Letters from Overseas

September 2008

• Conselho Cristao de Mocambique
  Zambezia, Sector de Comunicacoes
  Ave Julius Nyerere 948, CP 400
  Quelimane MOCAMBIQUE

Those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others...?

Luke 13:4

Jesus goes on to answer his own question, and the answer is "no." Jesus saw so clearly so much suffering, so often, of so many people who surely did not deserve it. Undeserved calamities continue. We do not know how or why a loving and all-powerful God would permit what seems like such injustice. It is beyond our understanding. But we are called to believe that God suffers too with all those who suffer.

On Monday, August 26, when 10 United Church of Canada members were travelling with us in Zambezia province of Mozambique, we visited Enesse Mulambe at her parents' home in the mountainous district of Milange. We were introduced by our colleague Pastor Manteiga, the head of the Christian Council's project of community gardens there for medicinal plants against HIV/AIDS. Enesse is one of 60 HIV-positive people his project has been helping. Enesse then was in an advanced state of AIDS, thin and weak and hopeless, not speaking, and lying propped on a straw mat and blanket in the shade under the wide overhanging thatched eaves. She was 19, with two small children, whose father had left them on learning that Enesse was HIV-positive.

Not long ago, the first HIV testing centre opened in Milange, and then a government clinic that administers anti-retroviral drugs to those whose CD4 white-blood-cell count has fallen below the threshold. But all this comes too late for Enesse, and for thousands of Mozambicans like her. By then she was too sick already to travel to the clinic, a 40-minute drive away on a bumpy dirt road, and her parents too poor in any case to afford the minibus taxi. CCM and Pastor Manteiga are negotiating with the district health administration to give him authority to administer anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) at the health post in Molumbo, much closer for those who live in the north of the district.

Earlier that same day we'd visited Julia and Albuquerque, at their farm, a 20-minute hike from the farthest that a vehicle can go on the dirt track leading from the main district road. Both are HIV-positive. Fortunately they went for testing when their viral load proved to be still relatively light. Their other good fortune is access to the natural medicines that Manteiga now can provide, produced from the CCM medicinal gardens. With other aids like good nutrition, a person with HIV can live for years before ARVs become necessary. Their farm is thriving and they have chickens and pigs and a mount of sorghum in the wicker elevated granary.

On that day we prayed with and for Enesse. There wasn't much else anyone could do, only this comfort. In the end, says Ecclesiastes (12:7), the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. The end of earthly life for Enesse came on Friday, September 12. Her parents came to inform the Christian Council, to thank CCM for their help in the last few weeks of their daughter's unjustly short life, and to say they knew that it had been too late for anyone to save her. It's too late for thousands of others who will unavoidably die soon of AIDS. But with CCM medicinal gardens in Milange and other districts, it won't be too late for other more-fortunate HIV-positive people and their families. There'll be hundreds more like Albuquerque and Julia.

In mission and service,
Karen and Bill Butt

Karen and Bill Butt are United Church of Canada Overseas Personnel serving with Conselho Cristao de Mocambique in Mozambique. The work of this ecumenical partner and the work of overseas personnel are made possible through your gifts to the Mission and Service Fund of The United Church of Canada.