God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

11/04/2009 • 9:30 pm Comments Off on 04.11.2009 Farewell thoughts

04.11.2009 Farewell thoughts

Sitting at Frankfurt airport I can feel the how tired I am and how much I am looking forward to sleep while flying back to Cape Town. I will be happy to be back home again.

For 16 days I toured through Germany with a detour to Rome, I have had meetings, planing workshop, planing meeting, one2one meetings, telephone meetings, talks – I saw round about a 1000 people in those days – statistics can be interesting. Plans are made until 2013 – I feel the manager syndrome arriving on my doorsteps, but I guess many people are telling me that since years. The Ecumenical church day, the world aids conference, the Bundespositivenkonferenz, the world awareness campaign part two, the exhibition at the Charite Museum, a film project, quite some invitations, amongst them to speak also about economy and ethics as well as how to achieve a value system for one’s own life, motivational talks – the visit of bishops to bring the idea of the pastoral care for positive clergy via bishops conferences to Rome – I am this evening indeed sure that there will be no dull moment in my life for the next years to come. And I thought it will take time to find enough work in my new working environment

HOPE Cape Town will be re-structured a bit – new offices, partly changed job descriptions – the Catholic Aids Networks registration as a NPO and PBO and I guess also there is some restructuring necessary – I still have to write a contribution to a book published by the University of Trier – writing down for me all the “still have to do” list is frightening and challenging at the same time. But I am in a good spirit that all can be done, seeing all the marvellous colleagues giving a hand and taking a lead with me.

Next week we will have our management and planing meeting from HOPE Cape Town and then I will report back in detail and we will plan for the new year ahead. Despite my tiredness I can feel the dynamics of networking – the possibilities lying ahead and I once again don’t understand the stand of many NGO’s which are so protective of their work and see most others as competition rather than a completion to their own work. This year I have seen some naughty incidents were other NGO’s were not afraid to try to lure away sponsors on our very own events. There are still so many feathers to earn in South Africa – and there are also so many willing sponsors if you have a good programme – there is no need to fight each other for anything.

 

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

11/04/2009 • 11:15 am 1

04.11.2009 Positive clergy

At the end of my stay in Germany I have had a meeting with a representative of the Archdiocese of Munich to discuss with him several matters. One was my request to the Archbishop of Munich to support my work in the fields of HIV/AIDS when it comes to priests, religious, clergy being positive. It is a tricky question but a very important one: how we deal with those amongst us, who are HIV positive.

I will visit in the near future some South African bishops as well to discuss this topic and to try to bring it to Rome. “It will raise some eyebrows”, so a member of the papal council for health care worker in Rome, but he also sees it as necessary to face this question. For me it has to do with justice within the church – all what we proclaim outside how to deal with people being HIV positive we must apply within the church. A long way to go, but all starts with the first mile. And I am grateful to all who are part of this new project.

www.hopecapetown.com/poz

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, Networking, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10/28/2009 • 1:02 am Comments Off on 28.10.2009 Lions Club

28.10.2009 Lions Club

A talk at the Lions Club in my hometown Bitburg concludes the day – for 90 minutes I am telling them about life in South Africa, HOPE Cape Town and the situation in my country of residence and work. It is amazingly silent in the room, the people follow in a way which is amazing for me, questions are asked afterwards and I go home with the feeling that people were genuine interested to hear what I had to tell them.

This is a night, were I feel I can be the bridge between people of different cultural background, where bridging is done successfully and were I guess we all go home somehow touched. Now I still have to prepare for this morning, the church service and all the encounters with the students a whole morning before heading to Aachen for an evening talk.

It is tiring but rewarding to be able to touch peoples life and I am grateful to be able to do this work.  I know that a piece of Africa will stay for the time being in the Eifel.

Reading this blog again, I just realise the word amazing twice in one sentence. But I guess it describes my feeling the best – it is always a challenge to be able to touch people’s heart and mind at the same time – and for me, it is always a little miracle when it happens during an encounter of such sort. It gives a sense of meaning to what one is trying to do, it is the spice in the soup of the life of an activist.

Filed under: Networking, Reflection, , , ,

10/27/2009 • 10:30 am Comments Off on 27.10.2009 The state of the health care system in SA

27.10.2009 The state of the health care system in SA

An insight into the health system of South Africa is given by the following article published by IOL and spread throughout the country – this article speaks for itself:

South Africa’s public hospitals are in a bleak state with failing equipment, a lack of basic consumables and dwindling numbers of doctors, Parliament heard on Wednesday.  Professor Bongani Mayozi, the head of internal medicine at the University of Cape Town, told the portfolio committee on health it was taking up to three days for patients to get a bed in a public hospital. “It takes about 24 hours a day for us to put 50 percent of people into a bed,” he said. “These people are sitting on a chair or lying on a trolley. They are very sick. They need to be admitted. Some people wait up to three days to get into a bed. “We regard this situation as completely unacceptable. Something that you would not wish on your mother or father.” Mayozi said surgical lists in many centres had been cut, equipment had not been renewed and there had been an overall decrease in tertiary level beds. The capacity to train new doctors had also been severely diminished. “When you go to war you need troops. You can’t fight a war without soldiers.”
South Africa is producing 0.58 doctors per 1 000 people, he said. Brazil and Mexico, with a similar gross domestic product per capita, are producing nearly two doctors per 1 000.
“As a result of this South Africa’s infant mortality rate is a lot higher than it should be and more people are dying from infectious diseases,” he said. Mayozi said the situation had arisen due to an “increasing demand” with “diminishing resources”. “When one looks at the reasons for the lack of progress, they are not difficult to find. They are related to under-investment to our public health sector over the past 15 years.” Andries Stulting, the acting head of the school of medicine at the University of the Free State, said the province’s health care situation is in a dire position. “There is a collapse of systems in the Free State. TB, HIV, primary health care, hospital services, training platforms, research, you name it, we are declining.  “We can’t do elective surgery anymore. Patients with hernias and cataracts. They don’t seem to be emergencies, so we cannot operate. People go blind and people can’t do their work.  “We don’t have basic things like eye pads, eye shields, medications… or should we keep quiet because we can be reprimanded?
“I hope I can give you some good news, but at the moment there is none.” –

Filed under: HIV Treatment, Medical and Research, Politics and Society, Reflection, Society and living environment, Uncategorized, , ,

10/26/2009 • 9:18 am Comments Off on 26.10.09 new week, new ventures

26.10.09 new week, new ventures

While this post is coming alive, I am on my way to Frankfurt to meet with representatives of the AIDS action alliance to discuss possible involvement at the 2nd ecumenical church day in Munich in May 2010 and the World AIDS Conference in Vienna. Mid November we have our annual planing meeting with HOPE Cape Town and then most travel arrangements must be decided on. Monday Frankfurt, Tuesday/Wednesday Bitburg and Wednesday eve Aachen are the next stations of my travel – Bitburg with a talk @ the Lion’s Club and various encounters and talks with the students and teachers of the St. Willibrord Gymnasium regarding the work of HOPE Cape Town and obviously touches the general situation in South Africa.  In Aachen I will talk about “HIV and AIDS as sign of the times” and discuss a possible theology of HIV and AIDS for our days.  All encounters create the opportunity to function as a bridge between South Africa and Europe. This becomes more and more important. In my talks in Berlin I once again realised how necessary it is that information is floating freely and honestly between South Africa and Germany to foster the development of relationships between the two countries which are helpful to the people and not only to the ruling class. Sometimes the European or German partners are very quick with solutions to our problems between Cape Town and Johannesburg – forgetting the different way, people in the South experience their realities. South Africa has a lot still to learn and to develop, be it that politicians are team player and not lone warriors trying to gain as much as possible as long as they are in office. But also the cooperation between NGO’s and government needs improvement and also here, the working mechanism developed in Germany between those parties, could have an assisting factor for us at the bottom of Africa.

Filed under: HIV and AIDS, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Networking, Politics and Society, Society and living environment, , , , , , , , , , , ,

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