God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

08/27/2009 • 7:35 am Comments Off on 27.08.2009 Decisions

27.08.2009 Decisions

It is a beautiful morning, blue sky – seems to be a perfect day. Today, the consultors of the local Archbishop of Cape Town meet and amongst all the topics one can find also my future to be finally determined. So somehow it is an important day – and as it started perfectly I hope and expect it will go on like that..  :-).

I know that quite some candles are burning, some prayers are said – and I strongly believe in destiny – and I can sense and feel that my destiny is Africa. I want to live and to die here on this continent. Having lived in South Africa now for more than 12 years, I cannot deny the beauty of the county and the continent, as far as I have seen it. I also cannot deny the brutality of life and death, the immediateness of life, the beauty of nature, which leaves one breathless at times, the pride of people and tribes, which unfortunately has also its downsides by killing each other. Nevertheless, the thin layer of “First world culture”, we have in Europe, is missing – and you know what: Most times I appreciate this very much so. Africa is not the lost continent but the most promising one…

I never have been more happy and content as in South Africa, working here means to be able to make a real difference. Something, all the DIN-A-something norms in Europe make almost impossible. So I hope for a working and living future in South Africa and Africa and that I am able to make a difference in the lives of people living with the HI virus as I tried to do in the last years.

Filed under: General, Reflection, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

08/25/2009 • 9:28 am Comments Off on 25.08.2009 The US is moving on HIV & AIDS

25.08.2009 The US is moving on HIV & AIDS

THE BRIEFING ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
____________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                                        August 21, 2009

President Obama Announces National HIV/AIDS Community Discussions

First Event, the Atlanta HIV/AIDS Community Discussion, to be Held on August 25th at the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference Community Discussions will feed into the development of a National HIV/AIDS Strategy

WASHINGTON – President Obama today announced the launch of the National HIV/AIDS Community Discussions, a series of events to be held across the country. These events, hosted by the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) will offer the public a chance to provide input as the White House works to fulfill the President’s pledge to develop a National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The first event, the Atlanta HIV/AIDS Community Discussion, will be held on August 25th at the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference.

“HIV remains an serious challenge to the American people and I am committed to developing an effective National HIV/AIDS Strategy,” said President Obama. “The National HIV/AIDS Community Discussions will provide an opportunity for members of the public to give their input on how we can best address this crucial issue. With the insights from communities across the country, we will have a strategy that is focused on the goals of reducing HIV incidence, getting people living with HIV/AIDS into care and improving health outcomes, and reducing HIV-related health disparities.”

With more than 56,000 new HIV infections occurring in the United States each year, the President believes that we must re-focus national attention on the domestic epidemic. He has articulated three goals for the NHAS: reducing HIV incidence, increasing access to care and optimizing health outcomes, and reducing HIV-related health disparities. The national HIV/AIDS community discussions are just one mechanism for engaging the American people and obtaining input. The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) will also provide input, and public comments submitted to the ONAP website will also be taken into consideration.

ONAP is part of the White House Domestic Policy Council and is tasked with coordinating the continuing efforts of the United States government to reduce the number of HIV infections across the U.S., and respond to the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The Atlanta HIV/AIDS Community Discussion will be held on August 25th as part of the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference, which is being held in Atlanta from August 23-26. The Community Discussion is open to conference participants and 200 tickets have been set-aside for the local Atlanta community. ONAP is also meeting with local HIV services organizations while it is in Atlanta.

Other cities in which communities discussions will be held are: Washington, DC; New York, NY; San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles, CA; Houston, TX; Albuquerque, NM; Jackson, MS; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Minneapolis, MN; Columbia, SC; Puerto Rico; and the Virgin Islands. Specific dates will be announced later.

Filed under: General, Politics and Society, , , , ,

08/23/2009 • 5:51 pm Comments Off on 23.08.2009 The last birthday…

23.08.2009 The last birthday…

The last birthday
Little Fareed’s death – a common outrage in Africa

Fareed is emaciated and he breathes heavily. For a ten-year-old boy he weighs too little and his eyes seem far too big for his face. And yet, Fareed is one of the luckier children. He has been admitted into a hospital, the Ithemba ward at Tygerberg Hospital. Fareed’s sister has sat by his bedside for days. She holds his hand, helps to change the bedding, comforts him. When I meet Fareed for the first time, volunteers have just made up his complexion with base. His big, sunken eyes look at me with quiet determination. Fareed has a yearning desire: he wants to have a birthday party. He was there when a little girl in the next room had a birthday party, organised by colleagues from HOPE Cape Town. It had a cake with candles and presents and all the trimmings. He would like that too. But there is one problem: Fareed will not live to see his next birthday. He has only days to live.
We decide to grant him his last wish anyway. We bake cakes, buy gifts, and decorate the room. And two days later we celebrate his “eleventh birthday”. Fareed cannot get up, so all the children are gathered around his bed, the birthday cake with burning candles on the sidetable. We help him to unwrap his presents – he is too weak to do even that. Our chorus of “Happy Birthday” sounds more like a swansong. I struggle to hold back my tears, as does everybody else. It is a cheerful horror party which I won’t forget as long as I live. But little Fareed is happy. A smile frequent smile floods across his face; he doesn’t have enough strength to animate his joy. A week later Fareed dies. These beautiful memories are distorted by a rage that this child had to die because at the time the medications which might have relieved his suffering and extend his life were unaffordable. It was an unnecessary, senseless death. And yet it is this particular death which revitalises me in times of despair, when I’m about to give up, when the sheer enormity of the suffering I see threatens to crush me. Fareed, a fleeting acquaintance in my life, has seared himself into my heart with a scorching intensity. When doubts start to take over, I think about him and remind myself why I am involved: on behalf of Fareed and all the children and adolescents I have watched suffering and dying from Aids, some in calm serenity, others crying in pain. Every such child, every such adolescent, represents the dying cries of the crucified Jesus in our times.

Excerpt from the German book: “Gott, Aids, Afrika” – B.Grill/S.Hippler – Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag (gebunden/ hard cover 2007 ), Bastei Luebbe (Taschenbuch/ Paperback 2009)

Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Reflection, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

08/22/2009 • 10:31 pm Comments Off on 22.08.2009 Notice of Events in September and October 2009

22.08.2009 Notice of Events in September and October 2009

For those living and working in Germany the following events might be of interest:

03.09. / 04.09.
Munich
Allerheiligen Hofkirche  20h00 African voices    Benefice Concert of the Cape Town Opera  http://www.eventin.de   –  Hotline: 01805-570000

05.09.
Nuernberg
Staatstheater   20h00 African voices    Benefice Concert of the Cape Town Opera   http://www.staatstheater-nuernberg.de

30.10.
Dresden
Kongresscentrum 14h00 Symposium:  Ithemba – Hope for African Children living with the virus (German/English)
Info: viola.klein@saxsys.de
Participants: Premier of Saxonia, Mr. Tillich, Mayor of Dresden, Mrs. Orosz, Dr. Ulrich Heide (German Aids Foundation), Rev. Fr.Stefan Hippler (HOPE Cape Town),
Jochaim Franz (be your own hero e.V.), Bob Geldorf (Aid Africa) u.a.

31.10.
Dresden
Schauspielhaus  9h00 4th HOPE Gala
http://www.hopegala.de

Filed under: General, HIV and AIDS, HIV Prevention, HIV Treatment, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

08/21/2009 • 5:09 pm Comments Off on 21.08.2009 Judging people…

21.08.2009 Judging people…

With the elevation of the Pius brotherhood through Benedikt XVI into the public eye we all can see and sense a new dawn of those, who are living in the past of the RC church and have refused to develop their faith. This in itself isn’t worrying. If people feel fine with the good old days and they want to keep them until they die – why not, if they apply it only to themselves. The danger is that with all the discussion now in the public forum, the old pictures from judgement, from evil, hell and condemnation, from a God acting like a policeman or a bookkeeper emerge again and that is the scary part. Reading about a priest in Austria starting to scare First Communion kids with hell and eternal condemnation – such teaching is surely encouraged through all the debate about the Pius brotherhood.

To spell it out again and again – and you can ask my community in Cape Town, they know it meanwhile and dream of it and can memorize it: God is love – unconditional love – and nothing ever can make us say that somebody has fallen out of the grace and mercy of God. Nobody! All those nevertheless doing it, denying that God is so much greater than all our thinking and understanding.

And this non judgemental unconditional love applies especially when it comes to such tricky topics like HIV and AIDS. There are no innocent babies and no not so innocent adults. There are only brothers and sisters with a certain condition. Point. No “Moralin”, no “Gardinenpredigt” – just acknowledgement, embracing of the condition and then the question, how to deal with it in a way beneficial to the person and his or her environment. Changing the stigma to a tool of compassion and mercy, self-knowledge and maturity.

I guess, if there is anything people living with the virus need besides good treatment and good friends it is people fighting like hell the stigma in our societies, fighting the travel bans, the discrimination, the human rights violations and fighting those who point fingers. And I have learned in my life: The more hostile people point fingers, the more they have to hide…

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Reflection, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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