Jack Voelkel
Full Immersion AIDS ministry
Guest Author: Don Nicol
Through AIM-Canada, Hanneke Budde received part of the Urbana 03 Offering to help with her ministry to HIV/AIDS victims. Recently, Don Nicol, a lay volunteer at Knox Presbyterian Church (Toronto, Canada), worked with Hanneke in Shinyanga, Tanzania for 3 months and filed this report.
An elderly woman was at our gate in the morning “cool” of 80 degrees. She desperately needed to share her burdens with “Mama Hanneke,” known for her Christian compassion. She had had two children and they had both died of AIDS. Now she was left with two grandsons who were sick, because they couldn’t get adequate food. She wanted to end her life because she felt she was a failure and there would be no one to look after her now in her old age and time of greatest need. How could she help these two? The older (11 years) showed all the signs of AIDS and would likely die without help.
The only immediate help that Hanneke could give her was enough beans and rice for a couple of days. “Come to my office next week,” Hanneke told her, “and we’ll try to help you through the aid program.” Although she has heard sad stories too often, Hanneke was deeply troubled as she walked back into the house.
Hanneke’s Story
As we drove to the office, Hanneke shared some of her story. Born in Holland and then moving to Canada, her training and background had been in education and counselling high need youth. While attending a mission conference at her home church [Knox, Toronto] Hanneke felt called to work with children in Tanzania through AIM. She’s been there 13 years. Today her African colleagues call her Mama Hanneke. “She is one of us,” they told me. “She is only white on the outside. She is our family. She does much more for us than what we do for each other. Please tell your people that the Bishop of Shinyanga encourages you to support this wonderful lady in whatever way you can, and send another 30 Hannekes to help us here.”
Hanneke’s responsibilities are impossible to describe precisely. New challenges and opportunities emerge daily to change her job description. She loves these new horizons and boredom is never an issue with her. In her rented house at the edge of the town, she cares for a three year old girl, Kiri, and a one year old boy, Baraka. Hanneke had found him lying on the side of the road, totally abandoned.
Hanneke at Work
Arriving at her crowded office she met students, who needed uniforms, books, and pencils, as well as widows with heartbreaking needs. One woman had walked six hours. We gave her some millet seed, rice and money for bus fare home. Another woman came because her husband has disappeared leaving her with eight children to care for. One tiny widow who came to get help for her orphans shared her scary drama. “Last night when I was sleeping in my house [really a hut] I felt my leg growing cold. I lit a match and saw a cobra three inches thick wrapped around my leg. I cried out to my neighbour. He ran and cut the snake into pieces with his machete. God is with us!”
We went to the government hospital to try to help a desperate family get an operation for their eleven year old daughter who has been bleeding from the nose for several weeks. The doctors wanted a bribe and they had no resources. Hanneke was able to intervene and provide a bit of money for the additional tests. The child’s fingernails were as if they had been painted dull white and her tongue was as white as chalk. She lay almost motionless, congealed blood on the mothers scarf under her face. She responded only slightly as Hanneke lifted the little one in prayer to God in that sultry ward full of very sick children. Unfortunately the help was too late. She died, clinging to the crocheted doll that we had brought her from Canada, on Christmas morning.
We drove to inspect another widow’s home. She was very elderly but had built a house next to her own to provide rent money for her family. The termites had invaded and now the roof was ready to cave in. We will try to replace the roof rafters. In her weak condition she praises God for Hanneke who brought her the love of her Jesus.
The HIV/AIDS Pandemic
AIDS has many ways of becoming rampant in Tanzania. There is the overt sexual infidelity; there have been programs of inoculation for children, where the same needle was used many times; there is the teenage circumcision ritual for boys, where the same knife is used many times; there is the lack of water for basic sanitation needs. Some medications that are sold in the stores are useless. AIDS causes the body’s immune system to fail and the infected person becomes susceptible to any disease (Opportunistic Infections).
Trying to make a living, using machetes and hoes, where ill-tempered long horn cattle hover and every green bush is decked with thorns often opens the body to infection. Life here seems somehow to be becoming even darker. Witch doctors’ huts with their round domes and conk shells on the peak thrive on the superstitions and the inadequate teaching of the Christian message in this country where David Livingstone’s heart lies buried under a baobab tree.
The Continued Drought
One morning we jolted through the yellow-red mud roads of Shinyanga. Only one road has ever been paved in Shinyanga and now it has harsher ruts than the roads in the rest of the city. Often drivers just take off wherever they can through streets crowded with bicycles and carts, loaded way beyond capacity. The red-yellow dust gets everywhere. When you feel the dust grinding into your skin you realize that ever the dust has salt in it. Often a road will be so washed away that you have to retreat, and the rains have not actually arrived yet. We hear that they have already started in the west of the country and people are praying that they will be here soon. People fear the damage that the pounding rains do to their mud block houses, but fear that the rains might not come strikes even more terror. Drought is the Grim Reaper’s bosom buddy in this delicate part of the continent.
As we drove along the road from the rundown diamond mine, in the heat of the late afternoon sun, we saw two men pulling their oxcart, straining under the burden of their load, of the heat, and the occasion. Lying almost motionless inside the cart was their longhorn cow. The cow was emaciated and her proud long horns did little to give her any sense of strength or control. Flies feasted around the puss running from her eyes. We could only imagine where they would take their animal for help, when help for humans is difficult to find. These men and their treasured beast were quickly becoming yet more victims of this rainless, sun-scorched area. It was increasingly hard to know how to help those who had become these new friends that we had begun to know and love.
Opportunities for Service
I asked Hanneke what opportunities there are for individuals to go and help her. She had a list ready, including the following:
• An urgent need for teachers in the newly built Christian school;
• The clinics are in need of medical staff;
• Numerous building and rebuilding projects;
• Financial aid is always welcome, and is prayerfully and wisely used.
She found plenty for me to do, and in spite of the heat and limited facilities I never felt more used by God in my life. I wish I could have stayed. Now I’m praying about returning.
Some Questions to Ponder
1. What impresses you about the scenes you have just read about?
2. How would you describe Hanneke?
3. Why do you think she has gone to Africa?
4. Do you think the Lord might ever call you to a ministry like hers?
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