put our faith in action, not with guilt over our luck but with joy in our shared humanity.
