It’s days like today that make me realize just how blessed I really am. Our task for the day was to visit a home that has experienced a recent death, or where someone is very ill. Christine took me back to her neighborhood of Matero, to Mavis’s home.
Beauty is Mavis’s older sister. She has 4 children, two of whom are grown; the youngest is 12 years old. Her husband died from AIDS in 2003, but Beauty was never tested for the disease herself.
In November, Beauty began experiencing fever, night sweats, body aches, and general weakness. A doctor at a clinic gave her Coartem for malaria, but it didn’t help. Doctors gave her other drugs, but they didn’t help, either. Her children were taking care of her, but when she got worse last week and began vomiting, Mavis brought her from the village where they grew up to her home in Matero.
In all likelihood, Beauty has AIDS. The history is there. The signs are almost certain. What will happen to her and her children? Her sister, Mavis, can barely afford to feed her own, let alone provide for Beauty while she is sick, or care for her children once she is gone. And Beauty and Mavis’s story is not unique. Theirs is the story of Africa. Everyone on this continent has been touched by AIDS in some way, shape, or form. Every home you go into, you feel the heaviness of death. It is a part of life here.
As I walked through the dirt streets of Matero this morning, I was speechless. There are no words that can make this okay. There is nothing I can do to change the outcome of Beauty’s situation; she is going to die. I know all the pc-church platitudes: At least she knows Jesus; her body will be healed completely; there’s more to life than what happens on earth. I know all that, and yes, it is true. But it doesn’t make Beauty’s death any more acceptable. What happens to her children? To her sisters?
I have no words, and I truly have no answers. All I can hold on to, as I write on the verge of tears, is that my Jesus is weeping over Beauty, too.
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