John Chaplin, Aim’s International Aids Co-ordinator, encourages us to look beyond the disturbing statistics and see what is being done and what can be done to combat the spread of this virus. 

It is said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago but the next best time is now. For Aids the best time to have responded is 25 years ago but we should not let the overwhelming figures stop us responding now.

In Kenya for instance, the ‘tree planting’ started six or seven years ago when Aids was declared a national disaster. Churches have played a significant part in Kenya’s response and the resulting fall in HIV prevalence (see ‘terminology’ box opposite) from double figures to just over 6%. On occasions churches in the West have also been involved.

Josephine’s story

Josephine is a member of a church in Nakuru, Kenya where a group of churches have been looking after orphans through a feeding programme and have trained Aids educators and teachers to share about Aids and Christian life skills. With the partnership of a church in the United States they have expanded these programmes and also established a number of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) sites, home-based care, and vocational training for youth.

As Josephine looked around she saw poverty everywhere and lots of orphaned children. So she left her job, and devoted herself to these children – many of them orphaned by HIV/Aids. Partly as a result of their partnership with a western church, her work has grown in its scope and outreach. Today, the ministry serves 120 orphans and vulnerable children – vulnerable because their parents are often HIV-positive. It is not an orphanage; instead the children are housed throughout the community by caring Christians and families. The daily feeding programme, providing for many of them with their only meal of the day, is just one of the ways that the ministry attends to the children’s many needs.

Josephine has seen a number of dramatic changes among the children. For example Simon never knew his father and his mother died of Aids in 1997, leaving eleven year-old Simon and his six year-old sister to be raised by their grandmother. Simon started drinking, which led to trouble with the police, and eventually he was sent away to Nairobi. While in Nairobi he became a Christian. When later he returned to Nakuru and discovered Josephine’s vocational training programme, Simon took up learning to paint and hopes someday to earn a living from his art.

“Our children are changing and are becoming agents of change,” says Josephine, “Never think that you are an orphan,” Josephine tells the children, “Having God is everything.”

The Nakuru churches have been stimulated and enabled to expand their involvement while the church in the US knows that their input has had an impact in the lives of those affected by Aids as well as those who minister to them.

Why Africa?

Some have asked why Aids is so prevalent in Africa. Is it related to greater promiscuity? The answer is not simple with many factors such as poor nutrition, poor health and medical care and poverty. One reason, however, is the acceptance of polygamous relationships in Africa. Society in the West may be as promiscuous – or more so – but usually it is done with one relationship following another.

Never think that you are an orphan,” Josephine tells the children, “Having God is everything.”

Other than when a person starts developing Aids, they are much more likely to infect others in the first few months after being infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) than at any other time. So a man in a polygamous marriage is much more likely to spread the virus to his wives soon after being infected. This explains why reduction in sexual partners – or ‘zero grazing’ as they have come to call it in Uganda – has been so effective, and such an important but often neglected strategy.

In Lesotho and Namibia the HIV prevalence is around 20%. It seems little ‘tree planting’ has been done. Although the lifestyle there makes the spread of HIV easy, the church is saying or doing very little. Yet there are small sparks of interest that Aim members are seeking to fan into flames.

In the mountains of Lesotho a group of church leaders is conducting Aids education among the herd boys. At the same time they will mentor young men from the local churches as they assist the leaders to teach chastity and faithfulness. Jayne (Aim US) is helping them develop their programme and sees the opportunities of taking it to other areas. A small group of young people in Rundu, Namibia have formed an Aids group that is teaching about Aids in churches and to the youth around. Aim is encouraging them in their stand to be different from their peers and helping them to find useful material and training to share the message of godly living through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Even though HIV prevalence rates have stabilized in sub-Saharan Africa, the actual number of people infected continues to grow because of population growth. Applying the same prevalence rate to a growing population will result in increasing numbers  of people living with HIV.

Information from 2006 report on the global aids epidemic. Chapter 2, Overview of the global aids epidemic.www.unaids.org

Hanalie’s Story

As an HIV sufferer, Hanalie, her five children and one granddaughter, live in hunger and poverty. Yet, as a new Christian, she sees God at work daily. No matter what comes, she shines! She shares her food and the clothes donated to her with others in need. Her community know her as a woman whom God helps. However, Hanalie was falsely accused of stealing a mobile phone, and landed up in a dirty jail for three days.

The church as a welcoming community of love and forgiveness should be a major force to overcome the spread of the virus."

So why would God allow her to be put in jail? While there she shared a small cell with about 15 other women, mostly prostitutes. She shared her story with some of them, including a young prostitute called Gabona. She told them that she, too, had been a prostitute, living under a bridge, she had lost a child to hunger and HIV, and had been abandoned by her husband. Through the testimony of a friend, who was HIV-positive, she had found Jesus. Now she lives for Jesus. He feeds her, protects her and has become her husband and friend. 

One evening Hanalie went to the tree where the prostitutes gather. Hanalie knows the place well. She saw Gabona who had listened to her while she was in prison. Gabona is hungry to be set free. She rushed to Hanalie and they talked for a while. Hanalie has since brought her to a Bible study, and offered to be in her life if she wants help.

Hanalie knows that if Gabona comes to Jesus, those three terrible days in prison were worth it. She smiles, knowing that God used her there. There, in the worst place, God was at work.

A safe place

Aids generates fear and stigma and yet it is relatively easy to avoid. Fear, stigma, silence and isolation are breeding grounds for the virus and greatly hamper any meaningful response. The church as a welcoming community of love and forgiveness should be a major force to overcome the spread of the virus. Sadly, by ignoring, condemning and rejecting, it is often the opposite.

Madagascar is in the early phase of the Aids pandemic, an ideal time to start tree planting. If the churches could respond now, an Aids disaster could be averted. Karin Mende, the Mission’s Aids co-ordinator on the island, is having many opportunities to share in churches and Christian groups but with a mixed response. “I was supposed to teach a three-day Aids seminar but after the first day the church leaders felt they did not want or need Aids teaching in their church. But on the other hand, I taught the first half of the Aids seminar at a small Christian university. What a joy to teach motivated people who want to be Aids educators in their respective churches and areas. Pray for them to develop realistic action plans to implement what they have learnt.”

The challenge

As the Mission’s International Aids Co-ordinator I have met the leaders of Aim’s Regions. They all recognize that Aids is one of the major issues they have to face. Aids education is also a gateway to reaching out to unreached people groups as it helps people to think of eternal issues and look seriously at the claims of the gospel. Aids can be a means God uses to bring people to himself.

Aids also challenges us as to how we live. Are we committed to God in every aspect of our lives? Surely for us as the body of God’s people, the call to us, both in the West and in Africa, is to live godly lives to which he has called us (1 Peter 1:14-16). Can we commit ourselves to pray for the church in Africa’s response to Aids? We in the West can support our brothers and sisters in Africa who are struggling with Aids and its impact. Please contact me if you or your church feel you are able.

A number of studies have shown that condom promotion has failed to have any impact in generalised HIV epidemics found in most African countries.

About the author

John Chaplin and Jackie Chaplin met and married in Eastbourne after a doctor/nurse romance. They first went with Aim to Kenya in 1994 to work in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. An increasing involvement in Aids and encouraging an effective Church response resulted in John helping to start the AIC Aids programme in 1998. In 2006 they moved to Aim’s International Office in Bristol where John has taken on the role of the Mission’s International Aids Coordinator. This involves John, helping develop Aids strategies within Aim’s Regions in Africa and encouraging all missionaries to develop an appropriate response to Aids in their particular field of work. John and Jackie have four children: Marie, Joshua, Rebekah and Daniel, the last three all adopted while in Kenya.

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