circle of quiet

After a long absence, what is it that I want to say?

I've spent the last few days accompanying people who do home care for men and women with HIV, sick people who live in poor neighborhoods. It's a lot to take in, even when I consider myself reasonably exposed to this sort of thing. "This sort of thing", of course, is a polite euphemism for: Poverty. Death. Starvation. Illness. As if those things were rude.

Last night I sat wrapped up in a wool blanket on my brown pleather couch in my little house in Macarungo. I let the silence work on me. I stilled my head, remembered to breathe. And almost immediately I began throwing up.

It was me needing emotional release, is all, and I understood that right away. Guess I am not in fact used to Those Rude Things. So I stretched out my arm, without leaving the couch, cradled the phone into my lap, and dialled a friend, direct from Moz to America, who listened to me cry and describe the day.

Immediately afterwards, I was fine, only weary and hungry. But fine enough to eat a peanut butter sandwich, crawl into my luxurious bed, and - grateful, warm - switch off the light.

What I'd spent all morning doing is walking in the rain with three Mozambican companions, two girls about my age, one of whom is seven months pregnant. They both kept taking my hands as we made our way through the mud and rain of a very poor urban neighborhood (we call them 'slums', but they call them home), passing through the smoke of a hundred charcoal cooking fires, hastening across green rivulets of waste.

Then there was the small-of-stature Pastor Fernando, quiet, gentle, always smiling, dripping wet, a man who is perhaps among the greatest men that have ever lived - given the way these things are judged spiritually - kindness and compassion oozing from him like they're his particular superpowers. He was beautiful to behold, to be frank. Even made me puke, a full ten hours later.

I could spend a lot of time and energy recreating what it was like watching these volunteers do their twice-weekly work, with nothing to offer the sick they visit other than their presence, a song or prayer if they want it, and the sincerity of their concern. Which is nothing and everything.

But I'm not going to. Instead I'm going to cut and paste excerpts from emails to my family:

...Doing the HIV work has gotten started though - after 3 months studying Portuguese - and that is always really rewarding. Because in the end it comes down to people's lives and interacting with really courageous people here - who suffer so much caring for their families, who work so hard, who give of themselves so generously. They aren't all perfect, of course - but I really think it is a huge privilege to be here, trying to understand people's lives, to try to do some good. It's not easy or straightforward, and also pretty emotionally stressful - I mean, of course it is! But it is good work and I'm grateful for the chance to do it.

This morning I spent walking around a very poor neighborhood with some people who volunteer, every single week, twice a week, to care for people who are sick at home. They are very very sick, in fact, and don't have much food or any money, so it is really important that someone comes to help care for them. Going into people's small, dark, little homes... some without doors even, made of only sticks and mud.

You leave your sandals at the door and enter. The hand of one of the volunteers reaches up in your blindness and pulls you down to the floor. You sit. After your eyes adjust to the darkness, you see there is a beautiful person, someone who is my age, you know, maybe only 27 years old, weighing about 80 lbs. They are laying on the floor, curled up like you do when you just want to forget the world, to shut out everything, to hear or feel nothing. There is no mattress, no reed mat. The wind and rain is howling outside, you shiver in your sweater, but for them, they have just a thin cotton blanket on them, it's not even a blanket. Their feet, bare, stick out the bottom. For some reason, that bothers you immensely. When your eyes adjust completely, you rest your hand on their back, which is hard, too bony. But it feels good to touch them, and you sense it feels good to them too. You see, in your silenced head and heart, they are just lying there, alone, in the darkness of a tiny, low-roofed hut, in the middle of a big, grass-overgrown country, in the middle of an enormous blue and black and green planet, surrounded by all the celestial emptiness of space. And they are dying.

The thing is: these people who are sick HAVE medicine - the government has made antiretrovirals and TB medicine (because they all have TB too) available for people - but the meds only work if you have enough food, otherwise they make you feel much worse, vomiting, diarrhea, etc. And people here don't have food. Not enough.

One older man lives by himself in a little shack - I think his wife died and he has no children around - and he told me how grateful he is that these women come to help him. He was just skin and bones really, but so kind, so gentle and polite. The women come and wash his clothes, make a little bit of porridge for him if he has any food - a big if - and draw water from the well for him. It makes a huge difference to his life.

So I just looked at these volunteers - the young girls, the middle-aged pastor, the old, bent grandmothers doing all this work - people who are themselves so thin, yet so strong inside and out, and I thought how they are really the people that Jesus will look at, shaking his head, overcome perhaps, and say:

"Well done. Well done. I was naked, sick, thirsty, etc., etc. And you cared for me."

They are amazing.