God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

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, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

08/20/2009 • 4:13 pm Comments Off on 20.08.2009 Positive clergy

20.08.2009 Positive clergy

Whether it is because people have read some postings or otherwise heard about it, it is amazing that there are people out there believing that a normal priest, a normal religious can not be HIV positive. Why not – I ask back. Also clergy, religious and seminarians, even nuns are only human beings, having a life before entering the state of religious life or being ordained. They continue to be human beings with all what comes with it, they can fail and raise again, and not only once.

Being a priest, religious or seminarian means to be called to holiness, but humanity remains – holiness without humanity, mistakes, errors and a life with ups and downs is not existing. There is nobody being born, raised and then lived a life without falter in this world. And when it comes to the official saints of the church, their holiness can only shine against the humanity, they have shown and experienced in their lives.

Only knowing to be weak, to make mistakes, to go wrong ways – and accepting that, can lead to maturity and to show compassion to others as I am able to show compassion to myself.

Writing this, I also feel, that even to think in the categories of “right” or “wrong” in connection with HIV is wrong. It is not even up to me to judge anybody in this matter. Decisions, we humans make and have to make every day leads to all sort of consequences. The main thing is to accept the consequences and to live your life to the fullest. Leave the judgment to God…

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

08/03/2009 • 1:41 pm Comments Off on 03.08.2009 positive blogging…

03.08.2009 positive blogging…

It is amazing to find out more and more people blogging about their positive lifestyles and it is encouraging to read about it.  Most of them are doing it anonymously and it is understandable amidst the fear of stigmatisation and the often neurotic way, people react to a positive person. Why is that so? Because amazingly I have the impression, that it is always the others, who would be vulnerable to catch the virus. I have had discussions with people having multiple unprotected sex, but they were still convinced that they carefully selected their partners and that the risk of contracting the virus was almost zero. Isn’t that amazing?
An unforgettable moment in my life was last year visiting a friend in Thailand, who obviously was quite sick when I arrived. Knowing his lifestyle I spend days to convince him to visit a clinic and to let him test himself. On a Saturday evening at 10pm I got him into Silom community clinic and pushed my way with him through the staff trying to close down. Three rapid tests confirmed my suspicion and reflecting with him on what was happening, it was amazing for me to understand that he – deep inside himself – knew, what was wrong with him, but simply refused to face the reality of a test. God knows alone how many infections could have been avoided if he would have gone earlier. But the fear of stigma, of getting sick, of being rejected prevented him for a long time to go for the test. Understandable, but it showed me again how stigma adds to more infections and to early death as one starts treatment consequently sometimes too late.

Making things worse in this case, his CD 4 count was still to high to be able to receive treatment (over 200 copies p/ml).. so he had to wait another half a year before being able to start treatment.  These are the things driving me in my work in this field. The stigma, the unnecessary suffering until being eligible for treatment in a 3rd world setting and more and more the restriction of travel for people living with the virus. We are so advanced in treatment in Europe – but we are still miles away from treating HIV as a condition which does not need to end in discrimination or stigmatization of some kind.

We have to work with those affected and infected in an intensive way to change these settings, which lead at the end to more suffering and more infections – completely unnecessary. And we have to work constantly with ourselves to understand our own perceptions, fears, prejudices to convert them into a loving understanding without judgment.

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

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